Today's episode is all about visual thinking
and learning. We will expand on an underrated,
nearly unrecognized power of the autistic phenotype,
visual thinking. Not just seeing a picture, but
the vivid details, the movies, acuity, experiences,
etc. This fascinating phenomenon does for learning.
With that, we will discuss associative learning
and procedural learning and a theory called weak
central coherence by Happ and Frith. It's about
20 -25 years old now. Very fascinating and relevant.
We will explore and expand on what Leo Kanner
and Hans Asperger highlighted. More recently,
Temple Grandin provides wonderful experiences
and scientific exploration of visual thinking.
The autistic brain sees details. Then it spans
out to see the bigger picture. Remember the example,
the anecdotal example in the first episode of
visual thinking about the trees, seeing the trees.
But I could only see the tree bark, the different
types of bark. It builds models. The autistic
brain builds models and it's detailed and precise
models of the world. In other words, the autistic
brain and the autistic phenotype uses a similar
approach to machine learning and AI. Remember
Hans Asperger's first paper in 1944. Much of
the lengthy paper, this was a lengthy paper,
was on autistic intelligence. Remember Asperger's
little professors. He nicknamed those kids little
professors. Remember the 11 case studies from
Leo Kanner in 1943. Similar learning style and
imagination. Remember the translation of autism
comes from autos, which means self. Remember
the early origins and connections to schizophrenia,
the visual hallucinations. Intense dreamlike
states is exactly why autism was used by Eugen
Blueler. And for the record, it took me five
takes to say that last name. And I don't even
know if I got it right. Remember Piaget highlighted
this a little in the 1920s with selective kids
appearing to have intense inter -worlds. Most
importantly, remember these crucial mentions
shared from the start of the podcast. The origin
of the podcast are things like this. The biology
that gives us autism. allows us to be comfortable
within ourselves. And that accelerates learning.
And remember B3, restricted, fixated interests
that are abnormal in intensity or focus. How
is that a thing? Remember, social norms are in
contrast to the autistic phenotype, especially
in education. The outside world is a conundrum.
an odd paradox, and humans fit everyone into
a box so they can evaluate and predict. And this
is an answer key. The entry point, the path,
this gate that must be entered, et cetera, into
learning is not an easy entrance. For the autistic
phenotype, that is not so much the case. Humans...
can complicate themselves so easily. We can spend
an infinite amount of time and create these distractions,
these reasons that prevents themselves from exploring
outside the box. Humans construct a box. Inside
this box is everything they know, everything
we know, and humans. want others to fit inside
of a facade construction to evaluate and for
prediction. If you can fit someone in that box
or even manipulate them into your perception
to make the others fit inside that box, it's
acceptance. If not, it's rejection. In other
words, If you can fit something inside of this
quick answer key, this quick box, you accept
it. It's easier for you. If it's not inside the
box, if it's different, it's outside the box.
You reject it. Humans love this because it makes
it easier on the observer. And you don't like
that. When others are outside that box, you've
created. It's complicated and hard to make sense
of. when this is occurring. You don't like that.
You hate those underlying feelings that are offending
your beliefs, offending your abilities to understand.
You might even resist that. Let's get into this.
How autistics build catalogs in different categories.
A remarkable similarity between autistic brains
and artificial intelligence and that machine
learning. It's forming concepts by collecting
and organizing specific concrete examples. And
this is often visual image, sensory experiences.
And this is collected and they form a mental
database or like a library. So for instance,
the catalogs. Unlike neurotypical individuals
who might rely on the abstraction or generalization
ideas, autistic people, especially those visual
thinkers and the ones that see the movies, construct
categories by compiling these detailed instances,
these examples. Temple Grandin in Thinking in
Pictures and the Autistic Brain Books describes
this in quite detail. She explains that her mind
works like a search engine for photographs, and
she sorts these specific images into categories
to understand the world. An example she gives
is a butterfly. Grandin doesn't think of a generic
butterfly. She often talks about churches and
the steeples. Maybe she sees the type of block
or brick. she sees real -life examples, things
that she's encountered and seen, and she's building
this up in this mental model. For instance, with
the butterfly, she will see specific butterflies,
one from her childhood backyard, or a metal decorative
butterfly, a painted butterfly, and so on. Each
image is in a file that's kind of labeled the
mental catalog. This is like the filing system
I explained in the previous episode. And this
is our collection of, okay, that's what a butterfly
is. When Grandin calls this associative learning,
and this is a hallmark of how many autistic individuals
build these catalogs. It's a bottom -up approach,
starting with specific details, and then gradually
constructing broader concepts or ideas or images.
