On Putting One's Eye on the Ball

Gym class was, more often than not, an utter nightmare for me during my school years. There were a few activities I liked and even excelled in (obstacle courses, jumping rope, the flexed arm hang test), but we never seemed to spend much time on those activities. For the most part, PE time meant chaotic, ragtag versions of team sports.

I was horrible at sports. Really horrible. I found the "team dynamic" incomprehensible to begin with, to the point where I often had to be reminded which team I was on. I generally had no clue what I was actually supposed to be doing at any given time. Team sports in particular seem to require a type of attentional breadth and vigilance I can't reliably access, and that seems to make other kinds of (necessary) cognition fizzle out from overload very quickly (which is part of the reason I hated both gym class and mandatory recess kickball growing up -- they didn't relax me or help me concentrate on studies afterward, they just left me confused and frazzled and more prone to melting down).

Plus, everything seemed far too fast-moving and unpredictable for me to possibly keep up with.* The mechanics of throwing, kicking, catching and hitting projectiles flying or rolling in my direction also pretty much eluded me throughout my entire elementary and secondary education. My motor planning was so bad that I couldn't even catch a softball in a glove when the teacher rolled it to me across the ground from a few feet away.

My memories of participation (if you can call it that) in ball-based games consist mainly of whirling confusion, garbled voices echoing through gymnasiums, getting hit in the head by balls I didn't see coming, jeers from classmates, nasty-smelling mesh shirts, getting picked last for teams, not getting picked at all and having to be "assigned" by the teacher (to a chorus of groans on the part of those who ended up "stuck" with me), and wandering in day-dreamy circles in the distant outfield.

As a grownup, I am still not so much into sports; I find watching them to be mind-numbingly boring, and I have no desire whatsoever to go out and join the local softball league. Nevertheless, it does seem that some skills have come online that I'd never in a million years have been able to predict the appearance of.

For years I thought I was totally hopeless at hitting a ball with a bat -- I don't recall ever actually hitting the ball (beyond the occasional accidental "bunt" or foul) during any childhood bat-oriented game session. This didn't bother me in particular, as I had no ambitions to become a pro athlete, but at the same time, I remained mystified at how anyone could possibly manage to use a stick to hit something flying through the air at them.

Recently, though, I somehow found myself in an impromptu backyard bat-and-ball session in which me, my SO, and his little niece and nephew were taking turns throwing a ball so one of the others could swing at it. I hadn't attempted to hit a ball with a bat for probably at least thirteen years prior to this session, and I had no expectations whatsoever of actually hitting when it came my turn to try.

Nevertheless, I hit it. Matt threw it again. I hit it again. I kept hitting it. I was shocked! Somehow, something about the relationships between bat and ball and timing and movement had managed to coalesce in my brain over many years of doing absolutely nothing to improve my hitting prowess.

In a flash, I also found that I understood what it meant to "keep one's eye on the ball" -- I'd heard that directive many times in my youth, but it had always sounded amusingly grotesque or obvious (in the "of course my eye is on the ball, but that doesn't tell me how to hit it with the bat!" sense) rather than actually descriptive of anything that would help me hit. Now, I could grok that keeping my eye on the ball actually had something to do with keeping track of where the ball was in relation to the bat, a concept which simply hadn't connected before.

Matt hadn't ever seen me try to hit a ball before, so he had a hard time figuring out what I was making such a big deal over, and he commented that he was giving me "easy" pitches. And I don't doubt that in the grand scheme of things, they were easy pitches -- even I could tell they weren't exactly fastballs, and I was using a kid-sized foam-covered bat -- but that didn't matter. Previously I'd not been able to hit any pitches!

Again, I'm not planning on going out for any teams. But I did want to write about my experience with apparent spontaneous batting ability, as it never ceases to amaze me how nonlinear skill acquisition can be at times!

---

* Minor exceptions to this were badminton -- which utilized a somewhat slower-moving projectile -- and indoor hockey, which allowed me to pretty much ignore the humans and concentrate on where the puck was. Somewhat amusingly, hockey is the only activity that managed to get me sidelined several times for "violence", as apparently I was pretty possessive of the puck when I had it, and not above thwacking people with my stick!

Help, Accommodation, and Non-Standard Needs

One of my regular volunteer activities includes mailing books to Methuselah Foundation donors. I don't mind this task at all, though the transaction e-mails (I get the receipts in my inbox every day) can certainly pile up over time -- it's pretty straightforward, which makes it a sustainable activity given that my day job takes up the vast majority of my waking hours during the week.

But this post isn't about volunteer activities, per se -- that's just background. What I'm really here to write about today is the concept of assistance -- specifically in light of social perceptions regarding what kinds of help it is and isn't okay to need (or refuse, for that matter).

Since I get alternate Fridays off work, these Fridays present an opportune time for me to print address labels and mail out books. There's a mailing centre in a small strip mall about a quarter mile from my apartment, and I usually go there to send things off. Perfectly reasonable, right?

Well, I certainly think so, and so far nobody has tried to stop me from doing this, but I have run into some rather odd responses and attitudes in the course of this ongoing mailing activity. If I have a lot of books to send (more than 15 or so), I will wait until a Saturday or a convenient evening when my partner can provide car services (and nobody ever bats an eye at that; it's perfectly reasonable, I guess, to commandeer the trunk of a car and another person's arms for transporting books) -- but if I only have a few and decide to transport them on foot, things are very different.

For some reason, people seem to think it tremendously odd when I walk to the postal centre carrying the books, usually in two reusable shopping bags (one in each hand). I can carry up to around 15 books this way, and the way I see it, it's a win-win situation: I get a nice dose of much-needed exercise, and the books get mailed.

And yet, quite often when I'm walking down the street, I get people yelling out their car windows, honking their horns, and (if they are pedestrians) running up to me and asking if they can help. I'm not totally certain that the yelling and honking are directly correlated with my carrying the bags of books, as people have been yelling at me out car windows for practically as long as I can recall for some reason, but it definitely seems to happen more when I'm carrying stuff.

As for the pedestrians who offer to help, what amazes me about that is how hard it can be to fend them off at times! It's not enough to say, "No thanks, I'm fine", apparently -- this kind of response will more usually garner me an "Are you sure?" than a respectful retreat.

The mailing centre employees sometimes express concern as well -- I think they've gotten used to me at this point, but initially I had to reassure them that no, I wasn't being "abandoned" to carry the books unaided. I have been encouraged in no uncertain terms to solicit rides and pretty much insist on being helped, to the point where it's clear to me that it must be quite socially acceptable to get assistance carrying objects (perhaps especially if you happen to be 100 lbs and female). Not only is it not considered sad or tragic that I can't carry 30 books at once -- I apparently wouldn't be considered "burdensome" if I were to essentially demand help with carrying 15 books, even though I can easily manage 15 books on my own!

This sort of thing happens to me at work as well.

