4.
The Nature of Autism
Our
description and expanded definition of intelligence marks it as the
most fundamental human quality underlying the human transformation.
The intimate linkage of intelligence to artificial environmental
reconstruction, and to the human behavioral responsiveness to that
reconstruction, means that the human transformation is in essence the
equivalent of the growth in human intelligence. Other human
qualities, such as language skills or collective learning, are
important because of their leveraging effect, but they are not
fundamental. These other qualities are themselves built up out of the
constructed artifacts contained within or introduced into the
environment, and are thus less basic to the transformative process
than intelligence itself. Intelligence essentially describes
the process, and thus human intelligence, correctly defined, lies at
the core of the human transformation.
Nonetheless,
intelligence does not explain why
there has been a human transformation—intelligence is simply part
of the description and does not serve as its own cause. And nothing
that has been said so far gives an indication of what has prompted
humanity to head down this transformative intelligence path, and
given that Earth’s long biological history has not been witness to
any similar transformation before humanity came along, it would seem
there must be something unique that has spurred this species to head
off in this unusual direction. Intelligence therefore is the
consequence
of something, it is a resultant effect, and thus to discover what has
catalyzed, and continues to catalyze, human intelligence and the
human transformation, we are going to need to search in an entirely
different direction.
To
summarize what has been discussed so far, recall first that humans
were once pure animals, with the same restrictive
survival-and-procreative focus that is experienced by every organism
that falls under evolution’s domain. As with the other animals,
human perception was once tightly constrained, targeted almost
entirely towards objects such as food, water, rivals, sexual targets
and conspecifics, and thus human perception would have been almost
entirely blinded to objects and concepts not serving immediate
survival-and-procreative demand. But sometime within the last few
hundred thousand years, and accelerating beginning around fifty to
one hundred thousand years ago, humans began to break free of
evolution’s constraints, by turning evolution’s process inside
out and by reconstructing the human surroundings entirely for human
benefit. These reconstructions can be characterized almost entirely
by the word artificial,
they rely heavily upon the structural concepts of pattern, symmetry,
repetition, logic, number and form. If you look deeply into any human
artifact—a building, a word, a computer chip—what you will
discover is an innovative use of pattern, structure and form not
typically seen in the biological world. Humans can now make these
innovations because humans now perceive
the structure that underlies them; humans have become adept at
visualizing their world in a way that goes beyond just the biological
and the evolutionary, that goes beyond just a restrictive focus on
food, water, rivals, etc. So the question to be asked is, what has
sparked this broadened perceptual awareness? Is there some feature,
some characteristic, unique to the human population and observable
within that population, that has prompted humanity to enlarge its
perceptual boundaries, to break free of evolution’s perceptual
constraints, to see much further than just survival-and-procreative
demand?
The
answer to that question is yes. There is indeed an observable and
significantly present feature within the human population that has
had the impact, and continues to have the impact, of broadening human
perception. Furthermore, this feature’s perceptual characteristics
are exactly those one would expect in accounting for the
characteristics of the human transformation, namely a heightened
awareness of underlying pattern, structure and form, accompanied by a
diminished awareness of the survival-and-procreative world. This
feature can be denoted with just one word, but I hesitate to mention
that word. I suspect if every word in the English language were to be
ranked in the order of its likelihood for being the underlying
impetus behind the human transformation, nearly everyone would put
this word somewhere near the bottom of their list. It is a word that
is poorly understood. It is a word that has been mostly
mischaracterized. So our first order of business will be to examine
this word more carefully, to dig more deeply into its true nature,
and to discover why this word is the key for explaining the
perceptual changes that have been catalyzing the human
transformation.
That
one word is autism.
