Common Modes of Thought; its broader than thinking in pictures
Fellow author, Temple Grandin, wrote and lectured much on ‘thinking in pictures’, imagining that, because a majority of high functioning people with Asperger’s did think in pictures (though many were auditory thinkers who thought in words) that, therefore, this was indicative of how ALL people with autism thought. On this basis she claimed that as ‘the woman who thinks like a cow’ that not only all autistic people think in pictures, but went further to project this predominant visual thinking style onto animals too. In fact visual thinking is the most common mode of thought for ALL people – around 60 %-65% of the population think in pictures. So how about the rest of us?
The second most common thinking style is verbal thinking, which Temple Grandin presumed was a non-autistic thing, as she didn’t do it. In fact, thinking in words is only half as common in the general population as thinking in pictures. Around 20%30% of the general population think in words.
Kinesthetic thinkers learn through DOING. They often struggle to sit still when made to watch or listen so are more liable than most to be labeled with ADD or ADHD, become failed students or have a lower IQ score if testing is based on visual or verbal processing. Kinesthetic learners may not know what they think or want to do until they start doing something. They are natural discovery learners and learn through their bodies and their hands. Only 10%-15% of the general population are kinesthetic learners and I’m one of them.
As a kinesthetic thinker who learns through DOING and thinks in movement, and someone with marked impairments in both visual and auditory thinking and learning, I wrote an article, ‘Not Thinking In Pictures’ to draw attention to the damaging effects of such new stereotypes which would promote that people who processed like me, should be taught via a medium which would fail us and have us judged by that failing.
I was glad to see that Temple has since retracted this assumption in her ‘revised edition’ of ‘Thinking In Pictures’. But her recent expansion from believing there are only two main forms of thinking; (auditory which she ascribed to non-autistic people and visual which she ascribed to people on the autistic spectrum) to a mere three (which now include musical and mathematical thinkers), still leaves out a remarkable minority and one which may shed much on those who are last to gain functional language because of the very nature of how they think and learn.
If only she could grasp my thinking style (sure, a mere 10%-15% of the population but still very existent people) and imagine my style of ‘an anthropologist on mars‘ (after all if her visual thinking supposedly makes her that, what are we kinesthetic learners? Are we anthropologists on Pluto?).
In a recent 9 stop tour I surveyed my audiences of 200-300 at each lecture about their own predominant thinking styles. Those present were largely non-autistic people. I asked them to put up their hands if they thought in and learned primarily via words. Around 50% of each audience put their hands up. I asked then how many thought in and learned via images, thought in pictures or would describe themselves as picture thinkers. Around 50% of the hands went up. I asked how many people felt they fitted neither. Only 1-5 hands would go up in each audience. I also asked the visual thinkers how many were somewhere on the autistic spectrum.
There were those who thought in music for whom experiences, moods and thoughts triggered music and songs and who learned best when they sang something, put it to music or were sung to or heard a story through rhyme. There were those who think in systems and structures, pure relationship links with no words or pictures to them, a purely structuralist type of thought, people thinking purely in systems.
Beyond this though, there were those who thought in color associations, almost emotional-thought, social thought, directly linked to representational colors; red moods, green days, yellow people, moments where the mood-colors clashed, blue-green conversations. There were those who thought purely in emotional flow and what shut them down or opened them up as though emotion itself were a kind of musical language for them, without the music itself. There were those who thought in movement and the changing feeling of space, for who the world did not exist unless their body experienced it and visual things had little or no meaning until they touched or handled them.
Visual thinkers and auditory thinkers live in their heads, in a meta reality. These may well be the one’s who most quickly learn language and Temple Grandin, herself, gives examples of poorly articulated speech at age two, trying to say ‘ball’ but managing only ‘bah’. By age three, with the help of speech therapy, she mastered sentences. Perhaps visual and auditory thinkers, have advantages there for it is through showing children pictures and actions that they often learn language.
But how would you teach language to someone with poor visual or auditory processing, who was neither a visual or auditory thinker or learner. What good would it do to show pictures to someone who can’t hold thought without connecting physically, tangibly, to what represents each thought? Or someone who maps not the interpretive intellectual meaning you intend but the emotional tone or interactive dynamic between you in the arbitrary behaviour of the showing? Or someone who you have just shown pictures to but who, without grasping any system will have little more than a fragmented overloading mosaic in their head? Perhaps if we wish to understand those who struggle to acquire functional speech with interpretive meaning we need to ask those who don’t rely on the usual thinking styles so common to verbal people.
Temple has now shifted to stating all autistics think in details. Again, whilst many do think only in details (which is associated with left hemisphere processing), those functionally non-verbal people without typed communication who seem to only attend to details cannot be assumed to think in details. There are many people with autism who fail so badly at both visual and auditory processing that, far from thinking only in details, a handful of recognisable details can be all that link quickly to meaning.
Having worked with over 600 people on the spectrum I have watched many people at the autistic end of the spectrum who navigate their world as though oblivious to the details, tuning in only to whether something feels nice, smells good, has a good texture or is a good movement-related buzz in their kinesthetic reality.
It’s too easy to project realities onto those who can’t verbally explain it for themselves; children, animals. It is folly to assume all children or all animals think or experience in any particular way. It is best perhaps to spend time with a blank mind to sense these things for yourself on a case by case basis. But first one would have to become mindless, thoughtless, and that may be such a hard task for anyone whose head is filled with compelling visual or auditory thoughts all the time.
… Donna Williams
autistic author of 9 books in the field of autism
not all, but many, autistic people have rigid thought patterns that are reluctant to change. Perhaps this is why Dr. Grandin still thinks that all autistics think in details. I very often do. and I know that once I get my mind on something, it can be hard as nails to change my opinion on it. I use three modes of learning at once: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, especially in the classroom. Physically writing notes, listening to the lecture, and reading what the professor has written on the board. My big challenge is going off topic hehe
Another side question: where can I find information on split brained autistics?
autie-aspie and aspie-autie
thanks
ai
a lot of people have rigid thought patterns… people with depression, people who are always confident they are right. One doesnt have to be on the autie spectrum to be rigid but if one is an obsessive-compulsive personality and is also on the spectrum then one probably is.
There are also people on the spectrum who arent attached to ideas and far more into experiences, so rigidity of beliefs of views isnt such an investment or such an issue.
Many people use several modes of learning and experiencing at once.