In my job as an electromagnetics engineer, I deal with a lot of weird-looking hardware, some of which is heavy, and some of which isn't. I've also been carting around a lot of empty boxes and piles of packing material lately, as we've been getting some nifty new items in. Anyhow, as a result of all this carrying-to-and-fro of Stuff, I've noted some interesting phenomena. Thankfully, there aren't any automobiles zipping through the building filled with occupants who like to yell out windows, but I still get a lot of people trying very hard to help me.

And...well, while I quite like having help when I'm trying to get a 90-pound amplifier onto a shelf, I am not so much about having people randomly hold doors open for me or try to grab light and easy-to-carry items out of my hand when I'm perfectly fine carrying them unaided. No, I'm not on some "macho woman" trip -- this has nothing to do with gender, at least on my end -- it's just that if I am in the process of trying to push a cart or open a door or even carry an empty box down the hallway, adding "human interaction" to the task tends to turn it from something perfectly manageable into something ridiculously confusing.

Seriously -- if I am carrying something or trying to open a door, and you rush over and either try to take the thing from me or manipulate the door yourself, you are likely to see me either dart away like a spooked squirrel, wave my arms, squeal, start repeating some phrase over and over again (usually something like "Get back! Get back! Just get back!"), or responding in any other number of (most likely) unexpected and odd-seeming ways. I do not react this way "on purpose", nor do I mean to be or seem rude -- it's just that I have a very sharp breakpoint in my response curve as far as navigating multiple environmental/perceptual variables goes.

Anyone who is around me long enough will probably see me react as described above at some point. I don't lash out and attack people physically or anything (my reactions tend far more toward "flight" or "freeze" than toward "fight"), but apparently I do manage to alarm, scare, or even offend people at times with my reactions to certain situations. I've gotten better at dealing with this, and at avoiding it in the first place over the years (particularly since finding out I was on the autistic spectrum), but it still happens from time to time.

Anyway, though, the thing that made me want to write this post was the realization that there seem to be:

- Certain kinds of help that are okay to ask for
- Certain kinds of help that people seem to think others are obligated to seek or accept
- Certain kinds of help that are almost impossible to explain the need for
- Certain kinds of help that don't seem like they require much (if anything) in the way of money or materials, but that people aren't supposed to ask for or need.

As far as I can tell, nobody thinks it's bad or weird for me to ask for help carrying heavy objects. In fact, if anyone so much as sees me trying to pick anything up or carry something, they are apt to not only offer help, but practically insist on giving it, even if I try my very best to make it clear that (a) I don't need it, and (b) they're making things more difficult for me by continuing to push it on me.

This also happens in other circumstances -- e.g., once I was in a software training class, and for some reason the instructor decided to single me out as needing "special instruction", so he stood behind me and kept pointing at things on the screen and telling me out loud what to do. I found this incredibly annoying, as I'd been doing fine on my own (I'm quite good at figuring out software interfaces) and he was distracting me with his pointing and commentary -- and I ended up having to tell him multiple times to go away and leave me alone before he actually did. I didn't need or want his help, and there were a zillion other things he could have been doing rather than micromanaging the contents of my screen, and yet, he didn't exactly rejoice at being freed from the "burden" of helping me.

On the other hand, often when I try to explain things that actually would help me (e.g., "If I'm opening a door, please don't run up and try to open it for me, because you will end up messing with my visual perception and motor planning"), people either tend to not believe me, not understand what I'm asking, or act as if I must be trying to impress them with my self-reliance or physical door-opening (or object-carrying) prowess. Which I'm not. Sometimes, quite frankly, the best way to help me is to avoid helping me, but this is extremely difficult to communicate to others.

And then there's the matter of "accommodations". I was authorized to receive some accommodations in school through the Disabled Student Services department, such as extra time on tests in college, and the opportunity to take tests in a quiet, less crowded room. When I was actually able to wrangle the logistics, I definitely did better on my tests (I still don't think I'd have been able to graduate without the accommodations I did have), but sometimes the teachers I asked to sign my test authorization forms reacted so negatively that I just didn't have it in me to push the issue. Some of them said things like, "It's too inconvenient for me to have you take your test outside the regular class period" -- and not having any real self-advocacy skills at that time in my life, I tended to just back down upon hearing that, figuring that I had "no right to special treatment" or even supposedly "reasonable accommodations" if they were truly that much of a hardship for my teachers.

If I were in school now, I'd be a lot more assertive. I used to feel as if I had to be "totally self-sufficient" otherwise I didn't even deserve to exist, and this led to a lot of really nasty periods of utter self-loathing, guilt, and "pushing" to the point of putting my health in danger (at one point in college I took a urine test and was told that I was "digesting my muscles and internal organs" due to not eating enough). I don't feel that way now, and in many ways I am a lot more "self-sufficient" than I used to be -- go figure.

I've had so many experiences of being offered help (help that clearly involved people "going out of their way") that I didn't need that anyone who tries to tell me that accommodations are a resource problem (and that people who don't want their differences "cured" are somehow selfish or lazy or worse) immediately goes on my "this person is lacking in clue" list. So often, when I see or hear of people complaining about having to accommodate someone else's non-standard need, it strikes me as a complaint about having to shift or disrupt the status quo rather than a rational complaint about a true and unfair hardship.

I really wish people would at least consider this before making knee-jerk arguments about nonstandard people being "resource drains".

Humans help each other. That's what we do as a (hopefully) civilized species -- we're supposed to have risen above all those harsh, ruthless "laws of the jungle" at this point! And sure, sometimes this is how things end up working out, as cooperation clearly exists -- but I still think a caveat is warranted regarding assuming you can just offer the same kinds of help to everyone and have it actually be useful to them.

Bottom line: Help shouldn't be about getting someone's gratitude or feeling like you've fulfilled your token obligation -- it should be about actually, you know, helping someone. Personally, I like it when people let me know when my actions aren't actually helping them -- I'd much rather them be honest than pretend to appreciate something they don't. And the fact that some people need different kinds of help than others doesn't mean that they are somehow objectively "diseased" -- it just means that the definition of what meaningful help is needs to become more flexible in order to create a more welcoming society for all.

Science, Social Justice, and Autistic Self-Advocacy

There are two perspectives (and by "perspectives" here, I mean "ways of looking at things") in my head that I sometimes have difficulty harmonizing with one another as far as autistic self-advocacy goes.

One perspective is extremely data-oriented and considers scientific research (ideally performed in collaboration with researchers who are themselves autistic) to be of paramount importance in characterizing autistic neurology and cognition.

As for why this characterization is important in the first place (aside from the science stuff frankly just being really interesting to a brain-geek like me), this perspective also figures that many of the problems faced by autistic people and our families stem from misconceptions about what autism is -- misconceptions which deny our strengths, misconstrue the reasons behind our behavior, and prompt all sorts of ridiculous assumptions about what we must intrinsically lack (e.g., self-insight, capacity for compassion, etc.).

This perspective is also the one from which I often feel compelled to point out, upon encountering people who invoke the standard litany of "will-nevers" ("she will never live in her own apartment or house, she will never make friends, she will never marry, she will never drive, she will never go to college", etc.) in response to learning that someone happens to be autistic, that these "will-nevers" are by no means justified by the facts.

