Clothing for words in the phonological store

There is another physical test being developed that helps professionals detect autism, this time by studying the voice. (I wrote earlier about a testing method that detects differences in global and local processing).

I don't have that much of an issue with my voice- it's better than some other people with Asperger's Syndrome- but it's still often flat, and I find I don't have a lot of control over the prosody sometimes. I still find this very frustrating. When you are female, people expect you to have a more melodious voice.

I also have some trouble understanding other peoples voices sometimes, but I have improved. I can understand other peoples tone but have a difficult time reproducing it willfully.

Speech for me is split into two distinct processes. I'm not able to just start talking and follow my train of thought easily while controlling my voice. There is a left spot for words, and a right spot for words.

The words themselves are coming at me from the left side. They are "naked" words. If I am trying to explain something, or recall something from memory, then I am usually running down a stream of consciousness that doesn't include a lot of room to manipulate those words. That's where the long streams of ranting are. I can go on for quite a while without pausing. I know that annoys people now though, and don't do that anymore if I can help it.

I have to focus on the involvement of my right side and combine the processes to be able to "clothe" the words in prosody, pitch, and volume. But when I do that, my cognition slows down considerably.

If I am staying on the right side, then I have much more control over my words, but my vocabulary is much lower and I have a lot more difficulty forming sentences. I can manipulate my voice if I am reading something that I already know.

Sometimes it is difficult to find my "inner voice" and I will accidentally copy the rhythm of other people in the room. It seems easier for my working memory if my brain does that, rather than having to concentrate on clothing my words "from scratch", I guess. For example, once I briefly talked to a Scottish person and they asked me what part of Scotland I'm from. Although I'm part Scottish, I haven't even been to Scotland and don't know any Scottish people. At the time I didn't realize I was speaking oddly because I think I was too preoccupied with what I was trying to say. But if  you randomly ask me to speak in an accent, I'm really bad at it! Sometimes other people with AS pick up odd accents, or have a "repertoire" of different distinct voices to choose from.

Mirror neurons have also been found to have some relationship with prosody. There seems to be some mirror neurons in Broca's area. That's probably why I temporarily copy other people's voices unintentionally.

I also annoy people by being too loud sometimes. But when I am concentrating on producing language, it's difficult to monitor my volume.

This paper came out last week in PLoS.

The Integration of Prosodic Speech in High Functioning Autism: A Preliminary fMRI Study

The left SMG is viewed as the starting point of the working memory loop for phonology which then projects frontally [60]. As such, the left SMG can be considered as the phonological store area and would then be a part of the phonological loop postulated by Baddeley [61]. It can thus be suggested that autistic subjects rely more on working memory processes and processes translating from auditory to articulatory representations than controls do in the natural condition.  It can thus be hypothesized that the HFA group recruit the left SMG as a compensatory phenomenon, which is supported by the idea that prosody could be so troublesome for them that they would be more concentrated on phoneme discrimination, which is part of the literal speech decoding, either to avoid paying attention to prosodic features or to be able to understand the story. A further explanation which may be raised for accounting for this left SMG activation could stem from a right hypoactivation in the HFA group, which is in light with previous cortical evoked potential studies reporting a right hypoactivation in autism  

 Hmm. It is true for me, that when I listen to another person talk it is much easier if I focus on encoding the words. Sometimes I have to tune out the persons tone, because it is too distracting and I can't follow what they are saying while trying to understand the words simultaneously.

I would like to be able to change my voice to appear more friendly, add different emotions, flirt, etc. In my imagination I can imagine myself doing that. But then when I try, getting the words out with these two different processes is another thing. My brain freezes up and won't let me.

Worldwide Empathy?

This is awesome.
I just came across this neat pictorial representation of Jeremy Rifkin presenting The Empathic Civilization. Since I'm a visual thinker, I really appreciated the animations. It's the perfect intro for understanding the mirror neuron process.

As I mentioned previously, Empathy is a neurological process. It is not an abstract, or "psychological imagination" based concept. We are hardwired to be group animals that communicate emotionally. We have the capacity to intimately communicate with each other, as well as other beings. 


If you don't have access to this stream of information, social interactions can be very cognitively demanding. 


Many people are unclear as to the difference in meaning between Empathy, Sympathy, and Compassion.