Some are impaired in some areas because of sensory perceptual disorders… for example those with central auditory processing disorder or semanatic pragmatic language disorder would struggle to learn through words. Those with scotopic sensitivity, dyslexia, functional agnosia and other visual perceptual disorders would similarly struggle to learn through their visual channels and hence these styles of thinking become limited, perhaps others, like musical, mathematical, thinking in systems or kinesthetic learning and experiencing then take these places, become their strengths.
Similarly, many who are excellent at visual and/or auditory processing are much less developed in kinesthetic learning and experiencing… look at the clumsiness of most people with Aspergers and contrast this with those with autism who sometimes have incredible balance – a sign of excellent kinesthetic feedback, often in spite of, or even because of, seriously flawed visual perceptual stuff and its related processing.
My struggle with Temple Grandins recent revised version of her book, Thinking In Pictures is that she presents visual and auditory learners as high functioning, those who have to connect physically with objects with word labels before they can learn words as low functioning and those who have to physically feel letters to learn words as severely impaired.
As someone who read fluently with no meaning at age nine and grasped meaning through connection with objects themselves and gesture representing their use, shape and movement, I find these assumptions of associated levels of functioning (and assumptions of intelligence) offensive if not demeaning, however much I like Temple as a person and appreciate her contributions to the field.
Similarly, a face isnt emotionally real or familiar to me till I touch it, hear it speak or smell the person, hence I have had one size fits all responses to them or impassivity or indifference. I cant see how this makes any person with sensory perceptual impairment necessarily lesser functioning or lesser intelligent than any other. Im sure Helen Keller would agree with me.
Temple writes in her revised version of Thinking In Pictures that people need to visualise to conceptualise, and clearly this isnt true of blind people or those with severe visual percepetual or visual processing/feedback issues. Things arent real for me till I touch them, I mistrust things till I handle them, tap them, move them, smell them. But I dont then visualise them. Yet I can conceive of them. I conceive of their weight, size, shape, how they exist within space and in relation to my presence. This isnt visual, its physical.
When I close my eyes and think of a table, I get only legs without top, surface without table top, the sound made when tapping it, the texture felt when running my hand over it. This mosaic doesnt qualify as visualising the way Temple may imagine. Blind people dream too but not in pictures but experiences.
Temple Grandins PhD in animal handling/engineering perhaps limits her breadth of experience with the broad range of sensory perceptual experiences well outside of her own. This doesn\\\’t diminish her insights into visual thinking (which , whilst common among many people with Aspergers, seems common to around 30-50% of the general population) but it may limit her ability to conceive of other sensory perceptual and associated cognitive realities.
Clinical experience with a vast number of people at all parts of the spectrum might change that but shed have to go much further than chatting to visual and auditory thinkers on Aspie internet forums to be giving more than opinion. Five to ten years of clinical practice in one-to-one work with people right across the spectrum would broaden her awareness of diversity on the spectrum a lot.
As for info on split-brain people on the spectrum, I wrote something on this in The Jumbled Jigsaw.
… Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
I hope this isn’t entirely off-topic, but-I’ve noticed that my mode of thought has changed dramatically in the past five years or so, which may or may not of been due to increased effort to socialialize with other on my part. I used to be an intensly visual thinker, up to where I could almost consider Grandin correct, if it weren’t for how much more extreme her visual thinking was compared to mine. Now I’m not as visual as I used to be, to the point that I don’t know if I can really classify myself as a visual thinker, on the other hand it’s not like my ability to do so has completly left, it’s not as though all my visualization issues have completely left me, but some of it feels more like a distant echo than the more intense thing I used to have (how I can classify myself now, I can’t even begin to guess). So I’m sort of interested in hearing if other people may of had simular experiences to mine. Your post has made me wonder what else might of been left out in regards to all this talk over ways of thinking, especially in regards to developmental issues and time periods.
Yes, exciting shifts B,
with 30-50% of the general population thinking in pictures as their dominant mode of thinking, I’m not surprised many Aspie folks do, like non-auties, think in pictures. Which psychologist, neurologist, teacher said it was THAT that made autie-spectrum people different? None. Temple Grandin did but she’s an engineer with a doctorate in the area of livestock handling.
Yes, most people use several modes of thinking and yes, its normal that new phases of development would increase or decrease previously dominant modes.
I rely on several, mainly structures/systems, kinesthetic (movement, space, tactile), musical (including seeing traffic musically, hearing conversations and actions musically), then I have some stored phrases re auditory thinking but its not flexible like people who can think in words, and my visual thinking is fragmented, mosaic, without any whole objects or characters or landscapes… its only whole when I paint it… so that’s me… and we’re all different combinations.
It’s a cool adventure yours is shifting.
I had no thinking in systems until I was about age 9. This development allowed me to begin to categorise words mechanically and learn how to construct sentences with meaning – more or less.
visualising is very much a meta-reality – people who live IN THEIR MINDS. Same with verbal thinking.
Kinesthetic thinkers live in their bodies so when they are not DOING they can feel they have no thought, that their thinking world is still.
Systems thinkers can live in their minds, but its not the same personalisation as those thinking in pictures because its far more structural, abstract, just categories, links, lines.
Musical thinkers can be off in their minds, but its more about EXPERIENCE and rhythm, emotion, pattern, its not the ‘ah ha’ of visual thinking. But musical thinkers can be great observers as everything can be perceived musically (at least for me), I see movement and actions musically, not just sound or speech.
So I guess different thinking styles take us to different places… different versions of ‘one’s own world’.
🙂 Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
I am one of those apies who thinks in pictures. I routinely annoy my neurotypical friends by quizzing them rather relentlessly about their mode of thinking. I didn’t realize that other peole don’t usually think in pictures or that my way of thinking was not the norm, until I read Temple’s book (which was a breakthrough moment for me), and ever since, I’ve been trying to pick the “normal” brains to compare notes. My results have been that most people say that they do not think in pictures, and others say that they soemtimes think in pictures and words as well. I thinkif you were to tell your audiences that they can only choose ONE choice (of course, they would have to hear all the descriptions first and this is assuming that most of them could process and retain verbal input well enough to respond readily, which I personally would have trouble with), the results might be somewhat different.