Now, of course some people truly "will never" do one or more of the things on the above list; I'm presently in the "possibly will never drive" zone myself, for instance.

But nevertheless, it is a fact that autistic people (including some who had speech delays or other indicators often assumed to indicate "low functioning" as children) sometimes do end up growing up capable of doing many things nobody could have predicted when they were younger.

It is a fact that research has revealed areas of measurable strength common to many autistics.

And it is also a fact that, from an historical standpoint, the very first documented study of autistics (in which the word "autistic" was used), included the following observation:

Even though most of these children were at one time or another looked upon as feebleminded, they are all unquestioningly endowed with good cognitive potentialities...The astounding vocabulary of the speaking children, the excellent memory for events of several years before, the phenomenal rote memory for poems and names, and the precise recollection of complex patterns and sequences, bespeak good intelligence in the sense in which this word is commonly used.

- Leo Kanner, 1943

So, basically, from a scientific and observational standpoint, the notion that being autistic automatically brings with it a global cognitive deficit is just plain wrong. It was wrong in Kanner's time, and it is still wrong now. And the wrongness of claiming that someone has this or that deficit, in this context, has nothing to do with making value judgments about people and everything to do with perpetuating misconceptions that could lead to some people being essentially "written off" as not worth the time and effort it might take to educate them or provide them with enrichment opportunities.

The other perspective, however, is much more social-justice oriented, figuring that the longstanding disability rights movement (as well as the superset civil rights movement) have already done all the major philosophical work that autistic advocates need to draw on.

Additionally, this social justice perspective is in some ways orthogonal to the question of what autism is -- it is less concerned with trying to figure out how autistic brains work than with trying to figure out how to secure basic civil rights for people currently labeled or identified as autistic. It is even, at times, leery of fixating too much on the data the scientists like so much, as the data-gathering process (even when done well) might be backed by entities with a primary interest in, say, coming up with a means to identify autistic genes for the sole purpose of eugenically preventing future autistic people.

Moreover, there's also the matter of what the scientific perspective's focus on dispelling misconceptions leaves unsaid. If it is wrong to assume that all autistics have global, severe, cognitive deficits, does that make it somehow okay to write off people who do have global, severe cognitive deficits? I would personally say "absolutely not", and I don't think there's anything inherent in the scientific perspective that claims it's okay to abuse or neglect people once they can be considered "sufficiently disabled", but this kind of discussion does come up from time to time, and it does concern me.

A great example of something the social-justice sector of my brain wholeheartedly agrees with is the essay The Thing Itself Is The Abuse, from the Biodiverse Resistance blog.

It's not the inherent wrongness of the treatment that is discussed, it is the supposed "horrible mistake" of subjecting someone to that treatment when that person actually turned out to be not a member of the category of people that it's considered acceptable to do this sort of thing to. No thought is given to why it's supposedly "acceptable" to do it to people who are in that category, despite the fact that, in both cases, the reporting of the incident blatantly begs the question: if it was horrible and inhuman and inacceptable to do this to one person "by mistake", what is it to do it to a whole "Othered" class of people deliberately?

Clearly, there are at least two main "things" going on in all this -- first of all, there's the question of what it means for a person to be autistic (and the implications of this for advocacy, for who is considered "qualified" to self-advocate as an autistic person, etc.). And second of all, there are the very real (and extremely distressing) problems of abuse and neglect of, and failure to educate and provide opportunities to, individuals with all types of disabilities.

I want to be able to acknowledge and deal with both these things without having my efforts to do so come across as somehow being ignorant of the other -- e.g., if I point out that plenty of autistic people do actually go on to learn to type or speak, and make friends, I don't want this to come across as denigrating those who cannot type or speak even as adults. I care about them, too, and I would hope that anyone advocating for more ethical treatment of disabled persons would agree that it is not any particular "ability level" in anything that grants a person the "right not to be abused", but that the fundamental problem here lies in the assumption that certain kinds of people can and even should be subject to "extreme aversives" or levels of tranquilizers sufficient to stupefy them.

I have been trying for ages to figure out if these perspectives (the scientific and the social-justice) are compatible, and fundamentally I guess I believe that on some level they are, but it's so difficult to navigate the language around this stuff that I sometimes despair of ever being able to explain why and how my own overall perspective makes sense, even to me.

The closest I can get to that right now, I suppose, is saying that while social justice has nothing to fear from truth (as revealed by properly-done science), science is still a human endeavor, and therefore subject to untoward influence as far as how experiments are designed, conducted, and interpreted. And far from being "anti-scientific", autistic self-advocacy can directly support scientific endeavors by asserting ourselves as stakeholders, even as we work in other contexts toward better ethical standards for all people, regardless of presence, type, or level of disability.

What Each Of Us Notices, Exploratorium Edition

I wrote What Each Of Us Notices a while back to offer a bit of an illustration of how I perceive things. I find perception and its variations fascinating, and I also find that it can sometimes be difficult in the realm of the highly word-oriented Internet to remain cognizant of the myriad ways different people might process, interpret, and appreciate the world around them.

Anyway, while I've been working on a few "wordy" posts that I hope to have in a bloggable state soon, I figured I'd do another perception/picture post tonight, as I spent most of today in San Francisco at the Exploratorium. Aside from it being a bit noisy in that echo-y way that reminds me disconcertingly of the school gymnasiums of my youth, the Exploratorium is one of the coolest environments there is -- not only is there science everywhere, there are also a ton of purely visual delights, including many Things That Spin. :D

The photos below are just a few of the images that caught my eye today.

A panel on the wall made of numerous tiny curved mirrors:



A neat spinny disc-shaped thing in the wall:



A portion of the inside architecture of the Exploratorium. Not an exhibit -- just a collection of lines, angles, and surfaces I found really cool:



Matt (my SO) and me inside a giant kaleidoscope (basically 3 mirrors held together at the edges in a triangle shape):



(As always, I would absolutely love to see images -- drawings, photographs, etc. -- from others, so feel free to comment with links to things you feel are representative of how you see the world.)

Chaos and Aesthetics Survey Results

My friend Dora (a Portland State University grad student) has completed the project paper based on her Chaos and Aesthetics Survey - thanks very much to any Existence is Wonderful readers who helped provide her with data!

The "short version" of the results is here (note: it may not make a lot of sense to folks outside Artificial Life classes); a (more accessible) PDF of her presentation explaining the survey's creation process and offering an analysis of the results is here.

I'm not particularly well-versed in Artificial Life studies myself, but I'm definitely intrigued by the idea, and I find it super-nifty indeed that there exists a field of study wherein art, math, and computer programming are so closely intertwined.

(Also, I should point out that in Dora's presentation PDF, the bulk of the text was written as a script to be read by a computerized text-to-speech program -- hence the occasional "odd" spelling here and there.)

Chaos and Aesthetics Survey

Passing this along for my friend Dora, who is currently working on a dual masters' at Portland State University in Systems Science and Computer Science. She's taking an Artificial Life class, and the survey is for a project in that class.

The text below is adapted from an e-mail she sent out; I figured at least a few Existence is Wonderful readers would be up for helping out a grad student via looking at nifty patterns!