I'll start with Compassion. Compassion is more of an intellectual exercise, that leads to the path of understanding another's situation by realizing the steps that led to that situation. You can technically have compassion for anyone, or anything. It takes work. That's why there aren't a lot of compassionate people these days. Nobody believes they have the time to contemplate the life history of others.

I like this explanation from a psychologist that writes about "America's continuing Empathy Deficit disorder".

Empathy vs. Sympathy
To clarify, empathy is different from sympathy. Sympathy reflects understanding another person's situation - but viewed through your own lens. That is, it's based on your version of what the other person is dealing with. ("Yeah, I can sympathize with your problem with your elderly mother, because I have my own problems with mine ..."). A narcissist can be sympathetic in this way.

Such a self-centered focus is similar to what some people think love is when they're really enthralled with their own feeling of being "in love," rather than loving the reality of who their partner is, as I wrote about in a previous post.

In contrast, empathy is what you feel only when you can step outside of yourself and enter the internal world of the other person. There -- but without abandoning or losing your own perspective -- you can experience the other's emotions, conflicts, or aspirations from within the vantage point of that person's world. That's not telepathy. Research shows that it's a hard-wired capacity in all of us. And that kind of connection builds healthy, mutual relationships -- an essential part of mental health.

However, the mind cannot be of the kind that experiences empathy continuously and frequently. In order for the group to function as a whole and operate defensively, there needed to be a "shut-off" switch that turned the experience of empathy down, or removed the experience of empathy completely from consciousness. In order to kill, we needed to remove ourselves from the sensation of being killed. (Otherwise we would all be acting like Deanna Troi from Star Trek, and having dramatic freak outs.)

That "shut-off" switch, is Identification.

Human minds come pre-prepared to accept the differentiation between Self and Other. There are "cognitive containers" that grasp and hold onto what the Self is, and what is related to the self. You can find this in the self reference effect, and in many aspects of human behaviour, information related to the self is favoured in an irrational way. (For example, the digits of your SIN number can influence what you are willing to pay for things.)

Human brains are filled with information that "anchors" a sense of identity, even if we are unaware of it, because it is not something that is chosen with free will.

This is a very old system, since we have inherited the mental framework built ontop of eons of primate socialization. Chimpanzees also form strong concepts of identity. I once read that a larger group of Chimps split into two separate "tribes". After they had been separated for some time, they came into contact with each other again. Instead of greeting their old companions with friendly behaviour, they were very wary of each other. One chimpanzee however, wanted to socialize. The chimp reached out to an old friend, and touched their shoulder. The other chimp recoiled at the touched, appeared disgusted, and retreated. He then proceeded to take some leaves and vigorously scrub the area where the other chimpanzee had touched him, as if he was trying to "decontaminate" the cooties from the now estranged tribe. (But, they don't seem to be "racist" against this albino chimpanzee!)

The concept of Identity being such a strong force, seems nearly crazy, and unbelievable at first. One of the scientists who discovered mirror neurons in action even said: "It took us several years to believe what we were seeing."But with more and more research being done with mirror neurons, it seems Identity is actually a biological process, not an arbitrarily chosen personal philosophy. The mirror neurons "learn" from experience what we consider to be our Identity, and then they form a cognitive framework around that, determining when and with whom empathy can be experienced.

Mirror neurons not only influence our thoughts, they determine what thoughts we are able to have.


For example, there is a significant difference in mirror neuron activity when people view the motor actions of another race. 

This explains how Natzi's were able to have a normal and loving family life, and then go to work and sadistically murder small children. They had dehumanized Jewish people completely, to the state that they were not capable of having an emotional empathetic response during those callous and unbelievably demented acts. The "empathy switch" was working for their families, and children who they saw as German, but not for Jewish children. The murdering of children to them, would have felt as benign as dismantling a mannequin. Therefor, not many questioned these acts. They didn't "feel bad about it", so found these acts to be applicable to their moral framework. Hitler did not send out an "evil wave" and brainwash an entire country. What he did, through propaganda that influences the mind, was to systematically rewire the brains of the German people to feel nothing for Jewish people. Or, if anything, a searing hatred and disgust that justified their actions.

Genocide is the dark side of empathy. I am currently reading "The Lucifer Effect" by Philip Zimbardo, the guy who designed the Stanford Prison experiment, causing a bunch of college students to have mental breakdowns. I'll probably write more about the evil half of empathy later.