Autism
as a word did not come into existence until the twentieth century. It
was first used in the early 1900s by the German psychiatrist Eugene
Bleuler in describing the more withdrawn characteristics of
schizophrenic patients. Then nearly simultaneously in the 1940s,
American psychiatrist Leo Kanner and Austrian pediatrician Hans
Asperger employed the adjective autistic
in their published case studies of children who were displaying a
distinct set of behavioral features—namely language peculiarities,
social difficulties, and obsessive engagement with unusual activities
and interests. This set of behavioral features became the basis for
the definition of what was thereafter recognized to be a distinct and
lifelong condition, the condition now known as autism.
Although
the case studies of Kanner and Asperger did include instances where
the prognosis and outcome were not all that dire, during the 1950s
and 1960s autism was recognized, studied and regarded almost
invariably as a devastating medical condition. Outcomes were assumed
to be poor, with institutionalization often regarded as inevitable,
and treatments could be draconian. Autism at that time was assumed to
be an extremely rare occurrence, with prevalence estimates running as
low as one in ten thousand (0.01%).
These
estimates would change greatly throughout the final three decades of
the twentieth century, with autism becoming more and more frequently
recognized and diagnosed. By the year 2000, prevalence studies were
estimating that the incidence of autism was somewhere around 1 in 150
(0.67%). The main driver in this increased recognition of autism was
a growing awareness that not every instance had to be severe and not
every outcome had to be poor. Children were being diagnosed as having
all the telltale characteristics of autism but with those
characteristics ranging widely in both detail and intensity, and
often easing, sometimes dramatically, with time. Terms such as
high-functioning
autism
and Asperger’s
Syndrome
were invented to delineate the more promising cases from those
considered to be more “classic,” although the distinction between
these terms was never clearly defined. Indeed it was a confusing era
for autism, with large disagreement over the meaning of the
condition. The increased prevalence, combined with a lingering
attitude that autism was something to be regarded as both medical and
tragic, induced general fear that autism had become an epidemic
within the population. Funding and research were exponentially
increased, targeted almost always towards discovering both a cause
and a cure. At the same time, countering voices were growing
louder—including voices from autistic individuals—saying that
autism was being unfairly demonized and grossly misunderstood.
Since
the year 2000, attitudes and prevalence have continued to undergo
major revision. Some consensus has formed around the notion that
autism should be described as a spectrum, meaning that although every
autistic individual exhibits to an observable degree the defining
features of the condition, there is an extremely broad range of
variation in both presentation and outcome. Some autistic individuals
will experience more intensely the characteristics associated with
autism, and will struggle to achieve independent lives, although this
outcome still appears to be relatively rare. Many autistic
individuals will manage to achieve some level of acclimation to their
condition and will become participating members within the
population, sometimes with additional support and sometimes with
complete independence. There are now many examples of autistic
individuals having succeeded in college, having gone on to marry and
to raise families, having gained successful careers, and so on.
Recently there has even been a movement in some industries, such as
computer software development, to actively seek out autistic
individuals for the work value of their particular characteristics.
Recent prevalence studies have indicated that nearly 1 in 50 children
(2.0%) are being identified as autistic by the age of eight. This
high level of prevalence, combined with a growing recognition that
many autistic individuals lead successful and productive lives, has
helped bolster an understanding that autism likely did not spring up
out of nowhere during the twentieth century, but instead that
autistic individuals have been a significant presence within the
human population for quite some time. Individuals once commonly
described as quirky, eccentric, isolated, etc., they are now being
more frequently recognized as autistic.
Despite
these ongoing changes in both prevalence estimates and how autism is
being generally regarded, the medical and academic communities still
seem to be struggling to catch up. Research and funding have
continued to be focused almost exclusively on autism as a medical
condition, with treatment and cure still frequently promulgated as
the ultimate goal. These attempts to uncover the medical root cause
of autism have branched off into several different avenues of
pursuit. One line of research has focused on autism as being a
hereditary disorder, a hypothesis suggested by the fact that
identical twin and other family studies have indicated a genetic
underpinning for the condition. A second line of research has
targeted autism as a neurological aberration, a thesis being tested
through an assortment of neuroimaging studies, mostly centered around
detecting atypical brain signatures in autistic individuals. Finally,
autism as a metabolic condition has also received a great deal of
attention and effort, as have theories suggesting a variety of
environmental insults, with everything from vaccines to highway
pollution being put forth as the primary trigger of disease.