---

Chaos and Aesthetics Survey

This survey is designed to examine the relationship between chaos and aesthetics. This is part of a project in an Artificial Life class in the Systems Science Graduate Program at Portland State University.

The survey consists of 15 different abstract images which you will be asked to rank on a scale of 1 to 6 based on your first impression or gut reaction of how beautiful, interesting, or appealing the image is to you.

The survey is completely anonymous, and nothing (including IPs) will connect you to your answers. No information will be collected other than the value you assign to each image.

The entire survey should take about 10 minutes to complete.

To take the survey, please go to http://uncivilization.net/hidden/eocsurvey_form.html

The results of the project will be posted at http://uncivilization.net/eocsurvey/results.html on June 6, 2008.

For more information, please contact Dora Raymaker at draymake @ pdx . edu.

Confessions Of A Non-Driving American

As a youngster, I always took it as a given that I'd get my drivers' license someday.

In December 2008, I will turn thirty years old. I still don't have a license. This no longer bothers me in the least. But it certainly seems to unnerve others, as I often find myself in the position of being expected to justify and explain my indefinite non-driverhood. Apparently, according to some, non-driving Americans are somewhere on the rarity scale between the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat and the Yeti.

But contrary to popular opinion, no, we are not mythical beasts. Plenty of people don't drive, and yes, some of us live in the good old US of A. Non-drivers include children 16 and under, elderly persons, blind persons, neuro-atypical persons (though neuro-atypicality certainly doesn't necessarily preclude driving), urbanite hipsters, skate punks, exercise enthusiasts, farm workers, and others who just plain don't like driving.

In other words, despite the car-obsessed culture we North Americans live in, not all of us drive. And while some of us may want to drive, not all of us do. And it's high time we had our say.

So here's my story, for what it's worth.

First Attempts

The first time I attempted to operate an automobile, I was about sixteen. I don't remember much about that attempt, except for the fact that it didn't last very long. Nobody was injured, but I seem to recall someone yelling "STOP!" after I'd gone a few clumsy feet in the driveway.

I didn't attempt driving again until I was eighteen, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I didn't need to drive in order to get anywhere I needed to go; my high school and the public library were within walking distance, so even though I sometimes got a ride with someone, I wasn't stranded when I didn't have a ride.

For another thing, I didn't see the point of trying for a license when I couldn't afford a car -- I had no expectation that my parents would buy me one (and it bugged me to hear other teenagers talking as if they were somehow "entitled" to cars), and I didn't have personal funds sufficient to buy one myself, let alone deal with insurance and gas and maintenance.

And finally, I simply wasn't all that interested in driving, as I was plenty busy with school, and my hobbies (reading, art, computer games) didn't pose heavy transportation demands.

But one day, my stepmom randomly asked me if I wanted to try driving again. I accepted this offer, and managed to make my way slowly around the parking lot of the local junior college in her tan minivan. I don't think I did too horribly, but it wasn't exactly an experience I was compelled to repeat soon afterward; it was very mentally exhausting. And soon I got caught up again in other things that didn't involve driving or attempting to drive, and the whole idea of doing so simply fell off my radar.

Round Two

Fast forward another three years or so. I'd transferred to university after completing my general education requirements at two local junior colleges, but I was home on summer break working as an engineering intern (at the same company I now work for; they hired me on after I graduated). My parents were starting to get concerned about my non-driving status at that point, judging from their repeated and pointed suggestions that I get my learner's permit. Eventually I guess the nagging got to me, as I went down to the DMV one day and passed the written test, thereby qualifying myself for behind-the-wheel instruction.

The day the driving instructor showed up in the little gray automatic with the extra brake was the first day I actually went out on a real road (as opposed to a driveway or parking lot). I was 21 years old, and still more or less optimistic that all I needed was a bit of practice in order to become a skilled, safe driver. So practice I did. And within a few hours of instruction, I was definitely a bit better than when I'd started at controlling the car. I was able to start it up, make it go straight, and steer, (albeit somewhat clumsily) around curves in the road.

The instructor had me drive on residential streets for the most part, which weren't too bad, though I had some trouble whenever there were other cars in the vicinity, as I found it very difficult to predict their behavior and judge where they were in relation to the car I was in. There were several incidents in which the instructor either had to slam on the extra brake (which I didn't find overly discouraging, as I knew the pedal was there for a reason) or grab the wheel from me in order to avoid Massive Crunchy Death, but I pressed on. We tried going up a really twisty mountain road at one point, and I actually didn't do too badly there, as there were very few other cars and the ones that were present seemed to be driving carefully and fairly slowly. And a few times, I ended up on the freeway.

The freeway experience was probably the biggest eye-opener of all with regard to what the demands of driving actually were. I actually liked driving on the freeway in some respects -- the "going really fast in a straight line" part was exhilirating, and several times I had to be reminded to note the speed limit. I also appreciated the "no stoplights" thing (as it meant less fiddling with the controls while simultaneously trying to pay attention to the road). But when it came to steering, merging, changing lanes, entering, or exiting, I was pretty well flummoxed. It became apparent to me fairly early on that freeway driving required a lot in the way of rapid responsiveness, and that even tiny movements of the steering wheel could have major effects on the car's trajectory when said car was careening along at 80 MPH.

I obviously didn't end up crashing and dying, but frankly I still chalk that up to luck and the presence of the instructor. But I finished my six hours (or whatever it was), and got the little permit certificate. I was pretty proud of that, and still figured that all I needed was more road practice.

After finishing up with the driving instructor, I mostly went out on the road with my dad. I could tell he and my stepmom were doing their best to help and encourage me, but at the same time, I also felt really pressured -- they would randomly quiz me on things like three-point turns (using napkins to represent cars) during dinner, and I was not very good at answering accurately in real-time, which frustrated both me and my parents alike. Once they had me drive the lot of us to the pizza place, and not only did I end up "drifting all over the road like a drunk", I also over-shot the driveway to the parking lot, and was in tears by the time we actually reached our destination. Another time, I was out driving with my dad, and he had to prevent me from driving through another car -- basically, we were at a green light (which my brain took to mean "go"), but the car in front of us wasn't actually moving yet.

Sometimes I seemed to do okay, but gradually I started noticing that I was really only "okay" when I had the whole road to myself. Any other large, moving objects, and I'd suddenly become exceedingly confused -- it was almost like the presence of even one other vehicle would break the whole scene around me into little pieces, which I then had to scramble to figure out the significance of. I'd been vaguely aware of this when I was driving with the instructor, but I'd not figured it to be anything unusual; I still figured at that point that everyone processed visual data the same way I did, and that if other people could drive, there was no reason I couldn't learn as well.

But the more I went out on the road, the more it became clear to me that I wasn't getting any better at dealing with multiple random moving variables in my visual field. Sure, I was getting better at manipulating the steering wheel and signal lights, but I was also still regularly forgetting which pedal was the gas and which was the brake, and just generally not dealing well with any outside motion or unpredictable situation on the road.

