I would just stick with autism and education.
Last time we talked about autism and education and within the classroom and the school day,
there are no fewer than four contrasts to the autistic phenotype.
The sensory processing, the social dynamics, the speech and language dynamics,
and last time I spent a lot on B3, the restricted and fixated interests that are abnormal in
intensity or focus and the constant subject switching, 45-50 minutes, switch subjects,
45-50 minutes, just repeating all day long.
It's a big contrast to the autistic phenotype.
But there are others that I really want to highlight because I think society is missing this very badly.
And that's the sensory processing.
We can define autism from criteria A, the social communication and interaction criteria.
That's not complicated.
That's well understood and accepted.
It's easy.
It's probably the easiest thing recognized from the lay public, whatever your profession,
to the autistic phenotype.
People can see that.
This isn't limited to normal back and forth communication, be it one-on-one or within a small group or even a large group.
Doesn't matter.
This is taking information that you're hearing.
So in our case, the teacher is teaching.
That's not complicated either.
That's how it's done.
The teacher is teaching.
And the students, whatever methods they use, whatever their protocol is for their learning style,
most in middle school and high school and even higher education, they take notes.
Note-taking is a very good skill utilized in the classroom.
My experience is, I'm taking this sensory information anyways, the sensation processing.
And I'm kind of hearing the information.
And something recognized with autism is, we take this information and we kind of transpose it into images.
Right?
We've talked about building up a catalog on how we see things, conceptualize things.
We build up this catalog, like the AI reference, and Tupacrandan touches on this a lot.
We hear the information and then we imagine it in visual form, sometimes even movie form.
Movie's playing.
And that's already somewhat of a delayed process, perhaps.
Because we have to attend to those images and how that is being created in our mind while keeping up with the teacher and this new information.
Maybe I shouldn't even say new information.
Maybe it's even known information.
But if it is new, that suggests that learning is occurring and it takes more time.
This is what I'm getting at.
This is taking more time to listen, transpose this, understand, and take notes.
All while keeping up with the problem that's already known in autism with the social communication and interaction.
This is very complicated.
Something that I don't think people understand is,
how much delayed this is, but the bonus of it, kind of on the superpower super deficit theme,
the power of doing this, having this thinking style and the images,
seeing it is adding a step into the learning process.
This is why I say it accelerates learning.
The problem is educators or parents, even even autistics, we're not taught that this is happening.
We're not really understood because if this isn't you, this is very complicated.
But seeing this accelerates our ability to understand what is happening.
Some other factors that delay this are to be considered too.
For those that are taking notes and those that can't understand why it's not only the visual processing,
this type of sensory processing phenomena, it's actually writing.
Another thing that's well understood about autism is kind of sloppy handwriting.
This isn't a skill that is lost or is challenging because of an area that's known in autism research,
the basal ganglia, and specifically the dorsal striatum, which is the basal ganglia is our go,
no go areas. This is where we kind of receive information into these subcortical areas
and we kind of facilitate downstream motor movements.
It's five subcortical areas and the inputs are the so-called dorsal striatum, the cadet and
putamen. This area receives information and based off of that information, it kind of
conducts the other subcortical areas, which then relays to other brain regions, specifically
the thalamus. But I don't want to digress too far into this. I'm hoping to cover this, but
with autism, the research, these areas are implicated through either deletions or mutations. A lot of
genetic factors are happening here and that's well understood and accepted in autism research.
So this conducting motor movements properly on pace is also a factor.
Another thing to consider here is not only the penmanship, but keeping up with spelling.
Autistics have very troubling abilities with spelling. I want to highlight
people don't understand this or they don't allow themselves to understand this. This isn't,
this is hard for other people to even consider and make sense of and we hate when we can't make
sense of something. This is one of our biggest problems as a complex living organism. We must
make sense of things because it settles us. It calms our, that whatever innate little conflict.
I still cannot keep up and take notes, but I can see these things
in my mind and be able to learn them that way. Maybe a problem though from
inside the classroom, especially as teenagers, these middle school and high schoolers.
That's not really the norm and here we go again. So much of the problem with the autistic phenotype
is the delta of our phenotype being forced into social norms. Being generalized to those social
norms expected to do that.