The
persistence of these efforts is reflected in the growing autism
research literature, which has expanded by at least an order of
magnitude in the last two decades alone. A recent listing of such
efforts would include the following titles: Autism
spectrum disorder symptom expression in individuals with 3q29
deletion syndrome;
Cortical
thickness abnormalities in autism spectrum disorder;
and Metabolomic
Signatures of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
These and other representative articles demonstrate the degree to
which the current research continues to focus on genetics, neurons
and metabolic pathways, as well as on the pursuit of treatment and
cure. But there is a growing irony haunting these many efforts, an
irony that can be recognized by considering a sampling of research
articles from the early 2000s: Examination
of AVPR1a as an autism susceptibility gene,
Neuroanatomic
variation in monozygotic twin pairs discordant for the narrow
phenotype for autism,
and Mercury
exposure in children with autistic spectrum disorder.
That is to say, not much has changed in autism research over the last
several decades, other than a great expansion in volume and a
constant shifting of the targeted culprits. Each year new candidate
genes, new targeted neural pathways, new metabolic mechanisms and new
environmental triggers are put forth with great fanfare and
considerable promise, which are then followed by years in which their
mention gradually declines. New therapies and new drugs are
frequently introduced and promoted, but then fail to deliver any
significant results in any unbiased trial. Watching this futile cycle
play out again and again, year after year, decade after decade, one
eventually gets the sense that when it comes to autism, the medical
and academic communities are essentially spinning their wheels. And
if there is to be any conclusion drawn from the autism research to
date, it is that we have every reason to suspect that autism is not
a medical condition.
In
my opinion, one of the more effective ways to achieve a greater
understanding of autism is to begin by exploring what it means to be
non-autistic, which is to say, what it means to be biologically
typical. This is not exactly an unfamiliar topic to this discussion,
because in a certain sense humans were most biologically typical when
they were in the state of being pure animals, with both their
behaviors and their perceptions shaped almost exclusively by
survival-and-procreative demand; the biological norm is to have all
of one’s effort and attention directed towards the immediate
essentials—food, water, rivals, sex, etc. Of course this
biologically pure state no longer entirely pertains for modern
humans, including non-autistic modern humans, but it is nonetheless
important to recognize how the carryover from this animal past
continues to influence behavior and perception in modern times. For
most humans today, despite finding themselves nearly fully immersed
in an artificially constructed environment, and despite having nearly
all their biological needs easily and abundantly met, nonetheless
still find themselves giving a great deal of attention and effort to
the familiar targets—food, water, rivals, sex, etc. Many of us can
confirm this proclivity simply by examining our own thoughts and
actions, and in addition, a general look at some of the more popular
human activities and interests will further reveal the extent to
which humans have remained strongly preoccupied with their more
primitive and natural selves. Everything from soap operas to
scatological humor to crosstown sports rivalries betrays the degree
to which humans have continued to be fascinated with the animal
aspect of humankind. Of course there is nothing surprising or
maladjusted about any of these tendencies, they are in fact entirely
to be expected. They are the natural consequence of humans being not
all that far removed from a former purely animal state.