I say this because when I encounter someone who says that they do think in pictures, I ask them questions such as: when you add, do you find it necessary to see/visualize the numbers? When someone tells you something, do you see it as they are telling you? Are words all but meaningless until they are converted into pictures? Generally after I ask these questions, they look at me oddly and say “no”. What they meant was that they are able to visualize some of the time. They do not think in pictures to the near exclusion of other thought styles.
A lot of auties seem to have a problem with Temple and object to things that she says, such as that our thoughts are closer to animals than other people…..(which I also agree with). I think it is valuble to remember that theory of mind thing……
My question to these 9 audience of 2000-3000 people was about their MAIN mode of thinking. In one audience 50% put their hands up that their main mode of thinking was in pictures and identified with the term Visual Thinkers. At the other 8 audiences it was more like 30-40%.
I did have them also put their hands up if their main mode of thinking was in words, as Verbal Thinkers. This was consistently 50-70% making it more common than visual but both were very common usual main modes of thought for these non-autistic people.
I then asked about other types, musical, structures/systems, movement/feelings and also found someone who thought via color – not IN color but associated moods, people, situations back to colors.
The sentence was very simple, very clearly – hand up please if your main way of thinking is in pictures, as in Visual Thinking.
Given these were educated professionals and parents, I can be fairly sure they understood this clear simple sentence.
I also asked, please keep your hand up if you are ALSO on the autistic spectrum. There were very few people present on the spectrum but those who were, surprisingly, were not all in the visual thinkers group. One was in the verbal thinkers group, another in the kinesthetic (movement and doing), others thought in systems/structures without pictures (mathematical), one thought musically, one (a person with autism) thought via colors, a few others said they thought in a mixture of styles.
I had no idea what results I’d get, I’d never surveyed a vast group on this. I do know, however, that most education/cognition info on modes of thinking list visual thinking as one of the three most common modes of thinking for the general population.
OK, so if I had asked how many of you think EXCLUSIVELY in pictures only then I’d probably find only a handful thought ONLY in one mode whether it was only visual, only verbal, only mathematical, only musical, only kinesthetic etc…. and people always have their strengths they rely on, others have impairments in certain systems leading to reliance on fewer modes than others might.
If a stranger buys an animal a new dish different to the previous and set down in a strange room without food in it so smell can’t signal what it is, many animals will ignore it, because it is not known by its smell, its placement (kinesthetic) the relationship dynamics with which it is supplied (unfamiliar person to the animal) and hasn’t been shown the use of yet (food in bowl). Animals tend not to recognise what they aren’t used to till they tap.move it (kinesthetic), smell it (not visual), listen to the sounds it makes (musical/aural) or get used to the system (mathematical). Experiements with animals show that some of the great apes can hold an image over in their minds but most animals did not demonstrate this skill.
Animals are geared for reaction and survival. If they realised purely on visual interpreting then we’d see them pursuing the potential outcomes of all kinds of visual imaginings for new novel outcomes. For example, instead of simply sticking with the system they are used to, they’d come up with an idea – a mentalising, a visualising – of a novel solution to satisfy an impulse outside of what they learned through DOING (kinesthetic). Unfortunately, where inventive humans do this, many animals do not. This is no reflection on the inteligence of the animals, but it does mean it is probably folly to assume that all animals think like oneself, whatever dominant thinking mode that may be.
If Temple is strictly a visual thinker then she would have no need to smell or move things or listen in for the sounds of things to know what they are. Fact is animals approach any incomprehensible visual and listen for sounds from it, then smell it, then bump it to see how it responds.
Hope that’s helpful. Sometimes we have to move away from what we WANT to believe, what would make us feel special to believe, and try and just see what IS – IN ITS OWN RIGHT. This is what science should be. This is anthropological technique. One can be a scientist, good at studying, but an antropologist is a form of sociologist, which studies behavioural patterns in foreign cultures… such as the differences between humans and animals.
🙂 Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
you know, there is a trick where a magician says, watch me pass this silver coin from one hand to the other. The magician then throws the coin from one hand to the other, but then shows a bronze coin. The viewer, however, sees a silver coin. This is because they believe the magician’s authority.
There are many many experiments where someone with a position of authority or with academic credentials of any type, related or not to what they are talking about, states an opinion as a fact and the audience then sees the events in terms of the framework they’ve been told is THE ONE to interpret it by…
for years ‘experts’ said those with autism were psychotic (the 60s) and this is what people SAW, then in the 70% ‘experts’ said people with autism were disturbed and then THIS was what they saw. In the 80s ‘experts’ said people with autism were retarded and THIS was what they saw.
So, presenting any person as an expert means people then take for granted that their views and beliefs are FACT and then can actually selectively view the world through those ‘facts’ closing out or discarding any evidence which would contradict this person’s ‘valued expertise’. This is especially so if the person is famous or an icon of any kind. People fear questioning such views.
But whilst it is great that we have many views and opinions and experiences to choose from, we need to keep real science in mind, not just be blinded to assume something is science because the person is presented as a scientist. A person with a qualification in social sciences can’t be considered automatically an dexpert in designing cattle chutes or engineering. A physicist may know nothing about agricultural science. A chemist may know little about astrophysics. A botanist may know nothing about psychology. So the expertise of the scientist depends on what is being studied. An educational psychologist, cognitive psychologist or neurologist, perhaps even a zoologist (and Temple isn’t a zoologist) might be able to give some valid SCIENTIFIC opinion on how any human groups think or animals think but anyone without these qualifications may as well be like asking a famous astronaut (who is also a scientist).
I have qualifications in linguistics, sociology and education, 8 years experience as a consultant working 1-1 with over 600 people on the spectrum in schools, residential care and families and I consider my views on how people think or experience to be opinion, not facts. I consider myself a social philosopher. If I were an astronaut exploring a fascination with how humans or animals think, I’d still consider myself a social philosopher even though, technically, I’m a scientist.
🙂 Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
Hi Donna. I just posted a reply on your Peter Jennings blog, and since it’s not recent I don’t know if you will see it but I have a little more to say, and as a non autie non aspie I am a little reluctant, as my own fears and worries about hurting or offending you grasp me around my throat and clutch my hands as I type. I wanted to share with you a song I’ve heard that reminds me of you, (although I acknowledge that I can never know or comprehend your pains) this song brings me to uncontrollable tears over you. I am a HUGE part of my autistic brother- in- law’s life, and I read your books to him everyday, so this does touch me. Everyday autism touches me. Please get the song and the lyrics simultaneously (if you can read and listen without the meaning falling out, otherwise figure it out however you wish.) If you choose to reply please do it via email, I am afraid to have your comment posted here, as you may not connect with this at all, and I would feel foolish. The song is called Tears and Rain, by James Blunt. I will welcome any reply. Thank you. (I am so damn nervous to hit that ‘submit comment’ thingy, you have no idea)
p.s.
