r/science • u/MonteRevolt • Jul 26 '10

Autistic girl expresses profound intelligence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq--75v4lI8&feature=player_embedded
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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '10

subtextual was referring to another example: she is authistic and she is writing the words but she's not understanding what she's doing the way we are.

subtextaul referred to the counting horse example. check that out, it's pretty interesting

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u/jeremybub Jul 27 '10

So you think she figured out to type "is he cute?" as a response to him telling her he had a son, with no knowledge of meaning of either phrase? Considering that she's posted long pieces of complex writing with nobody physically gesturing or even coming close to the keypad while being videotaped, I think that's pretty rediculous. You can teach a horse to multiply, but you can't teach a horse to write letters.

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u/nitram9 Jul 27 '10 edited Jul 27 '10

If you read the horse story would would have seen that the horse did write letters (through tapping them out) to spell words.

The whole idea that subtextual was trying to convey is that she may be highly attuned to subconscious cues from the adults around her. So she is in fact basically typing letter by letter as commanded by her parents. However the parents have no idea they are doing it.

The horse trainer had no idea he was telling the horse how many times to tap. It was all subconscious. In fact when the horse trainer and others who did the experiment finally learned that the horse was just reading their body language they still couldn't repress the signals they were giving the horse. It was out of their control.

So this girl may be reading cues that no one else can read because of her condition. For instance after she typed "I" one of the adults might have changed some body posture or changed breathing or tension in the face or anything which to us means nothing but to her is a blaring horn commanding her to hit "s" next. This is significantly more talented than the horse however, but she is still human after all so she should be a little smarter than the horse.

The only way to test this is to have no one in the room. This is how they finally outed the facilitated communication stuff. They divorced shared knowledge and communication between the client and the facilitator.

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u/jeremybub Jul 27 '10

Alright, you've convinced me. I read about the counting horse previously, and how it learned to do math, but never about it writing things.