I began to dread practice sessions, but I tried to maintain some semblance of enthusiasm. Not only had I been culturally conditioned to think that I "needed" to drive in order to be a respectable adult, I also figured I'd be a huge disappointment to my parents if I didn't drive, and I felt very guilty about being so poor at it. I got plenty of advice from various people on what my "problem" supposedly was: that I was "just nervous", that I still hadn't gotten enough practice, that I wasn't really trying, that I was "relying too much" on other modes of transportation, etc. None of those explanations really felt right, but I couldn't articulate what was actually going on, so I vacillated between feeling ashamed of myself for my "laziness" and trying to ignore and push the idea of driving out of my mind altogether.

I tried driving a few more times when I returned to university after summer break -- my very patient and supportive boyfriend Matt was plenty willing to lend me vehicular access for practice purposes. I drove around in the school parking lot a bit (though that was kind of unnerving, as there was a pen of goats at the edge of the lot!), and drove once or twice from Matt's apartment to mine. But then I got busy again with school, and driving fell off my mental map again until after graduation.

Third Time's The Charm?

Fast forward again, this time to 2004. I'd graduated college the previous year, and Matt and I had moved into a small apartment in Santa Clara following my getting hired on permanently at my job. I started having more contact with my family again, as they're local to the Bay Area, and once again, I started feeling ashamed and angry at myself for not having a license. I was 24ish and decided that I would get my license once and for all before turning 25 -- no more excuses, no more procrastinating.

Finally, I figured, I was really and truly ready. I had a patient and willing licensed driver to help me (Matt), a cute shiny new Ford Focus to zip around in, and plenty of wide streets and parking lots to practice in. I marched into the DMV and renewed my expired learner's permit, and prepared for my first parking-lot re-acquaintance with the driver's seat.

And...I did okay in parking lots, as usual. Not great, but okay. I then went out on the road with Matt, where I noted the same phenomena as I'd experienced in the beginning of my quest to become a real driver: being "fine" on straight stretches of road with no other cars, but randomly forgetting how to use the controls in the middle of navigating an intersection, and not reacting in safe or appropriate ways to unexpected events or moving objects in my visual field. And don't even get me started on those unprotected left turns -- without fail, it always looked to me like the cars going in the other direction were coming straight at my front bumper, which led to no end of dangerous overcompensation on my part.

But I felt better. Less like a failure. More like someone who was actually growing up, who was actually "trying".

The only problem (well, aside from the obvious safety issues that entered the picture every time I ventured out onto the road) was that after every session, I'd come home feeling utterly brain-dead. I would return to my apartment after less than an hour of driving practice end up doing nothing for the rest of the day beyond clicking random Internet links and wandering around the living room in circles.

It would have been one thing if I was actually becoming a better driver. But I just wasn't. And I wasn't doing much of anything else aside from work and household chores, either.

So eventually, after much internal deliberation, I decided that my energies would be spent better elsewhere than trying to get a drivers' license.

Realizations and Trade-Offs

It's worth noting how dysfunctional my overall self-image was at the time I was most concerned with trying to get a license.

For a while after deciding to cease my attempts at becoming a driver indefinitely, I second-guessed myself relentlessly:

Maybe I stopped practicing one session too early -- maybe another hour on the road and it all would have clicked!

Maybe I just need to find the right book or Web site or teacher -- maybe if I keep looking a little longer, I'll find something that will work for me.

Maybe I AM just too lazy. Maybe everyone who learns to drive goes through the same thing I've been through and worse, and I'm just weak-willed and making excuses to cover for it.

Those "maybes" (and plenty of others) danced in my head for months. Even though I knew I'd made the right decision (for the sake of my personal safety and productivity in my non-work life), I was still concerned that I was going to be a "burden" forever, and that people were always going to end up feeling "pressured" into driving me around. I thought of the well-intentioned people who'd been telling me since I was a teenager that I ought to be able to drive because I was supposedly "smart enough" to do so; I felt like I was almost assuredly letting them down.

But: the fact of the matter was that even after several years of on-and-off practice, I still couldn't get behind the wheel and consistently keep track of what was going on. There were moments -- brief moments -- wherein I felt like I was truly in control of the vehicle, but it only ever took one too many moving objects outside, or someone honking the horn, or a bird flying by, etc., to throw my brain completely off-track.

And by "completely off-track", I mean "totally unable to process any incoming information in a manner meaningful to driving".

My hearing is very sensitive. I'm sure this helps me appreciate music; I wouldn't trade it for less acute hearing if I could, any more than I'd poke my eye with a stick to reduce the painful glare of the sun. But it also means that car horns (and worse, car alarms) fill my entire skull with a hot, opaque red-blackness that effectively blocks out everything else in the universe.

My visual information-processing system works atypically. I didn't know until just a few years ago that not everyone saw things the way I did. I had no idea that it wasn't "normal" to see the world as raw shapes, colors, and patterns as opposed to readily-recognizable "macro-objects". I didn't have a clue that most people could look out their car windows and instantaneously parse out what shapes were attached to other cars, which were attached to trees, etc. -- for me, this process has always been at least semi-conscious and also energy-intensive to maintain.

And...cognitively speaking, there's something about my overall brain functioning that makes safe driving totally unsustainable for me. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but as near as I can tell, my brain does a lot of "buffering". That is, I take in a lot of information all the time, and rather than immediately making automatic assumptions about its significance, I sift through it slowly and painstakingly.

This sifting process is part conscious, part unconscious, and while it definitely contributes to my ability to absorb certain kinds of knowledge like a sponge (and to learn certain skills very very thoroughly), it also means I have periods wherein my motor, speech, and other "basic" skills aren't 100% reliable.

For example, I've written before about how walking into an unfamiliar place feels rather like walking into a kaleidescope to me -- sometimes I literally freeze in place when hit by a barrage of visual input, whereas other times I sort of dart off (not necessarily voluntarily) into a corner or other location-shape that feels instinctually "safe" to me.

Mind you, this isn't a terrible thing as far as I'm concerned.

I think there's definitely a place in the world for people who process information the way I do (just as there is for people who process information in other ways), and overall, the universe (at least the parts of it that are accessible to me) looks stunningly beautiful most of the time from behind my eyes.

But it's not the greatest thing in the world when it comes to being able to drive safely. I can deal with it while walking, or even biking -- but in a car, everything is going way too fast for any of my compensation mechanisms to kick in.

One can't get away from trade-offs, at least not in this reality.

And given that fact, most (if not all) people are going to run up against situations in their lives where they have to choose between accepting some aspect of how they are configured and making the best of it, or continuing to fight to "overcome" that aspect.

But How Do You Get Around?

Believe it or not, there are ways to get around even when one lacks a drivers' license.

Right now it works out that my place of employment is on the way to Matt's, making it quite convenient for us to car-pool every morning and afternoon. He's assured me that he doesn't mind driving me, and since he's not a passive-aggressive liar by nature, I'm compelled to believe him. And if he couldn't drive me for some reason, I could ride my bike, take the bus, or possibly even rollerblade. I'm not "dependent" on him for rides to work; it's just convenient given our circumstances right now, and if I had to, I could certainly find some way to effectively commute.

