Subject: Information processing in autism.
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I’m remembering an anecdote about a time Lorna Wing was looking at a dolls’ house with a young autistic boy.
She pointed at the bed and asked, “What’s this?” He answered, “A bed.” She pointed at the cover. He said, “A quilt.” Finally, she pointed at the pillow. He replied, “It’s a piece of ravioli.”
Somewhat astonished, she looked more closely – and saw that it did indeed look just like a piece of ravioli.
@KatyElphinstone I actually liked dollhouses as a kid. Hey, looky that I"M a nonbinary autistic af thingy, who'd've guessed it.
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All of this means it can be a) more tiring, and b) more time-consuming for us to move through the world, taking it in.
This can make everyday environments more effortful (more processing load, more filtering required), which can feel more tiring and sometimes slower.
This could also account for why autistic people need a lot of low-stimulus downtime, to recover from it all. Anyone would!
End of thread 🧵
Refs below.
Refs:
Zapparrata, N. M., Brooks, P. J., & Ober, T. M. (2023). Slower Processing Speed in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-analytic Investigation. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36112302/— Meta-analysis: autistic groups slower on time-based tasks.
Morsanyi, K., Handley, S. J., & Evans, J. S. B. T. (2009). Heuristics and biases in autism: Less biased but not more logical.
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/heuristics-and-biases-in-autism-less-biased-but-not-more-logical/— Autistic adolescents show reduced bias on heuristic tasks.
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Refs:
Zapparrata, N. M., Brooks, P. J., & Ober, T. M. (2023). Slower Processing Speed in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-analytic Investigation. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36112302/— Meta-analysis: autistic groups slower on time-based tasks.
Morsanyi, K., Handley, S. J., & Evans, J. S. B. T. (2009). Heuristics and biases in autism: Less biased but not more logical.
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/heuristics-and-biases-in-autism-less-biased-but-not-more-logical/— Autistic adolescents show reduced bias on heuristic tasks.
️De Martino, B., Harrison, N. A., Knafo, S., Bird, G., & Dolan, R. J. (2008). Explaining enhanced logical consistency during decision making in autism. Journal of Neuroscience.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2682781/— Reduced framing effect; less emotional context in choices.
Pellicano, E., & Burr, D. (2012). When the world becomes “too real”: A Bayesian explanation of autistic perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22959875/— Theory: perception less constrained by prior expectations.
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@KatyElphinstone I had a huge fasenation with doors, and doorbells, and oh god, every time we were anywhere with a doorbell or a unique doorknob I had to check it out again. OH, we're at my aunt's house, hey I gotta ring the doorbell at least 4 different times. Me at age 5 31 years ago lol.
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In effect, the boy was not allowing his pre-existing beliefs to cloud his judgement about that piece of ravioli on the bed
All told, could it be that, as autistic people, we’re simply taking in more signals from the outside world than most?
The research of Pellicano and Burr suggests autistic perception seems indeed to rely less heavily on expectations and preconceptions than the norm.
We may, in fact, be more ‘eye to brain’, so to speak.
@KatyElphinstone i actually really like that trait, it allows me to see more than other people. it plays a big part in my work as an artist, illustrator, writer
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De Martino, B., Harrison, N. A., Knafo, S., Bird, G., & Dolan, R. J. (2008). Explaining enhanced logical consistency during decision making in autism. Journal of Neuroscience.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2682781/— Reduced framing effect; less emotional context in choices.
Pellicano, E., & Burr, D. (2012). When the world becomes “too real”: A Bayesian explanation of autistic perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22959875/— Theory: perception less constrained by prior expectations.
️Seymour, R. A., et al. (2019). Dysregulated oscillatory connectivity in the visual system in autism spectrum disorder. Brain.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6763739/— Reduced feedback V4→V1; feedforward similar between groups.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). Clinical Testing and Diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorder.
https://www.cdc.gov/autism/hcp/diagnosis/index.html— DSM-5 diagnostic criteria summary; includes sensory differences.
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@KatyElphinstone I had a huge fasenation with doors, and doorbells, and oh god, every time we were anywhere with a doorbell or a unique doorknob I had to check it out again. OH, we're at my aunt's house, hey I gotta ring the doorbell at least 4 different times. Me at age 5 31 years ago lol.
Hehe my dog would be going nuts at that. She likes doorbells but finds them a little overstimulating 🥰
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@KatyElphinstone i actually really like that trait, it allows me to see more than other people. it plays a big part in my work as an artist, illustrator, writer
Yes, I have an artist friend, also autistic, who was saying exactly this. Seeing as really going outside yourself to properly 'see'... hm, if that makes sense..
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Yes, I have an artist friend, also autistic, who was saying exactly this. Seeing as really going outside yourself to properly 'see'... hm, if that makes sense..
@KatyElphinstone and to see through time too, it is not only visual and now but also past and future
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@KatyElphinstone and to see through time too, it is not only visual and now but also past and future
Ooh fabulous! Care to elaborate? (After all, time does not really exist in the forward/backward way we may believe...)