And this is the weak central coherence theory
by Happ and Frith from 2006. They have studies
from 20 -25 years ago. It's essentially a cognitive
processing style in autism characterized by preference
for local or detailed oriented processing over
the larger global contextual integration. They
suggest that autistics excel at focusing on specific
elements of information, such as noticing minute
details in a visual scene or memorizing precise
facts. But they may find it hard and challenging
to synthesize these details into broader holistic
understandings of the world. This weak central
coherence is very powerful in perception and
learning and this categorization. There is something
called embedded figures test. And autistic show
quickly they identify a hidden shape within a
complex image because of the focus on the individual
components rather than the distracting hole.
Instead of viewing the hole, scanning the whole
picture. This is a strength of the visual processing
which allows acceleration in activities requiring
precision, such as spotting differences in images
or analyzing intricate patterns in art or design.
This is very AI -ish. And I can't underestimate
this enough and I can't convey this to you enough.
The delays in the sensory processing because
of this and then the implications to socialness.
Do you understand this? This visual thinking
style enhances our ability to notice subtle details,
however, can make tasks requiring contextual
understanding like Interpreting social situations.
Understanding of each other and what social cues
are. Very challenging. Remember previous data
that we've discussed about local processing and
the sensory processing being kind of heightened.
This is what's happening here as well. This is
just another way of explaining it. Understanding
it. This local processing kind of biases an ability
to focus on discrete features of objects or concepts
and that accelerates the learning. That spinning
that heightened awareness on this specific detail
strengthens the memory here. And you should be
thinking about the pattern recognition as well
and just how autistics can see patterns very
well. I will give you an anecdote about how I
associate things, especially with people. I've
done this for as long as I can remember, and
whenever I was younger with different peer groups,
they would disagree with me, but they missed
what I was saying. I would compare people, new
people even, with certain phenotypes about them
to somebody else, especially famous people. and
I would pick out these fine details about this
person. Maybe it was some sort of phenotype,
but it was very covert detail that I could see
from this other person and then pull it up in
this other kind of model or this category that
I knew about this other famous person. And this
was very... fine detail. Maybe it was a jawline
or the way that their their chin looked or was
shaped. The distance of their eyes. It's this
sort of kind of fine detail phenotype that I
could see pick out from the other person and
then compare it to this famous person or from
somebody else. Maybe they're not even famous.
And I would do this with maybe some sort of Nuanced
behaviors that they have, maybe it was their
pace of walk or their step, or the way that their
shoulders would slouch, or the angle of their
thumbs. Have you ever noticed that people's,
the angle of their thumbs as they're walking
forward, or if they're just standing still, angles
of the thumbs are different. Most modern humans,
they're turned in almost like at a 45 degree
angle. The thumbs should be pointed directly
in line with your forward ambulation the path
that you're traveling on but now like modern
humans with this slouching and c -shaped shoulders
the thumbs are pointing in and they almost crisscross
if you would draw an imaginary line out from
the thumbs or other examples would be like a
hairline or the size of their ears or something
like this very fine detail and very quirky, hard
to detect, very covert. And others, whenever
I would mention this out loud, they wouldn't
catch it because they're not looking like that.
They're just looking at the general person, the
overall person. I'm looking at stuff that's very
precise, very pinpoint. And I would usually just
say it out loud. That person looks like this
person, or they have similar XYZ, whatever the
phenotype. that I was comparing and building
up this model. This is exactly a good example
of building models and different catalogs for
different categories. And others would disagree
with it. They would even make comments and laugh.
It's like no way. But they wouldn't see it. This
same mechanism is exactly like the pattern recognition
even. Seeing the little details first and then
zooming out, generalizing. This is exactly what
AI is doing when Temple Granting gives the melanoma
detection example with the autistic brain, machine
learning, and AI. In addition, memorizing and
organizing facts and information. This is very
fascinating stuff here. This is very powerful.
This is why words like the superpower, is in
the title for things like this. Not to be confused
with the push -pull motivational tactics of society
saying the autistic phenotype is superpowers.
This is one of those examples. So with learning
this weak central coherence shaping the autistic
individuals form and applying associations particularly
in this associative learning process. And we'll
dive into that more deeply later. This is similar
to classical and operant conditioning from old
learning theorists and psychologists like Pavlov
and Skinner. This explains why there's a strong
association. This means that type of idea with
autism. And you know, with the autistic phenotype,
there's very rigid thinking. This is very black
and white. There's no gray area. Because that
strong connection, that strong associative learning
to stimuli, this means that isn't flexible. Remember,
we've talked about the medial prefrontal cortex
in large detail and how it's kind of orchestrating
adaptive responses. It provides us skill sets
to use in the unpredictable world. We've covered
this even the beginning of this episode. This
is what complicates things. This is the kind
of the downfall of this strong association, this
accelerated learning. Remember the conversations
about the salience network and the default mode
network. those two so -called networks are heavily
involved here and strengthens the autistic phenotype.