I also presently live within easy walking distance from the bank and several basic stores where I can purchase water, food, and even underwear should the need arise. I can take the bus to any doctors' appointments I might have if need be, as the routes run by the local Kaiser facilities. I can even take the train to San Francisco if there's something worth seeing there. And I don't even live in a particularly urban area -- I'm smack in the middle of the South Bay suburbs.

This is not to say that transit is perfect around here -- there are some locations between which no convenient transit lines seem to run. I occasionally have to visit a lab in Fremont, CA for EMC testing, and if I were to take transit between here and there, the trip would surpass two and a half hours (whereas it's only about 20 minutes or so by car).

This makes me "dependent" on getting rides from co-workers when I have lab work to do, and at first I was embarrassed about this -- but then I realized that nobody even thought to question the fact that I also needed help with lifting and moving heavy equipment. If it's okay to need help in one area, why not in other areas as well? It would make just about as much sense for me to feel guilty about needing rides to the lab as it would for needing help carrying a 70-pound power supply -- which is to say, no sense at all. Plus, the reason my company sends me to the lab in the first place is because of my engineering knowledge -- knowledge that is not in any way affected by whether or not I can drive.

Bottom line: everyone has areas in which they need help, and areas in which they can help others, and there's no reason for anyone to be ashamed because their skill set isn't typical of their culture. And if people truly want to their cultures to become more inclusive, more flexible, and more capable of fulfilling the basic function of civilization at large (enabling all citizens to access food, shelter, and opportunities for self-determination and creative contribution), services like transit are major areas to pay attention to.

Acceptance Is Acknowledging What's In Your Toolbox, Not "Admitting Defeat"!

Faced with a trying situation, it is reflexive for people to ask themselves, "What could I have done to prevent this? What caused it? And how might I prevent similar situations in the future?"

There's nothing wrong with asking these questions, just as there's nothing wrong with acknowledging a difficulty or admitting that something is bothering you. And of course, each of us has our own ambition(s) and goals and projects, which necessarily entail the honing of existing skills or the acquisition of new skills.

But: the idea of sitting there being mad at what "could" have been prior to my birth no longer makes any sense to me. I used to go around feeling several sharp and conflicting flavors of angst about all the "what-ifs" and "might-have-beens" that I saw as having affected my life, but nowadays I'm seeing how counterproductive that sort of thing can be. I mean, it's one thing to look at the circumstances of your life and try to figure out the various ways in which you could improve certain aspects of your existence, but it's quite another to obsess over every little thing that could have conceivably contributed to any difficulty you presently experience.

What's strange to me, I guess, is how often I observe people coming to the conclusion that "working with the available materials" (where the "materials" in question are the various factors that have gone toward shaping you as a person, in conjunction with your past and present life circumstances) is tantamount to "admitting defeat".

I find it difficult to even write this, because of how often this kind of statement gets interpreted as meaning, "Nobody should ever bother doing anything to improve themselves or their circumstances", and how often notions like "acceptance" are seen as expressions of untoward "relativism" and calls for effective stagnation. I don't mean anything like that, though, so hopefully this explanation is clear enough on that front.

What I do mean is that it ought to be possible to be a psychologically and emotionally healthy person with dreams, goals, and ambitions -- while at the same time being someone who doesn't view themselves or the rest of the universe as a pathology waiting to be cured, or a broken machine waiting to be fixed. Explored, tinkered with, and played with, perhaps -- but not pitied for what it is not.

So, no, I'm not interested in practicing driving again right now. I'm not interested in advice or well-meaning "encouragement", or suggestions as to the deep, underlying psychological factors that might be "limiting" my driving prowess. I've received enough of that to last a lifetime already, thanks, and I've got plenty of other things I'd rather be doing with my time.

And frankly, I'm plenty willing at this point to start extolling the benefits of cutting down on car use in general.

I don't expect that autonomous personal vehicles are ever really going to go away completely (as even a well-designed transit system would have difficulty accommodating people who needed to pick up a pallet of planks or cinderblocks at the hardware store, or a new sofa). But you'd have to be pretty clueless to think that present-day automobiles (and the roads they drive on, and the traffic situations they create) aren't dangerous even for good drivers.

I'm actually regularly shocked both at the sheer number of accidents (and accident residue) I see on the roads around where I live, and at peoples' callous disregard for their own lives and the lives of others. I literally saw a guy a while back driving an SUV while talking on a cell phone with one hand, smoking a cigarette with the other, and reading a map with his eyes. (I don't even want to know what he was using to steer with...).

And then there's the whole environmental-impact thing to consider: I used to worry about being a "burden" due to not having my own car, but now I'm figuring I'm probably saving some carbon via my carpooling/walking/biking/bus-riding lifestyle. I try not to be judgmental, but seriously, Hummers? In the suburbs? Please.

All in all, I'm really hoping to see the day when more folks wake up and realize this and promptly build cool, safe, robot cars hooked into GPS units for route planning, and powered by solar panels and biodiesel.

And that monorail is long overdue.

(Hey, a non-driving girl can dream, right?)

The Empathy Conundrum: Ethics, Emotion, and Autistic Cognition

Two Capacities, One Word?

The word "empathy" gets bandied about a lot these days in popular media concerning brain and behavior-related topics.

Specifically, I've noticed that articles about either autism or sociopathy and criminal behavior tend to discuss a supposed "lack of empathy" in autistics - and in the sorts of people who like to torture animals for fun.

It is of great concern to me that the notion of particular kinds of people lacking empathy is so often brought up in a muddled, careless manner. I realize that most people writing about empathy and "mirror neurons" these days probably don't mean any harm by it, but that doesn't make the potential consequences of their writing any less worth pointing out and discussing critically.

First of all, I have noticed that when most people use the word empathy, they're actually referring to one of two very different things:

(1) The capacity of a person to "read" culture-typical social signals, respond in expected/predictable ways to common situations and experiences, and engage in a certain amount of "social learning" via particular kinds of imitation.

(2) The capacity of a person to feel emotions "on behalf" of others, to care about others, and to feel compelled toward ethical behavior.

I hardly think the two capacities decribed in (1) and (2) above could really be confused for each other, or assumed to mean the exact same thing, by anyone putting any actual thought into their discussion of what "empathy" means. And yet, it is not unusual to find people switching from talking about capacity (1) to talking about capacity (2) without any explicit indication that they are doing so, or any apparent understanding of what it might mean to conflate the two.

For a particularly egregious example of this, consider the Empathy Quotient quiz. Based on some of the theories and writings of British autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen (not to be confused with his cousin, comedic actor Sacha Baron-Cohen), the Empathy Quotient quiz includes such items as:

- I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation.

- I am very blunt, which some people take to be rudeness, even though this is unintentional.

- I can pick up quickly if someone says one thing but means another.

Notice that the three quiz items above all pertain to interpretation (1) of what "empathy" means.