One
of the more intriguing components of humanity's carryover from its
animal past is the notion of conspecific perception. Conspecific
perception is the natural tendency for organisms to possess a
heightened perceptual awareness for the other members of their own
species. For instance, lions perceive first and foremost other lions,
honeybees perceive first and foremost other honeybees, and so on. And
of course humans perceive first and foremost other humans. When one
walks into a conference room, despite one’s visual field being
almost entirely filled with various non-human artifacts, one’s
attention is nonetheless drawn immediately and naturally to the other
humans already in the room. This
intensified intra-species recognition is
evolutionarily fundamental
and essential
for a number of reasons. First, successful mating requires a physical
connection with another member of the same species, an occurrence
that would be haphazard at best without an enhanced perception for
one’s own kind. Also, the rearing of young would be
utterly
ineffective if either parent
or offspring could
not easily identify and perceptually foreground
the
other—imagine the consequences of a mother unable to
distinguish her
own brood from the broods of other species, or a
litter unable
to discern and to imitate its elders. In
addition, many
species coalesce into physical and
geographical groups
for warmth, for
effective
pack hunting, for
more
tenacious defense, and
so on,
with
these groupings themselves the
evidence
of how
each
member is
more greatly attuned to the presence and activities of the others
in the species.
Conspecific perception is crucial to successful survival and
procreation, so much so that it should probably be included within
the definition of what it means to be a species.
In
humans, conspecific perception is quite strong, as would be the case
for almost any species considered to be social, and the strength of
this human form of conspecific perception is most apparent when
considering the developmental activities of the very young. Human
newborns come into this world quite early and quite helpless, and
their first year or two of development is essentially an ongoing
scramble to gain a functional foothold. Careful observation of these
early years reveals the extent to which human newborns both rely upon
and are deeply attuned to the presence and activities of other
humans: a mother’s soothing voice, a father’s reassuring touch,
the smiling gestures of familiar faces. Nearly every child responds
immediately, favorably and naturally to these intra-species
impressions. And note how critical this process must be in giving the
newborn his or her sensory grounding, because without a strong dose
of conspecific perception the surrounding environment would most
likely emerge as nothing but a cacophony of random sensations: a wild
mix of colors and shapes in the visual field, a buzzing range of
tones and intensities inside the ear, a chaos of temperatures and
impressions upon the skin, and a kaleidoscope of haphazard tastes and
smells. Which of these impressions are to be latched upon as
important, and which of them can be ignored? Which sensations should
be promoted to the perceptual foreground, and which can be discarded
into the undiscerned remainder? It is primarily conspecific
perception that provides the organizational grounding around which a
newborn’s sensory world can be arranged. From out of the chaos of
countless sensations there emerges a human-forward world: human
faces, human laughter, human touch, human smells, human activities.
Everything associable to the human species gets a natural preference
in the newborn’s sensory field, thereby guaranteeing that the
newborn’s burgeoning perceptual world will become first and
foremost a human
world.
In
addition to conspecific perception’s primary impact of providing
sensory and developmental grounding, an impact shared in common with
almost every other animal species, conspecific perception in humans
now also serves a secondary purpose, that of providing a species-wide
awareness of the new features and behaviors being brought forth by
the human transformation. When one thinks of the many structured
artifacts and exploits that now dominate the human landscape—a
rattle, a book, a university lecture—one might wonder at first why
humans would give any attention at all to these artificial
impressions, given that there is no natural incentive to do so. These
objects and activities are not food, they are not water, they are not
sex, etc., and thus in the natural world, in the world of pure
animals, these objects and activities would seem destined to become
part of the undistinguished perceptual background. But of course the
reason these strange artifacts and behaviors end up garnering a great
deal of human attention, including the attention of humans of a very
young age, is that these artifacts and behaviors have become
intimately connected to the human species itself. Humans touch these
artifacts, humans point at these artifacts, humans put these
artifacts into other people’s hands. Thus once an artificial object
or behavior has gained sufficient foothold to become part of the
fabric of human experience, that object or behavior gets promoted to
the human perceptual foreground, because conspecific perception gives
humans the natural inclination to pay attention to what other humans
do.