The song makes me think of you as you were, and things may be different for you now. I hope this is all ok.
I have central auditory processing deficit with a family and personal background in autism who is a visual thinker. I learn best with visualswith hands on practices. Ever since I have read books from various personal perspectives of autism for over a decade and came in direct contact with all sorts of people with autism, I came to appreciate the diversity with thinking and learning styles. It never made sense to me that all people with autism think in pictures and are compare more to other animals than other people, even though there may be simularities in behavior and that I tend to think in pictures myself. Genrally people tend to relate best to the confines of their own respective experiences and some may have more difficulty then others in stepping out of their experiences and appreciating of what is different from theirs. As I learn more I need tomodify my thoughts. For example, I used to think that all visual thinkers process information exactly like me. But, I recently learn from books that this is not so. We tend to talk about other groups of people living in their own world. This applies to everybody and we each exist in our own world respectively, not to deny that we each have common bonds with one another. Since each one of us is unique with own respective neurology, influences, information processing, and experiences, we each have own peceptions too experience world in own way–each just as unique as finger prints.
Good reply Deborah,
some of us are natural anthropologists.
To be one, one must be able to not assume one’s own reality is that of those we’re viewing… its an open mind thing… a flexibility thing… and some could say ‘that’s not very autistic’ but it IS very ARTistic which can be all about flexibility and some language disabilities are about too much flexibility in language so that syntax and categories of words don’t ‘stick’… language becomes almost too elastic to retrieve comprehensibly to a social majority, so I’m all into challenging any stereotype.
I think you are enough of an anthropologist to keep that open mind and see what is, not just what you expect or imagine or want to be there, what would reflect well on your own place on the spectrum or in the human race… that is what a good anthropologist does… because its not about THEM. To truly understand others we almost need a separability of self from the world, from what we might want or would benefit us to find. That way we can truly find what IS there as best we can and hopefully be surprised more than we are self assured.
🙂 Donna Williams
autistic author, artist, screenwriter and ratbag
http://www.donnawilliams.net
the other interesting thing about your comment Deborah is that you have CAPD which has perhaps helped you compensate through more highly developed visual thinking. I have CAPD and a language processing disorder which involves inability to put mental pictures or meaning to language without gestures or other experiences put to the words externally. This combined with a sequencing disorder that causes tumbling with what I see and hear and the visual fragmentation and context blindness of Scotopic Sensitivity, means the visual system was pretty shot for me. I have great difficulty processing pictures for meaning. So whilst you perhaps transfered your available processing to a strong visual system, mine was unable to because both the visual and auditory had impaired processing, so my strengths are kinesthetic and musical.
🙂 Donna Williams.
I have PDD and have been trying to learn about you and Temple Grandin, trying to compare your works.
I see Grandin’s first book was 1986, and yours 1992. In various press articles, it seems that either one or the other of you are credited as being the founder of a new perspective on autism, a perspective conveying what it is like, what the symptoms are like, your different view on autism, etc. My question is about which of you should be considered the founder. But more specifically, I’d like to fully understand if your work was influenced by Grandin, and if Grandin’s work was influenced by yours. So, when you were writing your first book Nobody Nowhere, were you familiar with Grandin’s first 1986 book and her extensive views on autism (symptoms, what it is, what it is like, etc)?
Basically, I’m trying to put together a history of 1st person thought.
… that is, a history of the personal accounts of autistic authors. Who came first, who said what first, who used who’s ideas and where, etc? As it is, it all seems very disorganized with various claims about each of you, and there also is often little distinction between many of the things you two say.
good idea.
Temple’s book was out in 86, mine was written in 1989 and was published in the UK before the US, in 1990-91.
In 1991, Nobody Nowhere shot to number 1 for over ten weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and went number one in Japan, Canada, Norway as well. It became the first published autobiography of a person with autism in the MAINSTREAM publishing world.
How is this so?
Because in 1991 Temple’s book was an academic book which had not been sold in the MAINSTREAM publishing world (yet). Amazon didn’t exist back then, we didn’t have the internet like we do today. Everything was snail mail. And whilst Temple’s book was wonderfully important in the academic world, where it had been read by professionals seeking to understand autism, it hadn’t reached the general public at that point.
I hadn’t read Temple’s book until about 1-2 years after Nobody Nowhere came out. I didn’t know Temple’s book existed until the year after I wrote mine. I searched for it then but found it wasn’t available through any bookshops and of course online ones didn’t exist yet.
So after the success of Nobody Nowhere, my second book, Somebody Somewhere also shot to number one in the US, Japan and Norway and became a second major success, securing interest in autie-biographies from then on.
The first thing people asked was ‘are there any others’ and that’s how Temple’s book came out from the academic book shelves and into the mainstream publishing world.
So yes, she was before me, but in many ways, I paved the way for her books to get into the mainstream world without which she’d be known in academic circles more than being the name people know today.
So we are both founders in different ways.
Also our accounts are so incredibly opposite that they are at opposite poles. Temple was trying to pronounce words at age two (her accounts of trying to say ‘ball’ and only being able to say ‘bah’ and by age 3 with speech therapy, she was speaking. My account was the first one about echolalia and what today is called Semantic Pragmatic Disorder as my speech was purely echolalic till about age 5 and from then was made up of advertisements, jingles and stored phrases from TV shows until I learned the one-word-one-meaning interpretive language others have which was about age 9 and by age 11 I could speak in comprehensible and relatively deliberate sentences but commonly reverted to ‘Donna-speak’.
Temple was the first to write about frustration due to inability to speak caused by articulation problems. I was the first to write about a world in which interpretive language didn’t exist but an alternate language based on pattern, theme and feel which was incomprehensible to most, did still exist.
So mine was a history of what is today called semantic language disorder (which also occurs in people with autism and 1/3rd of people with autism are echolalic or have this form of ‘dysfunctional speech). And Temples was more one of articulation, more akin to what today is called Oral Dyspraxia (which also occurs in people with autism, and those without it, and is different again from Selective Mutism which can also occur in people with autism). For a comparison of these different language disorders in people with autism, have a look at The Jumbled Jigsaw.