But what is the good news?

The Good news, is that Identity is very flexible, as the video explains. We can "trick" our minds into accepting the identity characteristics of citizen, family member, job position, music taste, into our Identity repertoire.

In theory then, it is possible that we can extend our concept of empathy to include the entire human race. But this must be done through culture, art, and experience. Simply saying "I am a citizen of the world, one of 6 billion other citizens of the world" does not create an identity framework for empathy. Humans are reactive, intuition and emotion based creatures. Words and facts, do not chance minds. Identity is centered in the landscape of the "right brain", a place where associations instead of logic, proliferate.

Narcissism, and being highly self absorbed, creates an Identity that is highly ego/self based. When one views the world as existing "around" and apart from the self (somewhat like how autistic people are forced to see the world), instead of having an identity that incorporates a surrounding community and network, the brain forms an Identity that is highly deficient in Empathy. Seeing as how our society is becoming ultra individualistic with the use of social networking websites, children being brought up today are being taught that they are a unique being and everything is being connected TO them, instead of WITH THEM. (The terrifying consequences of this could be an entire generation full of thoughtless narcissists.)

Personally, I was not sure if I experienced Empathy, or not. I am constantly glued into my own perspective- I can't even experience two emotions at once, let alone process the feelings of another person simultaneously. When I was about 12 and came across the concept of Empathy, I was confused, and scared because I didn't experience that. (Nobody had mentioned anything about mild autism at that point.) I was worried that other people would consider me a cold monster, even though in different ways I cared for other people and the rest of the world deeply.

Now I realize that I do in fact have Empathy, but it is locked away behind a door, and difficult to reach in the maze of my mind. I can find this in my consciousness while watching movies sometimes, but this process becomes extremely overwhelming and my own emotions "drown", because of my hyper-focused conscious experience. It's as if I start to disappear, and I am being "absorbed" by the experiences of the other person. If I am in this "room" it is not possible to speak, or interact properly with the other person, because I can not reach the place where language is. I get thrown into "The Pit"- the place where primitive emotions reside. In that place, I become disoriented and lose control of my consciousness. It doesn't matter what type of emotion it is, whether it is anxiety or sadness, or the intensity. When my consciousness is hyper-focused on The Pit, it is not a pleasant experience. So I imagine that I might have "blocked it off" behind a door, a long time ago, in order to have the ability to interact with the rest of the world properly. So for most of the time, I don't have this automatic social information that everyone takes for granted. I have to use a lot more of my cognitive energy to figure out what is going on.

For many autistic spectrum people, this is also their experience, going strongly against the ridiculous stereotype that "autistic people do not experience any emotions." The empathy is simply too overwhelming, and takes the center stage drowning out other multiple cognitive processes. So those processes are sectioned off, and blocked out. Here is an article that discusses that theory. Recent research suggests that there is a functioning mirror neuron system in Autistics, but the information is not being processed and handled by the brain properly. Other studies claim the mirror neurons are firing, but delayed, sending confusing information to the brain. One researcher describes it as: “These children are really not unemotional, they do want to interact, it’s just difficult for them,” says Markram, “It’s quite sad because these are quite capable people but the world is just too intense, so they have to withdraw.”

Psychopaths/narcissists are the very opposite. Psychopaths can often be experts at figuring out the mental states of others, and have superior mimicking and social skills. Many are said to appear "charming". But this emotional information is not attached to their emotional experience. It is if they are watching other people behind a thick glass wall. They can understand very well the feelings of others, but they are never touched by them.

Psychopaths, science seems to be telling us, have unique brain abnormalities, and appear to be born rather than made. But most psychopaths do not become serial killers. (Many probably become lawyers, or politicians.) The psychopathic brain, PLUS childhood abuse, appears to be the recipe for serial-killing.

Narcissists however, are created. And consequently, they can in theory change and grow to experience Empathy, if they want to.

Autistic people on the other hand, are in a fog, struggling to see the people on the other side, off in the distance. Sometimes the fog breaks, and Empathy shines through. But most of the time it is obscured and distorted.

Besides the feeling of Empathy, mirror neurons have been implicated in many different cognitive processes, giving us a new picture of how the "scaffolding of the brain" is developed.


For more information on mirror neurons and Empathy, I suggest reading "Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect to Others" and "The Age of Empathy: Natures Lessons for a Kinder Society".