Thus
a large part of what it means to be biologically typical is to
participate in an immense and shared perceptual network of
human-centric features and behaviors, some of which date back to the
species’ purely animal past, and some of which correspond to the
changes of modern times. Humans eat what other humans eat, humans
fear what other humans fear, and humans gather where other humans
are. And furthermore, when one human makes a gesture, or utters a
word, or scribbles something down, there will be other humans
standing nearby and paying the closest of attention, supporting the
entire range of constructed artifacts and behaviors that fall under
the heading of human language. And when one human points
to
the heavenly
bodies, or
narrates
the tribe's origin story,
or demonstrates the
workings of the newest innovation,
there
will be other
humans avidly
watching and listening, reinforcing a broad array of structured
behaviors that constitute collective learning.
The continuity of human behavior, as well as the continuity of the
human environment—including those activities and features arising
out of the human transformation—all ride on a sea of conspecific
perception, the natural glue holding together the species and its
actions.
Since
conspecific perception is so clearly crucial to both human
development and to the species-wide awareness supporting the many
features defining the human transformation, it raises an interesting
question about what would happen if a member of the species did not
possess a strong sense of conspecific perception. What would be the
developmental consequence of a newborn coming into this world less
able than other humans to perceptually foreground the human aspects
of the surrounding environment, and what would be the overall
ramifications of an individual not able to obtain his or her sensory
grounding from a human-forward world? This is not really a
theoretical question, because I believe we already know the answer.
Any member of the human species possessing a weakened sense of
conspecific perception, any human less able than other humans to
perceptually foreground the human aspects of the surrounding
environment, any individual unable to obtain his or her sensory
grounding from a human-forward world, that individual would be most
accurately described as autistic.
One
of the chief defining characteristics of autism is that autistic
individuals experience a broad assortment of what are usually
described as social difficulties: lack of eye contact, unwillingness
to participate in reciprocal play or sharing, failure to point or to
follow the pointings of others, reluctance to engage in small talk
and in other forms of social interaction, etc. The autism research
literature has tended to blame these difficulties on presumed
deficits in some proposed biological or neurological mechanism, but I
would suggest that these long-standing conjectures are incorrect on
two different fronts—one, these conjectures are mischaracterizing
the conduct, and two, they are understating its cause. When one
observes carefully the actual activities of autistic individuals, and
especially the activities of very young autistic individuals, it
becomes quickly apparent that these individuals are to a significant
degree disengaged
from the other humans around them. Whereas most children will readily
interact with other people—laugh with them, play with them, follow
enthusiastically their every gesture, touch and sound—autistic
individuals by contrast seem largely unattuned to the presence of
other humans. Autistic toddlers often do not respond to their name
being called, and can be seen as being reluctant and awkward with
such things as hugs and coos. Young autistic children attend less to
other people than to favorite objects and interests. Autistic
adolescents seldom pursue the range of friendships and relationships
that other adolescents usually do. And even autistic adults, many of
whom have become reasonably acclimated by then to various social
customs and expectations, will nonetheless often describe their inner
experience as one of extreme isolation and alienation. Thus autistic
individuals are not demonstrating specific social deficits so much as
they are demonstrating a broad-scale disinclination towards the
members of their own species, and it is this broad-scale
disinclination that accounts for the various social difficulties. But
a broad-scale disinclination towards the members of one’s own
species is the same thing as saying that an autistic individual is
experiencing a weakened sense of conspecific perception. Unlike
biologically typical humans, who will quite naturally perceive first
and foremost other people, autistic individuals do not possess this
natural tendency, and thus theirs is not first and foremost a human
world.