I was largely meaning deaf till around age 9-11 and still struggle to get fluent literal meaning from receptive language. At around age 11 when I had developed the ability to speak in interpretive sentences but rather painstakingly, I developed Selective Mutism and would stop speaking for days, weeks, sometimes months at a time. I was the first person with autism to write about this in a published book.
Temple struggled with understanding the social chat of her mother’s high-society friends when she was three (perhaps we all might!) and her articulation problems and tantruming lead to a diagnosis of ‘brain damage’ in early infancy, but this is very different to an auditory agnosia or Central Auditory Processing Disorder (both of which are described in The Jumbled Jigsaw). Temple’s mother had completed a checklist on autism when Temple was in childhood and found she fitted this. Temple was formally diagnosed with Asperger’s in adulthood.
I understand from my father that I was assessed as psychotic in infancy at age 2 and a half, understood from my school teacher that I was assessed as disturbed throughout primary school and then diagnosed with autism in adulthood (IQ under 80 – probably due to processing issues with both pictures and written and spoken language – so I was not diagnosed in the HFA range even though I certainly attained an education and have great art skills).
Temple’s ‘symptoms’ were very different to mine. Temple didn’t have gut and immune disorders, no major illnesses. She rocked, spun smeared feces and threw tantrums around age 2-3 and by late childhood had intellectual interests in inventions, engineering and technology. She struggles to feel emotionally for people or arts and is vastly more driven by intellect. She claims to have no unconscious.
I threw few tantrums but was quite self injurious since age 2 and right through to adulthood, had colic, jaundice and chronic infections from 6 months, was on antibiotics for 26 years and diagnosed with gut disorders (gluten/casien intolerance and salicylate/phenol intolerance) and 2 primary immune deficiencies in adulthood. I would climb, jump, walk on fences, swing, spin and try to fall through space all the way through to my teens with remnants throughout adulthood. I am deeply effected by arts and aesthetics, a highly developed artistic sense and very little natural grasp of technology or engineering and little interest in how things work. I’m far more drawn to sensory patterns, including movement, light, shadow, acoustics, textures. I have a rich unconscious and have lucid dreaming, write poetry (Donna-speak is like fluent poetry) and prefer doing to thinking. In fact my great weakness is trying to think first before doing. I must DO in order to reflect or have conscious thought about pretty much anything. Temple is visual, I’m kinesthetic (again, see The Jumbled Jigsaw for more on this). Mine was the first account of a person with autism with imaginary friends (something which defied the stereotypes but is now found fairly common). I was often a gleeful, often giggly child, which defied the stereotypes at the time. Temple’s personality has always been far more serious, that of a scientist.
Temple will physically walk up to people and get into their space. I’m far more ‘cat’ and struggle with ‘exposure anxiety‘. Temple is treated for depression and is an obsessive and conscientious personality. I’m treated for a rapid cycling bipolar type mood disorder, as well as anxiety and compulsive disorders. My personality is more artistic than conscientious and I’ve struggled more with co-occurring OCD and compulsive tics than I have with being an obsessive personality. I have some significant learning challenges. Temple has learning differences.
So Temple learns from my works that her form of autism does not represent ALL people with AUTISM. That there is no ONE ‘poster child’ because there are many different types of autism.
Temple represents a more linear view, looking for the ONE thing that defines autism. I’m natually holistic and view autism as more like a ‘fruit salad’ with many possible combinations that differ from one form to another. This means Temple often has to alter who works in new additions to take account of diversity which my own 9 published works have pointed out. It tends not to work the other way.
One could say that I am a founder of a holistic approach to autism and one which lead to a vast expansion of the type of personalities and presentation expected in a person with autism. Because the severity of my issues extended into mid-late childhood, my works lead to the presumption of intelligence in those with dysfunctional language and the importance of typed communication for those with trapped intellectual or emotional intelligence defied by their behavior. I guess you could say ‘groundbreaking’.
Temple’s work fitted the stereotypes of the time. Mine did not, but as a result, the field overcame the controversy to expanded to the point that the old stereotypes are now seen as far less common than the greater diversity of people diagnosed with autism. Partially as a result of my books and all those which then expanded on them and added to the genre of autie-biography and autism-related works, diagnosis of those with autism in the 90s of 1 in 10,000 is today around 1 in 166.
I hope that’s helpful.
🙂 Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
Hi Consuela,
wow, that’s pretty wrong.
Temple and I actually say extremely DIFFERENT things.
Temple has said ‘all autistics think in pictures’.
I found 1/3rd of my audiences thought in pictures and many people with autism think in vastly different, often non-visual ways, particularly those who are object blind or have visual perceptual disorders.
Temple has said that FC is invalid.
I have strongly come out against this, acknowledging there will always be some cases where its not and explaining in depth some of the vastly different ways FC has worked for many people with autism, a number of whom have gone on to be independent typers now so have proven this case.
Temple has said that ‘all people with autism need higher levels of stimulation’.
I came out fiercely against this, indicating that many developed such extreme fight-flight states or had these exacerbated when pursued with too large a dose of directly confrontational interaction and many were so mono they were overstimulated, not understimulated.
Temple once did not believe dietary interventions were valid for people with autism.
I have been a spokesperson for dietary interventions in with autism WHO DO have SERIOUS gut and immune disorders.
Temple is a strong supporter of ABA, promoting it as the PRIMARY way to treat autism.
I have a very tempered view on ABA and recognise that whilst it has helped a reasonable percentage that there are a percentage for whom it is the antithesis of what works best for them, that others require it to be modified and that many other approaches have worked far better for some people with autism.
I was the first to write about an Indirectly Confrontational Approach – the antithesis of ABA – in Exposure Anxiety; The Invisible Cage of Involuntary Self Protection Responses.
Temple identifies her selfhood quite COMPLETELY with her autism and has said that if she didn’t have autism she wouldn’t be her.
I recognise my autism as PART of my selfhood but not its TOTALITY.
I recognise I also have a personality, an experiential history and a range of other genetic influences that are not summed up only by my autism.
If I didn’t have autism, I would still have many things which make up being me.
Temple equates Asperger’s with HFA and has said that severe autism should not be cured as it would eradicate the genius in those like herself who she sees as, by contrast, ‘high functioning’.