Rather than having anything to do with whether a person actually cares about other people (or animals), these items all have to do with how someone might "operate" in the social arena. These items may indeed suggest areas where someone might experience social difficulty as a result of not functioning, thinking, or perceiving in a culture-typical manner, but they don't say anything about a person's capacity to respond emotionally to situations affecting other people. Nor do they say anything about a person's capacity to behave ethically or hold and adhere to principles.

Now, consider the next example set of items from the quiz:

- It upsets me to see an animal in pain.

- Seeing people cry doesn't really upset me.

- I get upset if I see people suffering on news programmes.

These items, in contrast to the previous three, are directly concerned with a person's internal, affective response to the suffering of others. Not with how the person "comes across" socially, or how good the person is at quickly noticing and responding to indirect communication and/or typical social cues. And that's a very important distinction to be aware of.

But the "empathy quotient" quiz doesn't make this distinction. Nor, apparently, do many people who write articles about autism in the popular press.

The Empathy Quotient quiz designates scores of 0 - 32 as "low", and suggests that "most people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20".

I took this quiz this evening myself, and scored 18. So, while I don't put any actual stock in this quiz as a diagnostic instrument (its wording is extremely ambiguous in some places, among other problems), I certainly can't deny that my score does correlate with what my ASD diagnosis would supposedly predict.

But what does that actually mean, if anything?

My Own "Empathic Deficit"

I initially encountered the concept of "theory of mind" (and how it supposedly pertains to empathy) back when I was in the midst of the evaluation of my developmental history and cognitive/behavioral style that ended up leading to my diagnosis. At first, the idea that I might have "empathic difficulties" seemed to make sense and explain a lot of things about my pervasive and ongoing social difficulties.

After all:

- I have been called "insensitive" and "oblivious to other people" on numerous occasions.

- I was reprimanded at the first two jobs I worked at for such things as "sweeping the floor too much" (meaning I was focusing too intently on cleaning and not intently enough on greeting customers), and coming across as aloof or even rude.

- I have trouble spontaneously answering questions like "How are you?" (I actually have the comic below posted outside my cubicle at work).


- I have often been accused of missing the "emotional tone" of a conversation or situation -- e.g., my third grade teacher was once lecturing me about something (I can't remember what), and at one point she used a funny word, at which point I burst into laughter. I was then made to write "I will not laugh while I am being reprimanded" on a piece of paper multiple times.

- I have always found most social situations to be overwhelming and confusing (particularly if there are large groups involved).

- I have trouble keeping track of which people of my acquaintance know which pieces of information, and sometimes I get confused at the fact that things that seem "obvious" to me are not, in fact, "common knowledge".

- I also remember one of my childhood nicknames being "Miss Contrary", as I often appeared to "insist" on doing everything in my own way as opposed to a way I was shown or told -- and while I will certainly admit to stubbornness as a character trait (it runs in the family), the fact of the matter is that I often can't match people's movements in learning to perform tasks. (I'm a lot better at figuring out how to operate devices and accomplish physical tasks by studying and experimenting with the relevant objects myself than by watching other people performing the tasks and copying their movements, and I often find that the presence of other people when I'm trying to figure out how to do something hurts more than it helps.)

In light of all that, it seemed perfectly logical for me to figure that the popular literature conflating autistic cognition with a "lack of empathy" made sense. Until I was identified as being on the autistic spectrum, I'd tended to assume that I was "normal" and that other people were all weird and unpredictable. But learning that I might have "empathy deficits" turned the tables on that assumption, and for a while I found the notion that my social difficulties were due to such deficits quite useful as an explanatory tool.

Carelessness and Confusion

But as I read more (in seeking to learn how to better function in the world given the particulars of my neurology), I started to realize that empathy was a massively important and significant topic in the estimation of numerous scientists and laypeople. Empathy, according to many, is a key part of what makes humans "human" -- or perhaps more generally, what makes any sentient creature worthy and capable of membership in civilization.

So while I was (and am) perfectly okay with acknowledging my difficulties, I found myself becoming more and more distressed at how autistics were described in the media, particularly with regard to how tragic and horrible (or "bad for society") our existence was supposed to be, largely on account of our supposed empathic failures.

What's more, I observed that in quite a few of the discussions of autism I came across, "having a conscience" was being conflated or confused with "demonstrating and rapidly being able to interpret typical social signals".

I don't think this is the kind of linguistic carelessness anyone can afford to just ignore or brush aside, regardless of how naive it might be. Ignorance, and the perpetuation of misconceptions about what it is actually like to be and experience the world as a certain kind of person, can have real and serious consequences for people who actually happen to be the kind of person in question.

My concern is that if autistic people are culturally defined as "lacking empathy", and if people aren't exceedingly careful to define their terms (which they often aren't), and if "empathy" is widely considered to be a precursor to conscience, then we're basically being written off straight from the get-go.

And when people are written off, there's very little motivation to think about extending basic human rights to them, let alone (gasp) learning to better accommodate and integrate different sorts of people into society.

An example of what I mean by the confusion/conflation of "typical social skills" with "emotional response" can be found in the words of a commenter on a recent BoingBoing post referring to the Online Movement for autistics' rights. This commenter states that:

Mirror neurons allow us to literally feel someone else's pain. When we see someone hurt themselves, or see someone who is clearly emotionally upset, mirror neurons are triggered in the observer's mind that are analogous to the other individual's mental process.

This also allows us to learn through observation. You see someone going through a step-by-step process, and mirror neurons allow us to learn by having analogous neurons triggered.

But since autistics don't have the same mirror neural activity, they don't learn the same way, and they also don't have the same empathetic response.

The commenter quoted above is making what I see as the essential mistake in his appraisal of what it means to be autistic. He takes a particular mechanism by which learning may take place, notes that this mechanism may be difficult for (or inaccessible to) autistics, and jumps seamlessly to the conclusion that this has something to do with "being able to feel someone else's pain".

And it is my assertion that this assertion is invalid and scientifically untenable.

Different, Not Ethically Bankrupt!

A lot of discussions about autism, regardless of where they occur, seem to get stuck on the central dilemma of what autism actually is -- that is, what it means for a person to be autistic.

Do you go strictly by the DSM-IV definition? The ICD-10? What about all those people claiming that autism is caused by vaccines, or television, or French fries, or "yeast overgrowth"? Is autism a "set of behaviors" that, if a person can suppress them, will indicate that the person has been "cured" (this is certainly what the behaviorists would have you believe)? Are autism and Asperger's the same thing, or two different things? Does Asperger's even exist? Is autism more easily identified according to a person's weaknesses, or according to a person's strengths?

Truly, the sheer range of questions on this subject boggles the mind. I can certainly see how people end up getting confused, and believe me, I was pretty confused myself about the whole thing when I first started learning about what it meant for a person to be autistic. But over time I've come to settle on something of a cogent idea in this regard. And that idea is the fact that as near as I can tell, autism isn't so much about what a person does as about how a person does it.

It is quite apparent that autistics do tend to learn, think, and perceive differently than nonautistics do. There's good solid research backing this stuff up in the cognitive science arena, and I would dearly love to see it get more attention, seeing as the field of autism research has too long been dominated by the ghosts of radical behaviorism and psychoanalysis (and has of late been further polluted by opportunistic quackery, antivaccination pseudoscience, and homeopathic nincompoopery).

