Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin

search engine such as Google for images. It will give people who are more verbal thinkers an understanding into how visual associative thinking works. People with music and math minds have a search engine that finds associations between patterns and numbers.
    The Asperger individual who is a verbal logic thinker uses verbal categories. For example, Dr. Minshew had an Asperger patient who had a bad side effect with a medication. Explaining the science of why he should try a different medication was useless. However, he became willing to try a new medication after he was simply told, the pink pills made you sick and I want you to try the blue pills. He agreed to try the blue pills.
    The more I learn, the more I realize more and more that how I think and feel is different. My thinking is different from a normal person, but it is also very different from the verbal logic non-visual person with Asperger's. They create word categories instead of picture categories. The one common denominator of all autistic and Asperger thinking is that details are associated into categories to form a concept. Details are assembled into concepts like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. The picture on the puzzle can be seen when only 20 percent of the puzzle is put together, forming a big picture.

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T HE G REAT C ONTINUUM
    Diagnosing Autism
    THE FIRST SIGN that a baby may be autistic is that it stiffens up and resists being held and cuddled. It may be extremely sensitive to touch and respond by pulling away or screaming. More obvious symptoms of autism usually occur between twelve and twenty-four months of age. I was my mother's first child, and I was like a little wild animal. I struggled to get away when held, but if I was left alone in the big baby carriage I seldom fussed. Mother first realized that something was dreadfully wrong when I failed to start talking like the little girl next door, and it seemed that I might be deaf. Between nonstop tantrums and a penchant for smearing feces, I was a terrible two-year-old.
    At that time, I showed the symptoms of classic autism: no speech, poor eye contact, tantrums, appearance of deafness, no interest in people, and constant staring off into space. I was taken to a neurologist, and when a hearing test revealed that I was not deaf, I was given the label “brain-damaged.” Most doctors over forty years ago had never heard of autism. A few years later, when more doctors learned about it, that label was applied.
    I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk at age three. This caused me to throw many a tantrum. I could understand what people said to me, but I could not get my words out. It was like a big stutter, and starting words was difficult. My first few words were very difficult to produce and generally had only one syllable, such as “bah” for ball. I can remember logically thinking to myself that I would have to scream because I had no other way to communicate. Tantrums also occurred when I became tired or stressed by too much noise, such as horns going off at a birthday party. My behavior was like a tripping circuit breaker. One minute I was fine, and the next minute I was on the floor kicking and screaming like a crazed wildcat.
    I can remember the day I bit my teacher's leg. It was late in the afternoon and I was getting tired. I just lost it. But it was only after I came out of it, when I saw her bleeding leg, that I realized I had bitten her. Tantrums occurred suddenly, like epileptic seizures. Mother figured out that like seizures, they had to run their course. Getting angry once a tantrum started just made it worse. She explained to my elementary school teachers that the best way to handle me if I had a tantrum was not to get angry or excited. She learned that tantrums could be prevented by getting me out of noisy places when I got tired. Privileges such as watching Howdy Doody on TV were withdrawn when I had a bad day at school. She even figured out that I'd sometimes throw