I find this elitist stance distressing and recognise the talents in very severely autistic people, many of which Temple doesn’t have (some love deeply, sense extremely, have acute aesthetic sense and natural poetic style). Equally, unlike what Temple has often intimated, I don’t think the only geniuses in history and all important inventions have originated from those with HFA or Asperger’s. I definitely credit vast populations in society for a diversity of achievements and inventions but also know that some of the most important people in the world are those we’ve never known of but who enabled others to achieve.
Temple draws attention to autism stereotypes.
I love the diversity of people diagnosed on the spectrum many of whom do not fit the old stereotypes at all.
Temple has sought to describe autism as though it is ONE condition.
I have vastly written about the many other co-occurring conditions which combine to present as autism but are in fact generally distinct conditions in their own right and only present as autism by virtue of their combined developmental impact (see The Jumbled Jigsaw).
So if you believe Temple and I say or stand for exactly the same things, you haven’t read my works or really understood my deep humanitarian passion, my naturally holistic take on the world and my love of all diversity.
A foolish poet artist I may be, but vastly different from the clinical scientific engineer type mind Temple is so proud of having.
… Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
Thanks very much for discussing the differences between you two.
So she has Aspergers right? In nearly all past and recent press articles on her, including one’s linked at her website, they report her as having autism.
I’ve always observed a wide variation in autism. Some have very blunted affect, are serious and brooding most of the time, physically are abrupt and have a heavy touch (so to speak), etc, with brief instances here and there of smiling, laughing, etc, but brief instances. In contrast, some others, perhaps like yourself, seem more care-free, happy, joyful, etc. I wonder if the degree of severity of autism is at play here. The basic/general features of autism by definition (DSM-IV) are deficits in the quality and quantity of communication, social interaction, behaviour, etc. I wonder how you and Temple differ with respect to this. I wonder not only about the differences in quantity of the above, but also differences in the quality of the above. I read that Temple is possibly more social than you, but also that her style is highly contrived, script-following, rigid, etc. This then is not an issue of quantity of social interaction, but instead it’s an issue of the quality of social interaction. It sounds like your quantity of interaction is less, but perhaps what interaction you have is of a different/better quality, “better” meaning more natural, more personal exchange between you and people, etc.
I wonder if your accounts of sensory perception symptoms have been useful to scientists and in medicine. Do you know?
Temple also writes about sensory perception posted here at the leading US autism website (some think the most extensive and best autism website in the world). http://www.autism.org, http://www.autism.org/temple/visual.html She talks mainly about oversensitivity, both visual and auditory. Hearing especially, sound is “loud” and hurtful to her. I relate to this in many ways. Do you, or do you think differently of how you senses function? Temple doesn’t talk about “visual oversensitity” even though it’s in the paragraph title. Only hearing she talks about. I wonder what she means then by this. Maybe ‘difficult to look at things’, and what then would this mean?
Have you seen your wikipedia listing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Williams_%28author%29
Pretty extensive. This online encyclopedia is becoming quite respected.
There are people with Asperger’s who refer to themselves as ‘autistics’. Wendy Lawson, for example is diagnosed with Asperger’s but her website says ‘I’m Wendy and I’m autistic’.
There is a technical and diagnostic difference between having an autism spectrum condition and having autism. There’s also the adjective ‘autistic’ versus the diagnosis of autism.
And beyond that there’s the fact that those with Asperger’s who were late speakers (and Wendy spoke at age 4, Temple at age 3) often presume this means they have autism rather than Asperger’s, though late speech also occurs in a percentage of non-autistic people and not speaking till age 2, 3, 4 isn’t unheard of in the general population.
There are also those who had enough severity of behavioral challenges in infancy that they are assumed autistic and who are later diagnosed with Aspergers. Most people diagnosed with autism in infancy (or the old 60s and 70s labels of infantile psychosis or emotionally/behaviorally disturbed) are still autistic in adulthood rather than ‘becoming’ people with Asperger’s.
I’ve worked with over 600 people on the spectrum and seen vast diversity in those diagnosed with autism. I have certainly met very blunted, serious, abrupt and brooding people with autism and I’ve met socially terrified ones and I’ve met giggly uncontrollable hyperactive attention challenged ones (in fact the inexplicable giggling is in the autism chart used by the NAS). I’ve also seen many who swing between all three. I’d certainly say that I met as many of one type as another in my 12 years as an autism
consultant.
I was certainly not always gleeful. When I’d gone selectively mute, stopped eating and cried all the time, I was not gleeful. When I was self injurious, caught up in severe OCD rituals or driven nuts by breathing tics I was not gleeful, when I was fiercely self protective and avoiding all closeness I was not gleeful. So we really must realise people are whole people, never a one shade, one color kind of person.
Temple is less aloof than me. I struggle with social phobia but I really like people. Temple doesn’t struggle with the same social phobia and she has a scientists interest in people, so I think I really enjoy the diversity of people but I’m not terribly interested in their speaking. In fact if people didn’t speak or only did characterisations I’d find their company much easier. I feel I know people better if they don’t speak.
Having mania as part of bipolar means I get ‘out of control’, there’s a definite impulse control challenge there. I used to be fluent scripts, but far more involuntary, sort of like a TV remote control with a broken switch, switching channels, including cartoons. It makes controlled conversation more challenging and quite short lived before it all goes ‘bung’ or threatens to.
I’m very good non-verbally with people. I can happily enjoy all kinds of company if people aren’t trying to speak to me or directly engage me. I enjoy being in parallel company with people, kind of incidental contact. I like being fly on the wall, its natural and I love watching people enjoy EACH OTHERS company but struggle when told people like mine. It feels intrusive and redundant. I struggle with the exposure. I’m ‘cat’.
I like to help and I’m fairly thoughtful and kind so this gives me reasonable warmth with people when in a helping role. I struggle with the personal, with people trying to get to know me (its usually either invasive or overstimulating) and also with being taught as I really struggle to learn through speech or reading or being shown. I have to DO in order to learn easily so their style of teaching or informing me is highly irritating as it draws mostly on my weaknesses, rarely on my strengths. So I tend to be polite then try and teach myself through doing or give up and just do what I’m already used to or good at. Recently I’ve been teaching people how to best teach me and this is restoring my faith in my ability to learn and in theirs to teach.