Other examples that you might be familiar with
is like how autistics will categorize animals
maybe into fur types or habitats or big or small
number of legs and so forth colors maybe how
they purr or bark, or the sounds that they make,
the foods that they eat, predator or prey type
of things here. Then there's just massive amounts
of catalogs inserting those pictures into each
of these types of little categories about that
specific animal. Similar to the tree bark, instead
of seeing a large tree, just a generic tree.
Remember the tree bark example from the previous
episode. I didn't even get to the canopy By the
time I realized that others weren't doing this
And something fascinating about Temple Grandin
is breaking the type of visual thinkers into
different kind of subtypes She she so -called
calls these object Visualizers who think in concrete
detailed imaging or spatial visualizers thinks
in patterns or she uses the word abstractions
here that often excel in fields like math or
music. Now the word abstraction here is confusing
to me. However, I'll just keep moving on. Object
visualizers like her relies on cataloging the
specific images to form these categories. The
visual thinking It's supported by unique neural
wiring. She really highlights this in the autistic
brain. It's very necessary reading if you want
to understand the autistic brain. And in her
brain, they found a large white fiber track connecting
her visual cortex to her frontal cortex. Remember
these different types of fasciculus. These are
called fasciculus. There's Many. We have many
different types just depending on what they're
trying to accomplish and the connections being
made. The one that I can mention right now in
real time is the arcuate fasciculus that connects
varnices and brocas for the language and speech
connection. What to take away here is this. Some
of these connections are hyper connected like
driving on an interstate and some of these connections
are hypo. connected. It's like driving on a gravel
road. I don't think anybody can explain it any
simpler and easier to understand form than that.
Another worthy highlight from scientific literature
is Matrone et al. in 2006 who kind of helped
support this showing that autistic individuals
show enhanced perceptual functioning. particularly
in visual and auditory domains. Remember the
first and second episodes of the Sensory Processing
episode. This is heightened sensitivity to sensory
details that allows a building of the rich detailed
catalogs which are then formed and used to solve
problems and make sense of the world. An example
here is an autistic artist might catalog specific
shapes or colors to create intricate designs.
Remember Temple Grandlin sharing her ability
to design this cattle system, these livestock
systems in her head, and she can work out the
flaws in it in her head in real time. She sees
this. This machine learning, these catalogs that
we're building up, we're talking about explaining
involves a process called iterative refinement
this is error correction remember the interior
cingulate cortex part of the medial prefrontal
cortex error detection and conflict monitoring
this is correcting things in real time this is
updating the catalog this is machine learning
and ai iterative, refinement. This is so very
fascinating here. So here is the perceptual learning
in the context of the autistic phenotype. A definition
here is experience -driven improvement in the
brain's ability to process and interpret sensory
information that results in enhanced accuracy,
efficiency, and sensitivity to specific stimuli.
without requiring conscious effort or explicit
instruction. This is a very unique skill here
for the autistic phenotype. Remember what I explained
earlier about that conflict and people not liking
when things are outside of that box. This is
perfectly acceptable for the autistic phenotype.
We're just going to update. But keep in mind
that black and white thinking here don't underestimate
this. This process of perceptual learning is
driven by neuroplasticity. And just pause for
a moment and think about the social situations
from way back into the critical period of infants
and child and babies. One, two, three years old
and so forth. Remember that paper on salience
network from UCLA. This is all connecting here.
This is all in -depth exploration and understanding
of the autistic phenotype here. With that perceptual
learning, a key feature here, especially with
the autistic phenotype and that detailed orientation
of this cognitive style, describes an enhanced
local processing. And this is accelerating and
making us excel in certain tasks requiring precision
that discriminates sensory detail. Examples here
for the autistic phenotype may be subtle differences
in the visual patterns or auditory pitches, tactile
textures, and so forth. Very fascinating how
well autistics can do with these kind of slight
nuances. And also, keep in mind that sensory
overstimulation. This is all a factor here. This
is all in play. The example I've previously given
about auditory sounds is blending together and
eventually they just remind me of the late 60s
Beatles tracks. Whenever they're experimenting
with different instruments and things around
the studio that they're using to create sound.
They're just blending all of these sounds together.
It's typically at the end of the tracks. Maybe
check out Sgt. Pepper's or White Album. Just
listen to the complete track towards the end.