That
autistic individuals are dealing with a weakened sense of conspecific
perception is evidenced also by the frequency with which these
individuals experience an assortment of sensory issues. Many autistic
individuals report a wide and non-specific range of sensory symptoms:
for instance, being overwhelmed by the intensity of various textures,
noises and smells (hypersensitivity); or being oblivious to extreme
sensations, such as a shouted name or the sudden onset of hot and
cold (hyposensitivity); or a commingling of the senses, such as
“seeing” tones or “feeling” colors (synesthesia). The
motleyness of these sensory symptoms suggests that they are not the
result of any specific physical defect but are instead the
consequence of a more general difficulty in obtaining sensory
grounding. Biologically typical children rely upon conspecific
perception to organize their otherwise chaotic array of sensory
impressions, favoring and foregrounding those experiences that are in
some way connected to the human species. But autistic individuals,
not very aware of other people and not naturally favoring
human-associated impressions, find themselves dealing with what must
seem to be an overwhelming cascade of random and chaotic sensations,
with no clearcut means for achieving sensory organization or
cementing a sensory grounding, resulting in the many observed sensory
issues as well as in a delay of perceptual development.
This
weakness in conspecific perception can vary greatly from individual
to individual, and this is perhaps one of the reasons that autism
presents as a spectrum. Some autistic individuals appear to be almost
entirely lacking in perceptual attachment to human presence, and
these individuals can be seen as facing the greater challenge in
achieving developmental gains. Other autistic individuals do seem to
retain some level of connection and perceptual awareness for other
humans—albeit much less than that of their biologically typical
peers—and these individuals would appear to have the better chance
of reaching independence and well-being. But despite the variation,
there is nonetheless a threshold that would appear to be critical in
determining the autistic/non-autistic divide. Any human individual
with a strong enough sense of conspecific perception to be able to
make use of that perception to achieve his or her sensory grounding,
that individual is to be classified as non-autistic. Such an
individual will strongly attach to the human species itself and will
begin to see the surrounding world in much the same way as other
humans do. And in the modern world, such an individual will be able
to leverage this human connection into the realms of language and
collective learning, where conspecific perception plays such an
important role, and the individual will by these means begin to
easily follow the same developmental path being traveled by the large
majority of the population.
In
contrast, any individual with a sense of conspecific perception so
weak as to be unable to use that perception to achieve a strong
sensory grounding, that individual is to be classified as autistic.
Such individuals will find themselves dealing at first with something
akin to a sensory chaos, since there will be few prominent features,
such as other humans, naturally standing out from the manifold of
sensory impressions. Such individuals will thus be cut off from the
typical form of sensory organization and will not be able to easily
follow the same developmental path as their biologically typical
peers. Such individuals will not be able to perceive their
surrounding environment in the same way as other humans do.
And
this at last gets us to the heart of the matter, the key to why
autism is so critical for understanding the spark underlying the
human transformation. Biologically typical humans experience a world
that is organized primarily around the human species and its members,
biologically typical humans perceive first and foremost a
species-centric world. Autistic individuals do not primarily perceive
this species-centric world, and thus what they tend to perceive is
something entirely different. And that is the critical question: what
exactly is it that autistic individuals tend to perceive?
Another
chief defining characteristic of autism is that autistic individuals
frequently engage in what are usually described as restricted and
repetitive behaviors and interests. In young autistic children,
examples of these behaviors and interests cover a broad range of
curious activities: hand flapping, lining up toys, eating the same
food for every meal, obsession with certain objects such as ceiling
fans and light switches, resistance to furniture rearrangement or to
changes in a geographical route, strict adherence to ritual and to
order in activities such as dressing, and so on. Later on in life,
autistic adolescents will commonly focus much of their time and
energy on a limited set of particular interests, such as sports
statistics or dinosaurs or the weather, and will often perseverate
(talk constantly) about a favorite topic. Autistic adults can
sometimes be seen as leveraging their interests into studies and
careers, with the stereotypical target of these efforts being those
activities known for their rigid structure and rules: mathematics,
physics, chess, computer programming, etc. A large amount of autism
treatment is aimed at suppressing these various behaviors and
interests, because much of the autism research community still
regards these activities as anti-productive and harmful. But in a
manner ranging all the way from screaming tantrums to the most
eloquent of postings placed online, autistic individuals can be
observed forcefully resisting these many attempts at suppression. And
indeed, when one watches carefully the so-called restricted and
repetitive behaviors and interests of autistic individuals, it is
hard not to come away with the impression that for such individuals
these behaviors and interests are utterly necessary, as though
serving an essential purpose.