🙂 Donna *)
I have written about sensory hypersensitivity since 1991 and lectured about it since 1994. I wrote the first of four text books in 1994, Autism; An Inside Out Approach, and in this I wrote extensively of sensory hypersensitivities, lack of simultaneous processing of a sense of self and other, sensory perceptual disorders etc.
So my work on sensory AND perceptual challenges is far vaster than sensory hypersensitivities.
I was the first person with autism to write of visual perceptual disorders in those with autism, in Like Colour To The Blind in 1994, writings that have dramatically changed approaches to autism.
In The Jumbled Jigsaw I illustrated how many things now being mislabeled sensory hypersensitivities are actually part of emotional, personality, language processing and perceptual challenges and that we’d do well to avoid assuming them all to be sensory hypersensitivity issues.
I have the visual fragmentation AND light sensitivity issues of Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, yes, but also struggle to process simultaneously with both eyes, struggle to understand the meaning of objects unless they are in places I expect them and am face blind.
This is more than having hypersensitive vision. It’s extremely simplistic to take a range of information processing, neurological integration, perceptual AND sensory issues and reduce them all to ‘a hypersensitivity problem with light and color’. It also does harm and wastes valueable development time for those who have more than a sensory hypersensitivity. Particularly if they are WRONGLY presumed to be ‘visual thinkers’ and in fact don’t have the intact visual perception or processing for meaning required to think in pictures any more than a person blind from birth would.
Similarly, struggling with auditory hypersensitivity is not the same as auditory perceptual or language processing disorders but is often confused with them. Listening to accounts which don’t explain the diversity of things easily confused with each other can lead to years of lost development when a child is them subject to the wrong therapies and approaches that don’t address THEIR particular issues.
One must be careful that just because someone features in a lot of media coverage doesn’t necessarily make them the most informed person to be listening to. Temple’s PHd (which gives her the title Dr Grandin) is actually associated with her renowned expertise in animal handling within the ‘humane’ slaughter field.
As for wikipedia, yes, I am pretty prolific.
… Donna *)
Do you write about this in a book, your “struggle to process simultaneously with both eyes.” I think I experience something like this and was wondering what you mean by it. Do you mean … that when you look around or at something, you will see/perceive with only one eye at a time. What is you experience like? (By the way, have you ever encountered the experience of someone seeming to look at only one of your eyes and/or just one side of your face?)
Yours,
Consuela
I live in Oregon do you know anyone around here I could speek with, others with autism/aspergers, or parents of children with autism/aspergers?
with my glasses (which have both prescription lenses and tints for the visual perceptual challenge of Scotopic Sensitivity) both of my eyes react to what I see.
Without my glasses often only one of my eyes registers what I see. The other just seems to stare through things. It changes which eye does this but I think its a neurological thing, both hemispheres struggling to work simultaneously in a fluent integrated way.
I notice I’m far more meaning blind on my left side than my right. This means if you place unfamiliar objects on my left side I tend to either quickly forget what they are or use them in ways not associated with their meaning but if you put them on my right side I more consistently use them with their intended meaning.
So, for example, I’d regularly use a food bowl put on my left side as a rubbish tidy, but then wonder where my bowl was. But on my right side this wasn’t so usual. Same with all kinds of things.
I have quizzed audiences and found there are other people with autism, the parents of which reported understood what was shown, said or read to them better when they sat on their right hand side. It was never a majority, but there were always some who, on hearing my experience felt they’d solved a mystery.
I couldn’t tell when I became meaning blind as meaning blindness was so consistently there, but after our regular Chinese Restaurant ritual, then Chris noticed it seemed to have a pattern to it. That I got all the objects confused when they were on the left, but not so much when on the right, and over time we then organised to make sure objects delivered to my left were put on my right.
I don’t see it as a disability so much, unless naive people assume we all learn the same way and presume techniques that work for some work for all.
Stopping people sabotage my ability to learn to adapt to my challenges is sometimes a bigger job than finding the adaptations in the first place.
… Donna *)
and yes, I’ve written about visual perceptual challenges and neurological integration differences in Autism; An Inside Out Approach, in The Jumbled Jigsaw and in my four autobiographical works, perhaps most especially in Like Colour To The Blind (all available from Jessica Kingsley Publishers http://www.jkp.com )
… Donna *)
I seem to identify with this “Without my glasses often only one of my eyes registers what I see. The other just seems to stare through things.”
How are you aware of this when you look around with both eyes … so you can tell only one is registering when you’re using both eyes together … or do you cover one eye at a time in order to tell what each side is doing separately.
When people look at you, does it ever seem they are looking at only one or the other of your eyes, rather than both together?
Both eyes SEE.
But without my glasses often only one PROCESSES what is seen.
this is the difference between sight and perception
between what’s SENSORY and PERCEPTUAL
between SIGHT and VISION.
between the EYES and the BRAIN.
you’re right, I don’t know I’m only registering with one till both start working. But I have seen only one able to register when looking in the mirror and other people can see it. For some its quite a ‘party trick’. One person exclaimed ‘urgh, that’s like what frogs do’… which is difficult to understand but yes, one stays still and the other does move more in reaction…. one SEES and the other LOOKS if that makes sense.
but in any case isn’t this level of detail a little boring?
can’t we try and solve global warming or something more useful than how my visual perception works?
🙂 Donna *)
Both my eyes look like this party trick. It’s horrible. Like a frog’s or fishes eyes, or a dolls eyes. Like I’m staring at myself with this intense frightening scary stare.
Does one side of your face every droop slightly, especially with the eyebrow area droping downward, and the other side be raised upward with the eyebrown raising upward. Looks unbalanced. Do you ever feel this on your face?
Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, isn’t this just photosensitivty + dyslexia? I read the info on “sss” and it’s highly disputed as a legitimate diagnosis, appears made up by Irlen, appears to only be photosensitivity + dyslexia. Originally at least. Then she tries to add to this diagnosis after you contacter her. Wierd, adding to a diagnosis category that was already set before you came.
In fact Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome is recognized by Opthamologists, experts in visual perceptual issues, as BPI, which makes a testing range of lenses for this condition is run by Opthamologists.
They are VERY different to Irlen, which is generally run by educational psychologists.
One group are experts in visual perception, the other group experts in how people learn.
