Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism (24 page)

When working with nonverbal people with autism you have to be a good detective to figure out the cause behind a challenging behavior like throwing things or biting people. The first thing that must be ruled out is a hidden medical problem that the person cannot tell you about. If an individual who used to be calm and cooperative suddenly turns violent, pain may be the cause. Heartburn or acid reflux is a common problem in adults with autism. Try some simple remedies such as elevating the head of the bed six inches, not laying down after eating, and medicine for heartburn. Constipation is another common problem. Other painful conditions that can cause behavior problems are dental problems, ear infections, or sinus infections. One quiet little boy had pushed a bean up his nose and he disrupted his class until the bean was removed.

Sensory issues are another trigger of problem behaviors. Suspect sensory sensitivity if the behavior problem occurs right after the individual is moved to a new environment. The fear of getting one's ears blasted by the smoke alarm can trigger a tantrum. If a smoke alarm has previously gone off in the room, the individual may be afraid to go back into that room. The sight of a mobile phone may cause panic because it can ring at any time. Changing the ring tone may help. Fluorescent lights or some other stimuli that the person cannot tolerate are other possibilities.

Troubleshooting Guide for Challenging Behavior in Nonverbal Individuals

Step 1. Look for a painful, hidden medical problem.

Step 2. Look for a sensory reason.

Step 3. If 1 and 2 can be ruled out, look for the behavioral reasons for the challenging behavior.

There are three major behavioral motivators.

1. 1. The person is attempting to communicate.
   

2. 2. He/she is trying to get attention.
   

3. 3. The person wants to escape from a task that he/she dislikes.
   

There are many good books available to help remedy problems with challenging behavior such as the
Treasure Chest of Behavioral Strategies
. Once you have figured out the motivation, you can develop a behavioral program. If communication is a problem, then the individual may need a communication system such as “Picture Exchange” or a picture board. If a desire for attention is the cause, then ignoring the behavior sometimes works. If the individual is attempting to escape from a task, you must make sure that a sensory sensitivity issue is not the true cause. If there is no sensory issue, then try quietly to direct the person back to the task or change the task to make it more appealing.

Other interventions that can be used are working with an occupational therapist to calm the nervous system and special diets and supplements. Some teenagers and adult individuals will need medication. Doctors must not make the mistake of giving more and more medication every time there is a crisis. A program of vigorous exercise also helps to calm the nervous system. A combination of medical, behavioral, and nutritional/biomedical approaches is usually best.

Fear Associations

A person with autism may panic when he/she sees some common, ordinary thing. Maybe a blue coat evokes fear because the fire alarm went off at the exact moment the blue coat was being put on. The coat then becomes associated with the fire alarm. Sensory-based fear associations are common in animals. I saw a horse that was afraid of black cowboy hats. White cowboy hats and ball caps caused no reactions. The horse feared black hats because he was looking at a black hat when he was abused. Another animal became afraid of the sound of a nylon jacket because it was associated with abuse. These fear memories are stored as pictures, sounds, smells, or touches. Since nonverbal people with autism are sensitive to smells, it is likely that a smell could become associated with an aversive stimulus such as sensory overload at a supermarket. The smell of a new detergent brought into the home could possibly become associated with a “meltdown” in the detergent aisle of a local supermarket.

The problem with severe fear memories is that they can never be erased from the person's memory. A person or animal can learn to overcome a fear. The brain does this by sending a signal down to the amygdale (emotion center) to close the “computer file” of the memory. The file can be closed but it cannot be deleted. In animals, fear memories have a nasty habit of popping back even after the animal has learned to get over its fear. This is especially a problem in high-strung, nervous animals. Sensitive nervous animals that get frightened easily such as Arabian horses can become so traumatized by severe abuse that they may never completely learn to get over their fears. Animals with calmer genetics have an easier time learning to close the file on a fear memory. Making fear memories permanent helps animals to survive in the wild. The ones that forget where they met a lion will not survive.

9
Artists and Accountants

An Understanding of Animal Thought

MANY PEOPLE have been fascinated by the terrific feats of memorization of savants. According to Bernard Rimland, of the Autism Research Institute in San Diego, approximately 9 or 10 percent of people with autism have savant skills. Some are like calendar calculators who can tell you the day of the year for any date; others can perfectly play a piece of music they have heard only once. Another type can memorize every street in a city or every book in a library. There are also savants who can rapidly identify all the prime numbers in a list of numbers, even though they are incapable of doing basic arithmetic calculations. Hans Welling, a researcher in Portugal, speculates that mathematically weak savants may have a method for visually analyzing the symmetry of numbers, which would enable them to distinguish prime from nonprime numbers.

Savants are usually very impaired in learning other skills, such as socializing. One mother told me about her teenage savant son, who could do extraordinary computer programming but simply could not learn the meaning of money. Savants memorize huge amounts of information but have difficulty manipulating the material in meaningful ways. Their memory skills far exceed those of normal people, but their cognitive deficits are great. Some are incapable of making simple generalizations that cattle and other animals make easily.