That
essential purpose is the obtaining of a sensory grounding. When one
considers the circumstance of an autistic individual not possessing a
strong sense of conspecific perception, and in particular not able to
make use of conspecific perception to help with sensory organization,
one recognizes that this individual is facing the most dire of
outcomes. As has been described previously, unfiltered sensory
impressions are apt to be experienced as both chaotic and
overwhelming: the
wild mix of colors and shapes in the visual field, the
buzzing range of tones and intensities inside the ear, the
chaos of temperatures and impressions upon the skin, and the
kaleidoscope of haphazard tastes and smells.
If these sensory circumstances were to remain unresolved, the
autistic individual would be unable to obtain any perceptual signal
from the sensory environment, and would be left with only sensory
noise. In turn this would mean that the barriers to developmental
progress would be set impossibly high. But most autistic individuals
do not end up experiencing this dire outcome. We know that most
autistic individuals do manage to make significant developmental
progress, even if somewhat delayed compared to their non-autistic
peers, and many autistic individuals do go on to become participating
and productive members within the general population, navigating
quite successfully the features of a modern human world. So these
individuals have not become stuck inside a sensory chaos, and must
therefore be achieving a functional degree of sensory organization.
But if that sensory organization has not been built around
conspecific perception, then what has it been built around?
The
trick here is to recognize that I have not been exactly forthcoming
by characterizing the sensory field as entirely random. On the planet
Earth, the sensory field, although indeed wildly multivariate, still
possesses within itself a great deal of inherent structure and form.
In addition to the biological structure imparted by the evolutionary
propensity towards food, water, conspecifics and the like—the
structural organization that most organisms latch onto quite
naturally—there is also a great deal of structure that arises from
such influences as gravity, chemistry, thermodynamics, celestial
cycles, etc. Trees grow tall in a straight line, mountain peaks have
a particular shape, water drips in a rhythm, the moon cycles through
regular phases, and of course in the modern world artificial
structure can be found practically everywhere. These non-biological
instances of environmental structure and form are captured in a
variety of words and concepts: symmetry, pattern, repetition, logic,
number. These concepts possess one characteristic in common, they are
all chaos-defying features. In the sensory world, these are the
elements that serve to break the background noise.
The
interesting thing is, for most biological organisms, they never seem
to become aware of these non-biological structural features, never
become aware of the many instances of symmetry, pattern, repetition,
etc. It can be surmised that the reason for this lack of awareness of
non-biological structure is that it is not strictly necessary for
survival and procreation. Having successfully organized their sensory
experience into a biologically and conspecifically guided form of
perception, and having had their fitness greatly boosted by this
particular form of perception, most organisms then find themselves
locked into that way of perceiving their world, remaining almost
entirely blind to any other type of structure their world might
happen to contain.
But
for autistic individuals, less able to organize their sensory
experience around the usual biological concepts—including most
particularly around the notion of conspecific perception—and at
risk for the dire developmental consequence that would result from a
persistent sensory chaos, will latch onto any alternative means of
sensory organization that happens to be available. Thus autistic
individuals, unlike their biologically typical peers, will find
themselves becoming directly aware of non-biological structure and
form, will find themselves becoming directly aware of symmetry,
pattern, repetition, logic, number, and so on. From the pressing need
to resolve their potential sensory chaos, autistic individuals will
begin to hone in on those environmental features that serve to break
the background noise.