And, yes, Irlen Syndrome is a term coined by Helen Irlen but Scotopic Sensitivity is a condition of light sensitivity which can, yes, interfere with reading, but in itself is not Dyslexia. However, SOME of the BPI lenses for Scotopic Sensitivity have also worked for a number of people with Dyslexia, but the ‘autism lens’ range from BPI includes lenses which are used by both the Scotopic Sensitivity and Dyslexic populations.
There’s an article about it on my website http://www.donnawilliams.net .
Yes, Helen expanded her understanding of what can PRESENT as Scotopic Sensitivity (what she called Irlen Syndrome) but this is pretty normal. In the autism world, professionals have continually refined and expanded upon new information in their field.
As for facial asymmetry, I was recently very surprised to read that children could have mini strokes, leaving their faces slightly asymmetrical re muscle control. I don’t think this is ugly or anything to feel strange about nor is staring like a doll (I have enough of these kind of pics on my site).
Quirky looks and expression, or lack thereof, are rarer and rarer in a world of mass production looks, posturing and cosmetic surgery. Be proud, be you, and don’t waste your time with verbally abusing yourself about what version of ‘normal’ you think you should be, on any level.
🙂 Donna *)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irlen_Syndrome
“Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, also known as Meares-Irlen Syndrome or Irlen Syndrome”
“… it is sometimes categorised as a form of dyslexia. However, bestselling autistic author, Donna Williams, in her book Like Colour To The Blind wrote about her experience of tinted lenses after being diagnosed with Scotopic Sensitivity. In this book she described the lenses as enabling her to have cohesive, unfragmented vision, able to see faces, bodies and objects as a whole for the first time and reducing the extremity of experiences like meaning-blindness, face blindness, inability to learn to read facial expression and body language and the social consequences of these impairments. This lead to a worldwide raised awareness of Scotopic Sensitivity…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irlen_Syndrome#Skepticism
“Critics claim that the symptoms of those with Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome are related to already known visual disorders. According to a statement released by the American Optometric Association in 2004…”
I agree that what’s going on for me is more than light sensitivity of Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome and that, like the word autism is often applied to the combined developmental consequence of a range of underlying conditions, SSS is a blanket term that is used in the diagnosis of a range of presentations of a variety of visual perceptual challenges and it would be more helpful if this range were individually identified.
What was very strange for me was that whilst many more challenged people with autism have now written about severe visual perceptual challenges, many with Asperger’s wear tinted lenses for light sensitivity, assuming this was the main reason I wore mine. This was strange to me as had my visual perceptual issues been only that of light sensitivity, I’d have found it uncomfortable, stressing and annoying but I’d not have had the object and face recognition issues I have or the language tumbling stuff, which are actually quite different things again and more related to agnosia and language processing disorders effecting both heard and read speech.
Sure having the white of the page compete with print just made all that worse, but tackling that alone didn’t solve everything else. I still didn’t progress to reading for pleasure and even though faces and objects are now more cohesive, their meaning and recognition is still delayed or elusive. Not that I’m too annoyed at that, its just how it is, same as I’m not a horse or a cloud, no point complaining about it.
🙂 Donna *)
Thanks so much for your discussion, very helpful and you’re an excellent writer.
I live near Portland Oregon do you know anyone around here I could speek with, others with autism/aspergers, or parents of children with autism/aspergers?
woops, meant “speak”, lol speaking of writing well.
Hi Consuela,
visit http://www.auties.org
you’ll find we have new autie-friendly dinner clubs and autie-friendly activities clubs. If there’s nothing in your area you can start one. Then anyone looking for one in the same area will likely find you.
I did a talk in Portland a few years ago.
Nice place, nice people
met a lovely autie there too.
good luck.
🙂 Donna *)
Thanks so much! Do you think the person you met in Portland might be interested in emailing and/or meeting with me?
Can’t remember her name, didn’t get her details.
She had dark hair, was clumsy, wore glasses.
She was an artist, like me and she was someone I’d have liked for a friend.
Yet I remember everything we did, that she’d cooked for me, and we ate together under the stage.
I introduced her (it was an ‘in joke’ as she was meant to intro me).
I can do characterisations of her
but I can’t remember her name.
ah, such is life.
My life is full of nameless, faceless people whose patterns and actions I remember very well.
🙂 Donna *)
[…] Asperger’s usually has features like inability to read facial expression or body language (as seen in Expressive Agnosia), clumsiness (as seen in Dyspraxia, including oral dyspraxia), a tendency toward obsessional interests (as seen in the extreme of the concientious personality trait) and sometimes a great need for social acceptance and routine (as seen in the extreme of the sensitive personality trait) and a tendency to high social anxiety (generalised anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, panic disorder), sensory hypersensitivities. If you listen to Temple Grandin, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s as an adult after an infancy in which she was thought brain damaged, most will become scientists, engineers or work in I.T. so if Jenny is looking for adults with Asperger’s, now she knows where to find them, or at least the 6% with ASD who are in full time employment (yes 94% are not). Autism generally means a more complex, often bigger ‘autism fruit salad’; meaning deafness (verbal agnosia, auditory agnosia, semantic pragmatic disorder), meaning blindness (visual agnosia, associative agnosia), reading disabilities (dyslexia, scotopic sensitivity syndrome), poor body feedback (tactile agnosia, finger agnosia), no sense of pain (pain agnosia), poor muscle tone (Dystonia), impulse control disorders (OCD, Tourette’s, ADHD), mood disorders (Ultra Rapid Cycling Childhood Bipolar, infant-onset depression), anxiety disorders (separation anxiety, exposure anxiety), eating disorders (anorexia, self induced vomiting, extreme self-restricted food choice), sensory integration and motor planning problems (Dyspraxia), articulation problems (oral dyspraxia), communication disorders (aphasias) and often significant gut, immune and metabolic disorders. Learned dependency is common and as the stress of challenges ups the tempo of natural personality traits, these traits can escalate into disorder proportions, complicating development (dependent personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, etc….). It’s not hard to imagine that without significant, often life long intervention, adaptations and management for what can be in an autism fruit salad, that many of these adults aren’t going to be in the telephone directory under scientists, engineers or I.T consultants. But I’ve met some wonderful adults in this group and whilst for some the greatest achievement is just making it through the day with a smile, I’ve met writers (typing), poets, artists, singers, musicians, dancers, gardeners, one who’s a lab assistant, another who’s a chef, several who work in catering and others in sheltered employment. […]