I agree very much with researcher Michelle Dawson (who works with the University of Montreal) who frequently and firmly asserts that autistics deserve the same high standards of science and ethics as nonautistic people can generally expect to enjoy. And this, to me, means that "deficit model" biases have no place in serious research. The best ways to help autistics -- who can certainly sometimes have extreme difficulties with daily living and other skills -- are much more likely to be found if corners aren't cut scientifically or ethically, and if the focus is on understanding the autistic brain as opposed to merely "remediating" it or trying to "prevent" it.

This is not an attempt to be cute. This is not an attempt to "romanticize" autism or the lives of the many individuals who fight in vain to find a place, a community, a school, etc., that can balance their needs with the needs of the cognitive/perceptual/functional majority. This is not "political correctness".

This is, frankly, concern. And a little bit of desperation, perhaps, as the assumptions frequently made about the capacities (for thought, for feeling, for happiness, for a worthwhile existence) of autistic people appear to run so deep at times that I can scarcely imagine how we as a culture might effectively root them out.

Empathy is only one area where particularly damaging assumptions tend to get made. There are many, many more, and I don't know if I could ever effectively cover them all in the depth they require. But empathy is an important subject -- an important word -- to hash through and define and consider in the relevant contexts.

The Bottom Line

I'm almost beginning to suspect that some folks might actually believe that in order to have an internal, affective response to another person's suffering or delight, and in order to engage in ethical behavior (which should never be confused with, or conflated with, "nice" behavior), a person must also consistently display the ability to read and respond to typical social cues in expected ways very fast in real-time.

And if anyone gets anything at all out of reading this, I would hope that it's some degree of reassurance that this is not, in fact, the case.

Autism is not a "personality type", and it is certainly not just another word for "being a jerk". It is a neurodevelopmental difference that, according to the best science I can find, primarily affects the cognition and processing of low-level information. This difference in turn can influence what skills and types of interests a person might end up having, and it may make a person aware of different details in the environment than the nonautistic person would notice, and it can also contribute to documented patterns of strength and weakness.

It can mean we use body language differently, that we don't make typical eye contact, and that we push the boundaries of social norms as far as how we express happiness, distress, or other emotions. It can mean we use and relate to language in an idiosyncratic or peculiar-seeming manner. And so on, and so forth.

Consequently, the autistic person can sometimes appear aloof, uninterested in social interaction (and may in fact be uninterested in culture-typical dominant forms of social interplay), unpredictable, "difficult", insensitive, or any of a number of other adjectives that skirt around the notion of "empathic deficit".

But this does not mean that we hate people. It does not mean we see people as disposable objects, or that we are somehow like sociopaths.

I'm not saying all autistics are going to seem "nice" or "sensitive" once you get to know us -- I can be a pretty harsh character myself on occasion, particularly if I encounter people whining about how all the evil "disability extremists" and "political correctness zealots" are conspiring to take over the world and drain Your Tax Dollars(TM) so they can sit around all day watching sitcoms and producing hordes of deaf, autistic, and possibly even gay babies. If you insist on expressing racist, pseudoscientific, sexist, homophobic, or ableist attitudes, you will raise my ire, and the results will not be cute.

I may not be able to tell when someone is "mildly irritated" or "subtly upset" easily (particularly if I'm trying to keep track of a conversation I'm having in real-time with that person), but if someone is crying or obviously in pain, I am powerfully (sometimes overwhelmingly) affected by it.

Heck, I can't even stand to see robots (fictional or real) being smashed or otherwise abused. I used to hide my eyes as a kid while watching Short Circuit 2 during the scene where the robotic protagonist is beaten by a group of thugs (which you can actually watch here if you're curious, but be warned that it is extremely upsetting and may very well make you cry).

So, I don't personally have any doubt that I at least have whatever basic circuitry is necessary for a person to care about other beings. I don't have any inclination to believe that autistic neurology, regardless of whether you want to talk about "Asperger's"-labeled people, or "PDD"-labeled people, or those with labels of "Autistic Disorder", in any way, shape, or form negates a person's capacity for care, for love, or for ethics. And I firmly believe that if the future is to be an open, welcoming place for all the various forms that may come about due to choice or accident or experiment, it is vital not to confuse charisma with conscience.

---

Links: Autistics (and Family Members of Autistics) On Empathy

- Bev at Asperger Square 8 describes her experiences in Empathy Class, and illustrates a few scenarios that aren't necessarily what they might seem.

- Autistic self-advocate Joel Smith discusses how it is certainly possible to be autistic and a caring person at the same time.

- ABFH at Whose Planet Is It Anyway? offers an "alternative" version of the Empathy Quotient -- one might perhaps say a revised version!

- Autistic self-advocate Jim Sinclair offers Thoughts About Empathy.

- Amanda Baggs writes quite a lot worth reading here regarding bullying, exclusion, and the "we're not like those people!" phenomenon that underlies so much of the actually pernicious empathic failure that is not constrained to any individual or named pathology, but endemic throughout society in certain manifestations.

- Temple Grandin, an author and professor of animal science who also happens to be autistic, notes an interview on NPR how she is "frustrated by the inability of normal [nonautistic] people to have sensory empathy. They can't seem to acknowledge these different realities because they're so far away from their own experiences."

- Special education teacher (and parent to autistic son) Mike Stanton discusses a pair of autistic artists and muses, "Why should there be a connection between [neurotypical] social cognition and moral values?"

- Lisa at Life In The New Republic describes how her 12-year-old autistic son, Brendan, upon realizing that the stuffed animal he'd just picked up did not light up when squeezed (as it was advertised to do), asserted that he did not want to return the toy because "...he was worried about what would happen to it if he took it back, that no-one would love it."

(NOTE: Links have been listed here to provide a range of perspectives on empathy as it pertains to autism and human morality/conscience/cognition in general. Please note that the opinions expressed by the individuals linked are theirs alone, and my listing them here does not imply that I always agree with all these people on everything. I probably agree with many of them on a lot of things, but there is no person I agree with 100% of the time).

Perception and Impressions: An Experiment

I tried this experiment recently with some friends, and the results were interesting enough to compel me to try it out on Existence is Wonderful. I was thinking recently about the way different people tend to prioritize different features as salient when they form their first impressions of something (or someone, for that matter), and it occurred to me that a small survey involving fairly simple images might serve as an interesting demonstration.

So, if you are so inclined, please choose the option in the poll box below that most closely matches your initial impression: is A or B more like X?

NOTE: In the polling application I'm using for this experiment, merely selecting one of the radio buttons will count as a "vote" -- so please look carefully before choosing, because you can't take your vote back.

EDIT (2/22/08): I would actually greatly appreciate it if people would comment on their reasons for choosing either A or B. You might want to avoid looking at other people's comments before making your own choice so as to avoid unduly biasing your response, and you don't HAVE to state your reasoning in order to vote, but it would be cool if at least a few people offered their thoughts in this regard.