Will the normal humans please stand up?

This is related to the previous posting about the rise of narcissism and selfishness in "Western Culture", and how for some reason, not many people notice it, or even care. (Compared to Asperger's Syndrome, which many parents seem to be absolutely terrified of.)

This is obviously problematic, because "Western Culture" is where most psychological research happens. And this research is used to measure what is considered "normal" or "healthy" psychological behaviour, as well as "universal" behaviours.

Westerners are abnormally egocentric, individualistic, isolated, and conformist, compared to other cultures presently in the world as well as in the past. And yet...

We consistently consider ourselves "normal", and immune to cultural biases in thinking and problem solving.

(Because we've somehow escaped this silly primitive culture nonsense, and now experience CIVILIZATION and RATIONAL BEHAVIOUR. Yes. That is sarcasm.)

If you don't believe me, read this review, titled "The Weirdest People in the World?" criticizing the use of western college students to create theories of "universal" human behaviour and cognition. The acronym WEIRD stands for "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic."

So yeah, what we consider normal, can also be called "weird", and as noted in the previous post, we seem to be getting "weirder" every decade.

Along with psychological views of the self and other, and the "cultural" aspects of an individuals identity- there is variations in spacial perception, social reasoning, memory, and susceptibility to optical illusions. Since I read psychology, I was aware of some of these differences, but was surprised to find that not all cultures viewed optical illusions the same way, because my cognitive psychology book told me it was one of those "universal" things.

The muller-Lyer optical illusion is the one shown here that tricks you into perceiving that these lines are different lengths, when in fact they are actually all the same length, as demonstrated below in red.
(But people on the autistic spectrum often don't perceive this. Because my consciousness is most often hyper-focused, I can go- yep same line...yep...same line. But if I look again, and focus on the whole for a little while, I can see the illusion.)

Americans, REALLY SUCK AT THIS. They get fooled easily, compared to most other cultures. Some cultures are less easily fooled, and it seems the San bushpeople of the Kalahari, like autistic spectrum folk, aren't fooled at all and can easily tell the lines are the same. (Maybe because in order to eat, and not BE EATEN, they are raised with a high attention to detail).

So does that mean the optical illusion is universal, EXCEPT for those hunter-gatherers, (who live the lifestyle of 99% of humans that have ever existed), that have the "wrong" kind of perception?

No. You can't call things Universal, and choose which cultures belong in the Universal box, and which ones belong in the Deviation box.

Some people read stuff like this and jump to the ridiculous conclusion of extreme cultural relativity: "See! There is no human nature! It's ALL culture!"- or to the other extreme end that maybe "GENES are responsible for these perceptual and cognitive differences!"- as if actually choosing teams in the epic "Nature vs. Nurture" battle.

But in my opinion, there is no battle. A battle implies that one of them could win. I think it's more like a game of "tug-of-war" that never ends. Team Culture has much more manpower, and when Team Culture tugs hard enough, it pulls Team Genes towards its side, so that Team Genes almost touches that "thin red line". But Team Culture is never strong enough to completely pull Team Genes over and win the game. Sometimes Team Culture becomes exhausted and collapses on the ground, and Team Genes takes over and slides Team Culture through the mud and back to the other side. But you can't saying something is "just genes", separate from culture. (Like some recent crap news about how some men are "born to cheat" because they have a "cheating gene".)

Team culture can be a lot of things. Humans have produced Natzi culture, Tibetan Monk culture, and more recently, Gangster culture.

But culture is not infinitely malleable. I'm guessing there will never be a culture where people produce babies only to eat them as as Jonathan Swift suggested, (sacrafice and religion is different), or one in which Amazonian women keep their multiple husbands in cages.

But one in which uneducated, unattractive, drug addicted, misogynistic, badly dressed thugs who can't even sing or play an instrument produce an award winning record that millions of people buy: possible.

We are very cultural beings, with "cultural software" in our minds.
My point is: You can't say with certainty which kind of human behaviour is "universal", and which kind is not. You can only say that we have biases, and tendencies, and make some guesses. Culture is strong enough to warp these tendencies. For example, facial expressions are "Universal", but Westerners and Asians produce and view facial expressions slightly differently.

But I do think there is definitely something called "human nature"- only it can be stretched and distorted. You can't figure out exactly what that is by studying ONE culture, and ONE time period, and ONE species, and ONE type of people.