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@KatyElphinstone and to see through time too, it is not only visual and now but also past and future
@KatyElphinstone this visualisation shows it i hope: (it is a page from my (dutch) graphic novel on autism, that i hope to publish in english soon too: https://astridpoot.nl/2024/09/14/graphicnovel-wise-enough-to-play-the-fool/)
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@KatyElphinstone this visualisation shows it i hope: (it is a page from my (dutch) graphic novel on autism, that i hope to publish in english soon too: https://astridpoot.nl/2024/09/14/graphicnovel-wise-enough-to-play-the-fool/)
It does show it. I love this picture.
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It does show it. I love this picture.
@KatyElphinstone the sense of connection between everything
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@KatyElphinstone the sense of connection between everything
It's really beautiful. I'm just looking at your site and waiting for the English translation to load (as I cannot claim to understand much Dutch).
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@KatyElphinstone the sense of connection between everything
I love your series of boring paintings. I went straight in there.
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@KatyElphinstone I had a huge fasenation with doors, and doorbells, and oh god, every time we were anywhere with a doorbell or a unique doorknob I had to check it out again. OH, we're at my aunt's house, hey I gotta ring the doorbell at least 4 different times. Me at age 5 31 years ago lol.
@cordova5029 @KatyElphinstone I had a fascination with doorknobs when I was young.
I determined at an early age that the simple ones, like in a house, have a plain shaft that connects both sides. Turning one side turns the other side.
But commercial knobs typically have a separate mechanism for each side. Turning one side does not turn the other. Which I found fascinating, so of course I had to try this out whenever we went somewhere new.
But there was a house around the corner from ours that had some type of multi- chime doorbell that played a song. Which was fascinating and unheard of in the 70s.
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I love your series of boring paintings. I went straight in there.
The beauty in the banal 🥰
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@cordova5029 @KatyElphinstone I had a fascination with doorknobs when I was young.
I determined at an early age that the simple ones, like in a house, have a plain shaft that connects both sides. Turning one side turns the other side.
But commercial knobs typically have a separate mechanism for each side. Turning one side does not turn the other. Which I found fascinating, so of course I had to try this out whenever we went somewhere new.
But there was a house around the corner from ours that had some type of multi- chime doorbell that played a song. Which was fascinating and unheard of in the 70s.
I once had to figure one out because it was broken. It was surprisingly complex! It would have been very useful to have you there!
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All of this means it can be a) more tiring, and b) more time-consuming for us to move through the world, taking it in.
This can make everyday environments more effortful (more processing load, more filtering required), which can feel more tiring and sometimes slower.
This could also account for why autistic people need a lot of low-stimulus downtime, to recover from it all. Anyone would!
End of thread 🧵
Refs below.
@KatyElphinstone This likely has a direct connection to the phrase "just tune it out" that we get all the time, especially with hearing and auditory processing. For whatever reason, I guess the NT brain just has better active filtering on the senses than the autistic brain? I'm blind, but from what I understand that degree of filtering is virtually required for vision to function, as the eyes generate a ton of spurious information such as motion blur on their own, not to mention the sheer amount of detail they can capture, and so the brain subjects it to heavy filtering to try and build a coherent mental perception. With ears, all the info is coming into the auditory cortex which also has to build a coherent mental perception (sound) out of it. And I guess that either the auditory cortex or whatever its output goes to just can have different degrees of filtering? These can be slightly manipulated by people, actually. It's a myth that blind people literally *hear* better than people who are not blind, but the case could theoretically be made that they *listen* better? Their brain, consciously or subconsciously, assigned more processing to their ears than a person who has to spend all that bandwidth on visual input instead. Although I haven't looked at correlations between blindness and auditory processing disorders and likelihood of overstimulation, I wonder if anyone's done research on that!
Edit: Not sure about auditory processing disorders and overstimulation specifically, but there is certainly evidence to suggest that the auditory cortex adapts itself to be more capable of perceiving detail. The example they use here in sound frequency and motion, and the frequency part might have something to do with that anecdotal correlation between blindness and enhanced pitch perception and musicality. https://www.washington.edu/news/2019/04/22/brains-of-blind-people-adapt-to-sharpen-sense-of-hearing-study-shows/ -
Subject: Information processing in autism. Is our style necessarily a deficit?
Why do autistic people find new or high-stimulus environments stressful; even overwhelming?
Why can it seem, at times, we're slower than others? To take in scenes; to mentally process them; to make decisions based on them
This thread is an alternative take on autistic processing style & speed.
(Comments & feedback welcomed, as always!)
#Autism #ActuallyAutistic #EpistemicInjustice #Neurodivergent #AuDHD
@KatyElphinstone Interesting angle on it. I have an analogy with computers that has worked pretty well before: Database optimization for read vs write. When you store information in a database, there are two basic ways to find it later: you can scan every record until you find the ones with that info, or you can use an index to look up the records that match the search term. Which is like looking up a word in a book's index to get a list of all the pages where that word is used – it's much faster to check only those pages than every page of the book. So it's faster to find the data, but the catch is that it takes a little work to keep the index updated as you add records. If you look stuff up more often than you add records, that trade-off works out and you spend less time overall.
I think of autistic processing as something like that. My autistic brain spends more time up front processing new information and building connections to other information, so it's faster for me to recall information or find interesting associations to other info. Just like keeping a database index up to date makes adding info a little slower so finding it later is a lot faster. It's all about trade-offs. Nobody can be the best at everything, especially when being the best means optimizing for that situation at the expense of others. I just want people to stop expecting me to have a write-optimized brain instead of a read-optimized one.