It is no mystery how the autistic savant depicted in the movie
Rain Man
beat the casinos in Las Vegas and counted cards in the game of twenty-one. It was simply intense visualization and concentration. The only reason I can 't count cards is that I can no longer concentrate intensely enough. My visualization skill has not changed, but I can no longer hold a single image steady for a long enough period of time. When I visualize equipment, I edit the images like a feature movie. I may visualize the system from a vantage point on the ground, but in the next instant I see it from another perspective. I am no longer able to hold a continuous video in my imagination. I would speculate that the true card-counting savant mind works like a video camera that is fixed to a tripod and continuously records the same scene. The vantage point of the savant 's mind camera remains fixed for relatively long intervals. When the savant 's concentration is locked onto one thing, it is difficult for him to shift attention. If a VCR could be plugged into his brain and his visual memories could be played on a TV, his memory would likely resemble a very long home movie taken from a single, stationary vantage point. This intense ability to hold an image constant may also contribute to the rigid and inflexible behavior of most savants.

What interests me most about autistic savants of the extreme type is that they do not satisfy one of Marian Stamp Dawkins 's chief criteria for thinking. Dawkins, a researcher at the University of Oxford, is one of the few specialists who studies thinking in animals. She makes a clear distinction between instinctual behavior and true thinking. Similar to the main operating programs of a computer, instincts are behavior patterns that are programmed in the animal. Some instincts are hard-wired like computer hardware, and others can be modified by experience. An example of instinctual behavior is a calf following its mother. Animals are also capable of learning behavior that is not governed by instincts. For example, cows can quickly learn to line up for milking at 4:00 P.M.But cows lining up at milking time or running after a feed truck are simply responding to straightforward stimulus conditioning. Animals are also capable of learning simple rules of thumb. An animal can remember that he gets food when a green light turns on or he must jump a barrier to avoid a shock when a red light turns on. But to determine whether or not the animal is really thinking requires testing under novel conditions where he cannot use a simple rule of thumb. Numerous studies reviewed by Dawkins clearly indicate that animals can think and are capable of using previously learned information to solve problems presented under novel conditions. Animals have the ability to generalize, even though they do not use language.

Dawkins 's work begs the deeper question of whether a child with autism who is unable to generalize can think. For example, a person with classic Kanner autism can be taught not to run out into the busy street in front of his house because it is dangerous. Unfortunately, he often fails to generalize this knowledge to a street at somebody else 's house. In another scenario, the autistic person may learn the procedure for buying a candy bar at Safeway but have difficulty figuring out how to buy a candy bar at Wal-green 's. Such people are not able to comprehend any deviations from the pictures in their memory.

According to Dawkins 's criteria, then, savant autistics are not capable of true thought. Autistic people like myself are able to satisfy her criteria for thinking, but I would be denied the ability to think by scientists who maintain that language is essential for thinking.

When a well-respected animal scientist told me that animals do not think, I replied that if this were true, then I would have to conclude that I was unable to think. He could not imagine thinking in pictures, nor assign it the validity of real thought. Mine is a world of thinking that many language-based thinkers do not comprehend. I have observed that the people who are most likely to deny animals thought are often highly verbal thinkers who have poor visualization skills. They excel at verbal or sequential thinking activities but are unable to read blueprints.

It is very likely that animals think in pictures and memories of smell, light, and sound patterns. In fact, my visual thinking patterns probably resemble animal thinking more closely than those of verbal thinkers. It seems silly to me to debate whether or not animals can think. To me it has always been obvious that they do. I have always pictured in my mind how the animal responds to the visual images in his head. Since I have pictures in my imagination, I assume that animals have similar pictures. Differences between language-based thought and picture-based thought may explain why artists and accountants fail to understand each other. They are like apples and oranges.

Studies by Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and many other researchers have shown very clearly that primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas can think, though few scientists would also concede that farm animals have thinking abilities. Yet anyone who has spent any time working with cattle knows that they are able to recognize familiar objects when they see them in a new location. My experience suggests that these animals think in discrete visual images. They are able to make an association between a visual image stored in their memory and what they are seeing in the present. During an experiment on the farm at Colorado State University, for example, cattle were handled in a squeeze chute for blood testing once a month for five months. Most cattle willingly reentered the squeeze chute during each blood test after the first one, but a few refused to enter. These animals were very discriminating as to which part of the squeeze chute they disliked, often refusing to put their heads in the stanchion though voluntarily entering the body-squeezing part.

Apparently when the person operating the lever closed the stanchion too quickly, the animal got banged on the head. Animals that had been accidentally struck were more likely to balk at the head stanchion. Most of them marched right up to the squeeze chute and willingly walked into the body squeeze section, but they stopped short of the stanchion because they feared getting banged on the head. Some animals poked their head toward the stanchion and then quickly jerked it back before the operator could close the stanchion around their neck. They acted like sissy swimmers who put a toe in the cold water and then jerk it out.