You also can't go around the world playing behavioural economic games with different cultures and expect that to "prove" some kind of "truth" about modern society, and claim that capitalism and markets make us "kinder". The study went through the news and and spawned a lot of dumbass articles suddenly concluding "See! Look how awesome our society is! We're not selfish! Without capitalism and religion, we would be stealing and spearing each other! Actually, it's the bushpeople who are selfish jerks!"

Look at those selfish jerks.

The kindest people in the whole world, and the entire existence of humanity.

The paper is interesting, but I think that "news article" is one dumbass conclusion from that paper. Of course hunter-gatherers are not peaceful, earth loving, pure beings. (Apparently the murder rate is the same as other cultures, when you factor in the amount of people in groups). But just because they played the ultimatum game in a certain way, certainly doesn't make them "unkind" to strangers. I mean, they work together and share their meat, and actually agreed to help anthropologists with these studies. Wouldn't the unkind reaction to be to tell them to fuck off? And in their own group, they are very generous, and "kind" every day. When was the last time you popped over to your neighbours house to offer them free groceries for no reason? Of course they are going to think differently, and will consider it "strange" to give stuff to complete strangers they will never see again. That would be like an alien landing in your backyard from a spaceship, and asking for half your paycheck. You'd probably be very suspicious, offer a small amount, and probably phone a psychiatrist. You can't make sweeping generalizations like that about the personalities of other cultures, let alone cultures in the past, unless you have psychic powers and a time machine. "Tribal" groups don't exist in isolation, in some kind of representation of the thinking process of our ancestors. They don't have any reason to trust "random white people" or take their experiments seriously, either. But maybe when there were no random white people bothering them 5,000 years ago, they would have thought differently, who knows.

Humans have hardwired "stranger danger". That's one of those "pretty much" universal things, but culture determines how paranoid the group is to outsiders. They avoid dealing with strangers in the out-group, and think very differently about them. We didn't hang out with random strangers all the time in our past. The "other" is a strong repelling force. Our society, and other industrialized societies, only seem "kinder" because we live in a big, massive "US" group, called a country, and we have certain expectations in dealing with strangers, because we do it every day, and act like we belong in ONE GIANT TRIBE culture. We don't really encounter "strangers" very often. Fellow citizens are not strangers, they are fellow citizens we identify with. We are obsessed with our reputations, and don't want to look like "jerks", even if only God is watching. We are used to playing hypothetical intellectual games. Tribal people don't sit around doing that. We use the strategy that we think is "right", that gives us a feelgood emotional reaction (Not an intellectual one). That feelgood feeling doesn't happen with people very different from us that we can't possibly identify with. This has absolutely nothing to do with kindness, having a "world religion", or free markets evolving us into more co-operative people. Because that insinuates that if these aspects are taken away, people will just start to rape and pillage freely. (If that was really true, would that mean that a hypothetical society made up of socialist atheists, like on Star Trek, would all act like misanthropic criminals?) If you take a bunch of American strangers and dump them on a deserted island with "others"- people aren't so "kind" anymore. Just like tribe-people suspicious of outsiders, if you tell Americans they are playing the game with a Muslim from Afghanistan, many people won't want to be very generous, like they are when they think they are playing with Americans. It depends on the situation. In real life, people are becoming LESS kind, and LESS generous, in real life situations, and certainly LESS "FAIR". Markets and monotheistic religions create "very large tribes", not kindness and fairness.

So, people in smaller scale societies don't punish strangers, and that's considered a bad thing? But if a strange looking alien came to your door with a giant chunk of diamond and offered to give you 10% of it, would you go "Fuck you Alien! That's really unfair, so not only am I going to reject your offering, I'm going to tell your Alien boss that you're a jerk so he takes the diamond away from you, and we both get nothing!" That doesn't really prove you live in a kind society, just that you live in a society obsessed with "justice" and punishing others for perceived injustices.