Sounds just start to blend in real time for me
in social settings. They don't have to be loud
sounds. Just multiple sounds. This iterative
refinement and the perceptual learning the strong
connections similar to the associative learning
and that weak central coherence the detailed
precision of understanding things. It's a powerful
mechanism for refining this sensory processing
that kind of leads to unique implications for
the autistic individuals. The accelerated learning
ability and that sensory sensitivity, disability,
and those restricted, fixated interests that
are abnormal in intensity or focus. And now whenever
I say that the autistic phenotype has many contrasts
to the social norms, including education, the
school day, and within the classroom, you can
hopefully see why. Start piecing this together
about Well, the autistic phenotype just prefers
isolation and restricted interest. Those details
and knowledge and the wisdom builds up and is
very interesting to us, especially when you transpose
these into real live movies in your head. So
to end, let's do some similarities between AI,
machine learning, and the autistic brain. feature
extraction and cataloging for the autistic brain.
Grandin's visual thinking involves breaking down
complex information into the specific detailed
images, which she organizes into the mental catalogs.
Her livestock shoot and working out those kinks
and flaws, seeing the bottlenecks, interestingly.
People like Oliver Sacks who just imagined being
a bat wondered and put himself into I'm a bat
right now for an hour or so he would just spend
an hour two hours of his day pretending and imagining
himself being a bat and Temple Grandin did this
as well with Being a cow and kind of navigating
the livestock chute What areas would terrify
me what? is the flaws here, the barriers here.
What do they see? If you think about autism and
the ability to be more docile. I hate to even
use the word, but it's pretty accurate here.
With the squeeze machine and the smaller classrooms
and so forth. Being in our preferred environment.
This is what this is kind of doing here. Having
an ability to Be something else. Imagine things
in great detail from different perspectives.
In AI and machine learning, they have the convolutional
neural networks. This is pretty similar to the
autistic brain. Processes images similarly and
extracts low -level features in different layers,
just layers upon layers of the categories and
catalogs. Both the autistic catalog and the AI
feature extraction rely on bottom -up approaches.
This is all very similar. Temple Grandin has
a great example of AI for detecting melanoma.
You just feed the AI machine, that machine learning,
thousands upon thousands upon thousands of pictures
of melanoma, and then you insert a subject. this
new picture, and then it's just massively comparing
it. It's just quickly comparing all of those
images. And then this is sort of like the box
example. If it fits, if the subject's picture
fits the example of melanoma, accept. Detect
it. If not, reject. So pattern recognition is
huge here. and the associative learning. In autistic
brains, associative learning allows us to form
catalogs and connect specific visual memories.
Remember the default mode network. Nikolai involved
here is the hippocampus. And we have strong memory,
episodic memory. It's very fascinating here,
the episodic memory. For instance, the butterfly
example. If you mention butterfly, Temple Grandin
will remember a specific butterfly maybe in her
childhood and where she was when she saw that
specific butterfly. Specialized learning and
connectivity. This is a big thing with the autistic
phenotype. This specialized learning. These hyper
-connectivities of visual areas reaching out
to specific detailed areas of other brain regions
are kind of strengthening these connections and
those become preferred by the brain. The brain
doesn't want to work. It just wants to respond
based off of what it knows. We talk about neuroplasticity
in quite detail throughout many different episodes.
We are who we are because of these connections.
With AI and machine learning, these neural networks
and AI have dense local connections as well within
layers that allows them to perform detailed analysis.
Maybe it's an object recognition or it's analyzing
something, some sort of data. The autistic brain's
connectivity pattern supports cataloging and
specialized learning as well. Both of these systems
kind of excel in domains where precision and
pattern recognition are key. Accelerated learning,
something that's very, very important. I cannot
overstate Asperger's little professors and even
the children in the canner paper. They had accelerated
knowledge and information on different things,
random things in life. So what's so bad about
that? In AI and machine learning, this accelerated
learning uses that iterative approach. It's all
doing the same thing. Transfers learning where
AI applies knowledge across tasks and mirrors
how autistic individuals build catalogs for different
categories. Both the autistic brain and this
machine learning and AI accelerated learning
builds by accessing detailed catalogs to precision
these visual images and the movies playing out
or accessible to us in real time. If I'm explaining
something, if I'm explaining the inner mitochondrial
membrane and oxidative phosphorylation, I see
that in my head. I see the five cytochromes and
the FO head and I can just reverse engineer that.
I can just see it as I explain it. However, sometimes
that delays my processing because I have to keep
up with both. And that's an added factor. But
I'll take that. I will happily take that because
of this visual imaging and seeing movies in my
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Don't interfere with this because you will harm
the autistic phenotype. Embrace this. Allow them
to embrace this. If you are listening to the
podcast, listening to the episode, please feel
free to leave a review or rating. In podcasting,
reviews, ratings, and downloads are huge and
I very much appreciate your feedback. You can
contact me on X at RPS 47586. We can discuss
anything and everything about autism. I very
much appreciate your comments and your interactions
on X. You can check out the YouTube page for
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and clips. You can email me info .fromthespectrum
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the Spectrum Podcast.