How adult autism thinks
I have adult autism. I probably think differently than you do.
Sometimes my partner asks what it means when I say, “I love you”. I don’t know if I have words to express this concept. In fact, I often struggle to translate my thoughts into human language. I call what goes on in my head the “Music of the Hemispheres”. At best, I can offer a rough translation into English from what bounces around inside my noggin.
Temple Grandin concurs that folks with adult autism often think in a different manner than other people. From my understanding, the typical neurotypical person thinks verbally. Their thought process about going to the closet to get a box is, quite literally, “go to the closet and get the box”.
In the early, Wild West days of autism, researchers believed folks with autism thought in a combination of visual and mathematical processes. Now, it is understood that visual and mathematical thought models are usually two separate ways of thinking.
From my own experience, I would add three-dimensional, spider web thinking as a superset of visual thinking.
I am a combined spider web, visual, and mathematical thinker. I struggle when writing because I will often translate images and mathematics into language using lines and parentheses to organize thoughts. When I play cards, I usually don’t name the cards as I play them; I use symbolic references and mathematical representations. I can read backwards and upside down because the words make transformative shapes and patterns.
To help illustrate autistic thought models, I would like to reference a number of popular movies and TV shows.
Extraordinary Attorney Woo and The Good Doctor portray visual thinking. Woo Young-Woo’s memory of legal documents is depicted as mentally flipping through a stack of papers. When Shaun Murphy encounters a medical situation, the series presents his visualizations of the anatomical structures and functions as his mind moves through the body.
In Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes often uses a photo and yarn metaphor to illustrate spider web thinking. Lengths of yarn are pinned between photos, map places, and items to demonstrate the multiple, complex three-dimensional linkages between them.
Numb3rs shows mathematical thinking as Charlie Eppes assist his FBI-agent brother in solving crimes.
When I travel from one location to another, I envision a mental map and path of the route. In my head, I see road conditions, construction sites, possible traffic or weather, and will visually reroute as needed. My previous mother-in-law needed a turn-by-turn list of written directions to get anywhere new. Neither of us could understand how the other ever arrived anywhere.
When I see a car drive down the road, I can envision the pistons moving up and down in the cylinders as fuel and air are mixed and injected into the engine. Everyone else around me just sees a car go by.
Not only does each of the thought models have its own strength and limitations, none of them directly translate into another. And even two people with adult autism who think in the same paradigm will not utilize it the same way. After all, if you’ve met one person with adult autism, you’ve met one person with adult autism.
Our adult autism coaching looks to build communication bridges between the various thought models and neurotypical people they interact with.