That viewpoint also bugged me because, using that reasoning, you could say that people on the autistic spectrum are also "unkind" because they do not  punish people in the Ultimatum game. When I first encountered that, I was somewhat confused as to why someone would REJECT ANYTHING. I remember reading Temple Grandin picked the "rational option", and in general autistic people were more likely to do that (and psychopaths, because they are selfish jerks). Because in my mind, my thought process was narrowed down to: "Hmm...Something...or...Nothing. Of course I'll pick the something, even if it's 1%! Something is better than NOTHING". I would also have the thought when someone kept 99% -"fuck you, jerk!" but there was no emotional benefit for me to punish myself by punishing another person I will "never meet again". They were two separate thoughts. I was completely astounded that "normal" people reject free money and punish themselves, in order to punish the bad behaviour of other people they don't know and will never meet. For some reason that makes them feel better, but so does co-operating. When this game is done in an fMRI, apparently "pleasure centres" light up. So, I guess that makes me an "unkind person" because I don't enjoy punishing people.

All this research on human behaviour and culture is interesting and useful, but not when you claim confusing things like "capitalism makes us kind" in the newspaper.

The understanding of what is "normal", and what is "not normal", is important when scientist types are doing research on autistic spectrum disorders. Most often, the studies compare autistic spectrum people with WEIRD people.  But that doesn't necessarily tell you what differences there are between "normal people" and "autistic people", because autistic people are not exposed to culture in the same way. They don't "soak up" the cultural mind. Every autistic person has a slightly different mind. A difference in cognition might not be because of "Autism", but it might be because they don't exist in the same cultural universe as the rest of the population, just like someone who was raised in a crazy cult- except it is a "culture of one".

And, in studies on autistic people, deviations from the "normal population" are almost always framed negatively. For example, here is a study about the lack of a self reference effect in autism (meaning "normal people" have better memory for words and subjects relating to themselves, and special brain areas light up when exposed to information about themselves), which is called; A lack of self-consciousness in Autism. This study finds that autistic people treat all information the same, whether it is relevant to the self or not- and consider that proof of a "lack of self-consciousness." They could have also called it "Autistic people do not have a bias for information related to the self." But hey, favouring information about yourself and distorting your thought processes to notice more things about yourself, is the normal thing to do.

Local and Global processing: Another way of looking at autism

There is interesting new research being developed looking at different types of information processing in autism. Using an EEG, researchers have found that people on the autistic spectrum have particular differences in "brain waves" while performing certain tasks, meaning soon there could be a simple physical test that can aid in the diagnosis of autism.

Many people have the vague understanding that the mind sees through the eyes, and that information is transferred into the brain via some kind of recording device, which is then displayed as one image on an "internal screen."

However, the brain actually perceives the outside world with multiple processes. There is no recorder, and there is no screen. We only have the illusion of a unified field of vision.

Sometimes, these processes/pathways do not operate in synch. Some may be slower than others, and your brain might experience perceptual "lags", which may be responsible for communication difficulties and sensory difficulties. It's like playing a video game, and the characters are lagging behind you and the scenery. 

Similar to your eyes seeing from different perspectives and coming together as one sense of vision, the two hemispheres of your brain are associated with two different ways of seeing. One side, the left hemisphere, is able to process colour and detail. This is called "local processing". The other side, the right hemisphere, is concerned with whole objects and boundaries of objects, called "global processing", and is important for other processes such as motion detection and depth. (These are very general terms. There is no "local pathway" or "global pathway" exactly in the brain. There are many "cables and wires". Here is a link to more info on visual pathways and some visual tests)

Only read this part if you want more you details, otherwise skip ahead:
(From the study:High-scoring individuals also demonstrated difficulty in identifying the global components of locally salient hierarchical Navon figures. Furthermore, cross-validated discriminant analysis, using fourphysiologically and three psychophysically derived parameters, correctly classified 83% of individuals who scored either high or low on the Autism Spectrum Quotient. These findings in the group scoring high on the Autism Spectrum Quotient indicate that a delay in primary visual/prestriate cortical processing of magnocellular input diminishes the advantage of its early arrival to primary visual cortex. This appears to be associated with impaired global visual perception, predicting with high accuracy behavioural tendencies associated with autism spectrum disorders.)

In "neurotypical" people, these two distinct pathways come together as one, but in autistic spectrum disorders, there are discrepancies with how these two different viewpoints merge. In the "normal" brain, the brain is first concerned with the object as a whole. It only "zooms in" to consider the detail, if the object is being examined by you. For people with autism however, the brain is usually fixated with the detail oriented, "local processing" mode of the left brain first, before it begins to perceive the whole object.