Over the five-month period the animals grew too large for the manually operated chute, so they were taken to a hydraulically operated squeeze chute for the fifth and final blood test. The hydraulic chute was painted a different color and looked somewhat different from the manually powered squeeze chute. Likewise, the alleys and corrals leading up to the hydraulic chute were totally different. When the cattle approached the hydraulic squeeze chute, many of them balked and refused to put their heads into the stanchion. They recognized the squeeze chute in spite of the different design and new location. They had generalized their knowledge of squeeze chutes and stanchions to a new place.

Cattle I have worked with have had the ability to apply previously learned skills to new situations, which also indicates a capacity for thought. Cattle with large horns, such as Texas long-horns, have good spatial sense and will turn their heads to walk up a thirty-inch-wide truck loading ramp. But young cattle that have had no prior experience with narrow chutes and ramps will hit their horns on the entrance and be unable to enter. Turning the head to pass through a narrow place is not governed by instinct. Experienced animals learn to turn their heads. After they have learned, they will turn their heads before they enter a chute they have never seen before. When an experienced animal approaches the chute entrance, he turns his head and enters effortlessly.

Some very elegant research with birds has shown that even our feathered friends can think. Herb Terrace, the famous chimpanzee trainer, trained pigeons to peck at a series of lighted buttons in a specific order to obtain food. The task was designed to make it impossible for the pigeon to use a simple rule of thumb such as “red light equals food. ” All of the experiments were conducted in an enclosed box and controlled by a computer to insure that the pigeons did not receive cues from the trainer. (Whenever animal thinking is being evaluated, the “Clever Hans effect ” must be taken into account. Hans was a famous horse that had been trained to count by tapping his hoof. Many people were very impressed and thought the horse really could count. Hans did not know how to count, but he was a very perceptive horse who picked up subtle cues from his trainer.) Terrace designed a whole series of trials to show that the pigeons could apply previously learned knowledge about the button order to new button-pushing problems.

Irene Pepperberg has slowly and laboriously taught an African gray parrot named Alex to use language beyond mere repetition by having him watch two people talking to each other. One person would hold up an object such as a cork and ask, “What is this? ” If the second person gave the correct name for the cork, she would be praised by the first person and given the cork. However, if the second person gave the wrong name for the object, she was told “no ” very firmly After Alex watched many of these conversations, he started to use words in appropriate ways. Each small step was mastered before he went on to the next step.

For a reward, the parrot would be given the object. He had to learn that the correct word could get him things he wanted. People teaching language to severely autistic children use similar methods. The Lovaas language-teaching method requires seeing the object, hearing the word, and pairing the word with both the object and reward. After a child learns the objects, he is given pictures of objects. For some children severely afflicted with autism, relating to such pictures is difficult.

More evidence to support the idea of animal thought can be found in Benjamin Beck 's extensive review of the published scientific literature. While it is well known that monkeys and chimpanzees can use tools, Beck found many reports of tool use in birds and nonprimate mammals. Tool use is another sign that animals can really think. Elephants will push uprooted trees onto electric fences to break them, and one elephant even used a bamboo stake to scrape off a leech. Eskimo lore is full of accounts of polar bears throwing chunks of ice at seals. I have watched seagulls carry shellfish up over the roof of a steel boathouse and then drop them to break them open. The gulls also dropped clams on the road and waited for cars to run over them, exposing the tasty morsels. Beck 's review of the literature indicated that birds can learn tool use by observation. When one bluejay in a captive colony had learned to use reaching tools, five other jays also learned. A Galapagos finch that does not usually use sticks for probing learned to use them after observing another species of bird using this tool.

At the University of Illinois farm where I worked as a graduate student, the pigs in one pen learned to unscrew the bolts that held the fence to the wall. As fast as I could screw the bolts back in, their little tongues were unscrewing them. All five pigs in that pen learned to unscrew bolts. My aunt had a horse that learned to put its head through a gate to lift it off the hinges; and at every large cattle feedlot, there are always one or two cattle who rival the techniques of the great escape artists among us. One time I witnessed a twelve-hundred-pound crossbred Brahman steer jump six six-foot gates. He just levitated over them. A horse has to run to jump a gate, but this big Brahman rose up like a leaping whale and effortlessly cleared the top of the gates. The vast majority of cattle are content to stay in the pens and don 't try to get out, but a bull that has learned how to break barbed-wire fences is impossible to keep in, because he has learned that he will not get cut if he presses against the posts. Fences only work because cattle do not know that they can break them.

Dolphins at the University of Hawaii are being taught to understand symbolic sign language. Initial training is conducted by a person who makes hand signals that represent a simple sequence of commands. After the dolphin learns how to do a series of these tasks with a person, the next step is to have it look at a videotape of the person. This helps to prevent the Clever Hans effect. The simple command sentences are rearranged into hundreds of different combinations so the dolphins cannot memorize a set routine. Dolphins can easily transfer instructions from a real person to a videotape of the person. A third step further prevents possible cuing from the trainer. The trainer is now dressed in black and videotaped against a black curtain. The only thing the dolphin can see is the trainer 's white gloves making the signs against a black backdrop. The dolphins are able to understand the videotaped hand signals, too. At this point, the images are more abstract, and the dolphins are taking the first steps toward understanding symbolic representation of words.