That
autistic individuals are embracing this alternative perceptual path
is most evident from their so-called restricted and repetitive
behaviors and interests. These activities are not arbitrary, but
indeed have a requisite quality to them—all promote and enhance the
non-biological structure that an autistic individual has begun to
crave. Hand
flapping is rhythmic to both sight and touch,
every routine is a repetition. Ceiling
fans encompass both symmetrical shape and regular motion, light
switches capture a logic. And note the distinction in the use of
toys, for instance in a set of dolls and dishes. The biologically
typical child might easily be found sharing such toys with other
children, setting out perhaps the scenario of an afternoon tea party,
the type of interactive play that rides so firmly upon the shoulders
of conspecific perception. But the autistic child is much more likely
to line up these toys, or form them into a circle or some other
patterned shape, carving out yet one more instance of non-biological
structure in the child’s sensory field. The restricted and
repetitive behaviors and interests of autistic individuals serve an
essential purpose, they bring forward the non-biological structure
inherently contained in the surrounding environment, they enhance the
perceptual experience of symmetry, pattern, repetition, logic,
number, and so on. They bring organization to the autistic
individual’s sensory world.
These
days, biologically typical children chart a developmental path that
begins, via the mechanism of conspecific perception, with a strong
association to humankind. And because the many humans they encounter
and observe along the way are also engaged with the artifacts and
behaviors of a complex structural world—a world that has gone far
beyond just the immediate needs of survival and procreation—these
biologically typical children, naturally curious about what other
humans do, soon begin to participate in this complex structural world
too. Suppression of this developmental path would be predictably
disastrous. If a biologically typical child were to be cut off
entirely from human contact and were to be given no opportunity to
leverage conspecific perception, then not only would this child be
deprived of his or her preferred and natural way of perceiving the
environment, this child would also be deprived of his or her most
straightforward connection to the expanded structural aspects of the
modern world. Fortunately, very few biologically typical children
encounter such cruelty, with most today making excellent
developmental progress, eventually transitioning to becoming fully
contributing members of a complex human society.
By
way of comparison, autistic children these days employ the same
developmental path as do biologically typical children, but autistic
children traverse this path in the opposite direction. Autistic
children gain their sensory grounding first through an awareness and
manipulation of the non-biological and structural aspects of their
surrounding world. And because much of this structural world has been
integrated to humankind, and because this structural world depends in
many ways upon human interaction, autistic individuals—perhaps
reluctantly at first—eventually progress to that awkward but
helpful moment when they begin to attach themselves to the members of
their own species. Here too, suppression of this developmental path
would be predictably disastrous. If an autistic child were to be cut
off from his or her structured behaviors and interests, then not only
would this child be deprived of his or her preferred and natural way
of perceiving the environment, this child would also be deprived of
his or her most straightforward connection to a human-centric world.
Unfortunately, far too many autistic children are actually subjected
to this kind of cruelty. Many of the so-called treatments and
therapies for autism are designed specifically to force the autistic
child to abandon his or her preferred way of perceiving the
environment, attempting to substitute instead the perceptual
preferences of biologically typical children. This is such a shame.
The
developmental direction from autistic perception to eventual
engagement
with a human-centric world can be traversed successfully and yield
productive
results.
It is the reason so many autistic individuals end up making excellent
developmental progress, eventually transitioning to becoming fully
contributing members of a complex human society.
This
then is the nature of autism. It begins with a weakened sense of
conspecific perception, weak enough that it will stymie the autistic
individual from organizing his sensory experience around other humans
and what other humans do. This circumstance often results in
developmental delays, it often results in sensory issues. But in
compensation, the autistic individual will find himself latching onto
the inherent structure contained within the surrounding environment,
latching onto the many examples of symmetry, pattern, repetition,
logic, number, and form. And where have we heard those words before,
what role have they been playing in the discussion? Were these not
the words considered critical for understanding the human
transformation?
Autism
is a variable path—some autistic individuals will struggle mightily
to make developmental progress, others will do remarkably well. But
all autistic individuals have an important influence on humankind,
because all help bring to the species Homo
sapiens
a new and revolutionary form of perception.