This is because the human brain wants a quick "scan" of the outline of it's surroundings, to quickly decide "Hey, is that thingy over there interesting?" or "Ah! That thing is going to kill me!" Local processing is supposed to happen AFTER so we can look at the details inside- "Oops, that thing I thought was a snake, was only a hose." But when local processing happens FIRST, perception is impaired in a way. Not always in a bad way, but it can cause many problems, such as disrupting other pathways. 

The easiest way to demonstrate and understand this is using a test called "The Navon test". 

The first figure "neurotypical" people usually perceive, is the large letter made up of the different small letters. This image at first glance would appear to be "E S A H", then they would realize these images are composed of other letters. 

In autistic spectrum disorders (as well as other connective disorders, such as schitzophrenia), the person first perceives the small letters instead of the whole. This image appears to be a collection of "A H E S". They are able to understand the whole as well, but there is a delay in being able to see the whole. (For example, I may scan the edges of the group of "E" to see the letter A, but if I concentrate for a couple seconds the entire A appears. Then after a couple seconds it may "Pop", and disappear, and I see a collection of E again. This means to me, many objects appear to vibrate around the edges! ) This delay in perception is detected with the use of an EEG, (or the thing with wires you stick on your head that measures brain electricity.) 

Here is another test: 

 Click for larger image

See how fast you are able to find the OUTLINE of this triangle above the picture (to the RIGHT). It's easier if you click on the larger image. Ignore the block graphics example to the left. 

This is an example of an Embedded Figures Test or EFT. (EFT in Autism study). People with enhanced local processing are able to find it more quickly than people who tend to see things in wholes. They are also better at reproducing patterns in block tests like the example above.  

(If you find you aren't sure if you have Asperger's or not, and you have no difficulty seeing the wholes, then you might not have an autistic spectrum disorder. MOST have these issues, but apparently, not ALL.)

This can create problems in daily life, such as inability to properly understand facial expressions (since you may not view the face as an entire whole), and navigating. When your brain has trouble detecting the boundaries of objects, its more difficult to navigate around objects and interact with them. 

Don't confuse this, with visual focus. Focus happens within the eye. This is how the brain processes what the "eye sees". (I know, confusing.)

This aspect of processing in autism is often overlooked by professionals, and those attempting to understand the nature of autism. But in my opinion, understanding how these pathways work, and WHY there are delays in processing, seems like a very important part of Autism research, and much more work should to be done on this. 

This is because visual perception and internal thought patterns are intimately related. Your ability to perceive the world reflects how you are able to perceive thoughts in your own mind, and the information you are attempting to understand. Our ability to "think" was adapted from the older visual pathways of our primate ancestors. 

It is my belief that deficits in the ability to perceive wholes is directly related to other aspects of autism- such as trouble with metaphors and abstractions, "one track thinking", the feeling that the world is "chaotic", and the tendency to have "special interests". 

This is because an autistic brain has a much easier time putting small pieces together, both visually and mentally. Just like there is difficulty in perceiving objects quickly, many autistic people have a hard time quickly changing topics or "areas of thinking." They aren't able to quickly scan the whole "concepts" in their brains, like neurotypical people do. They get fixated on the small details and connections.

Why is this? Minicolumns? White matter connections? Nobody knows that yet.

The ability to see objects first globally instead of by their parts, is a newly adapted human trait. Our closest cousins, Chimpanzees, show only slight preference, or no preference for global processing. Monkeys do not have this ability, they process the world more like local processing. It seems to me, that global processing and the mental equivalent, the ability to "conceptualize", was probably very important in our evolutionary past, helping us to form relationships, learn to avoid predators, and form complex community and groups. 

(I'm in no way implying that autistic people are less evolved or something!  I'm just saying that a lot of our brain wiring is evolutionary very new. In this way, what Temple Grandin says about Autistics being able to think more "like animals" may be true.)

This is a very basic intro. (And I'm not a professional).

For more information, visit:

Brain waves show signature of Autism

Magnocellular evoked potential delay with high autism spectrum quotient yields a neural mechanism for altered perception

Global and Local processing in the Right and Left Hemisphere

This is an introspective personal blog that covers issues on autistic consciousness and understanding, with the hope that both so called "normal people" as well autistic people can better understand what autism is like in the mind. I'm probably going to be writing more on global vs. local processing in the future. 

For another post on the cognitive difficulties of autism, read The chambers of my mind post.