This is the 11th post of Autism Acceptance month. Today let’s try to understand how differently information is processed by persons with Autism. We will see just major differences in this post.
1. Think from bottom up.
The neurotypicals generally think top-down. We are tuned to quickly understand abstractions and then go to the details. Autistic persons generally think the other way. They see the details first, and slowly start understanding the concept, which is bottom-up approach.
2. Take things very literally
If anything you tell them, that needs to be interpreted using some common sense or in some social context, then they would find it difficult to understand. They take it very literally. For example, “It’s raining cats and dogs” is a form of figurative speech. It implies that it is raining heavily. An autistic person would interpret it literally and will wonder where are cats and dogs..
3. Harder to remember sequences
If we give a sequence of commands to an autistic person, and you can’t expect him / her to do it in the same order. Most of them can’t remember the sequence. After a lot of trials and repetitions, they would become master of that specific sequence of commands. But it takes long.
Because of such differences in the way information is processed, it becomes very difficult for neurotypicals to communicate with autistic persons. Our communication has lot of implied information, which the autistic persons will not be able to decipher, understand and act on it. When I started teaching music to different autistic persons, I realised that I have to have different approaches to communicate the same thing to different persons. It took me quite a bit of time to understand how each person processes the information and adjust myself while communicating with each person.
In order for us to accept autistic persons in the society and be comfortable in an inclusive world, it is imperative that we understand such differences and be empathetic towards them.
No comments:
Post a Comment