Idle Speculation, Part Three

Autistic people are often good at certain things. They are also almost universally poor at others.

When thinking of the later category, social skills are the first thing that usually comes to mind. Speech is another... but language isn't, as exhibited by autistic persons such as Amanda Baggs. While it'd be accurate to say that there are times when she has difficulties with language, it certainly wouldn't be accurate to say that she's bad at it!

Thinking about this issue led me to think about what common elements the things in those two categories have in common. While it's pure speculation on my part (hence the title of this post), I suspect that the reason for the difference lies in the way that they're taught.

As I see it, teaching methods can be rougly grouped into three broad categories. There may be a fourth, but I haven't thought of it. Remember that this is mainly speculation on my part.

First, there are those methods that break down a skill into its component parts or steps and teach those before teaching the integrated whole. For instance, when I teach origami, I typically start by teaching how to perform basic folds. Subsequent to this, I teach the steps of a basic pattern, composed of those folds. Later, I move on to more and more complex patterns, teaching them step-by-step. We can call these methods teaching by component parts.

If you have to wonder where I got that name, please look at the first sentence of that paragraph. Yes, I know it's uncreative. Feel free to sue.

Math, for instance, is typically taught this way. So are most subjects related to science and engineering, as well as some craft skills.

Secondly, we have those methods that teach an approximation to the desired skill before modifying it into a closer approximation which is then modified again and again until the desired skill is mastered. We can group these teaching methods together and call them teaching by successive approximation.

Social skills are typically taught in this manner in modern Western cultures. Speech is another example of a skill taught like this.

If you see where I'm going with this, give yourself a cookie.

The third category -- methods that mix the two methods describe above -- is largely unimportant in this analysis. I will, however, note that my experience has been that autistic people are typically better at these skills than they are at skills typically taught entirely through methods that fall under the second category and worse than at skills taught through the first.

In other words, I suspect that this plays rather nicely into some of my earlier speculation.

Idle Speculation, Part Two

There are a number of theories as to what autism is. These range from Cohen's extreme male brain theory to neuroanatomical theories such as those involving the mirror neuron system and cognitive theories such as weak central coherence theory.

About the only thing we can really agree on is that no one knows for sure what the cause or causes of autism is or are.

I have a number of ideas of my own. I hope to one day be able to investigate them. These range from one that's connected to a meditation technique properly called mushin no shin to another, more basic, hypothesis.

My actual reasoning for this is connected to something called neural networking theory. As the human brain can be described as a neural network, this has considerable relevance. Unfortunately, my reasoning also involves fractal algorythms, which are something that I've found that the English language is fairly poor at expressing.

No, explaining the concepts is actually fairly easy. The problem is that my original reasoning was framed in terms of them. English kinda sucks at describing fractal patterns, especially when it comes to following a chain of reasoning that's framed in terms of them. While it's not that difficult with simpler fractals like the Sierpinski Triangle or the Koch snowflake, I actually think in a form of what can be called semi-fractal, recursive pseudocode. Were I to try to explain my actual thoughts on the matter in English, I'd quickly get bogged down in the details.

This is hardly a new experience for me.

That said, the hypothesis itself is actually fairly elegant. While it's possible to view mental retardation as a defecit in the ability to learn (i.e. acquire new information, new mental circuitry, and/or new schemata), I suspect that autism may be related to a defecit in the ability to unlearn (i.e. the ability to forget existing information, revamp existing mental circuitry, and/or engage in accomodation for matters in which there are existing cognitive schemata).

On the flip side, this could also be phrased as a statement that autism is simply an overabundance of the ability to retain existing skills and remember things, which would help explain autism's suspected connection to genius.

There is, of course, a great deal more to this theory, but I'm saving it for a potential future research paper.

Idle Speculation, Part One

Be forewarned: the following is purely idle speculation on my part. Do not take this too seriously -- it's nothing but random thoughts on my part. I may be entirely wrong here.


When I think of the autistic community, certain "big names" come to mind. Most notably, I tend to think of Temple Grandin, Donna Williams, Jim Sinclair, Amanda Baggs, and Michelle Dawson (not in any particular order). Oddly enough, all but one of those names are female... and the sole exception is physically intersex and was raised as a girl.

At the same time, however, about 80% of diagnosed autistics are male.


In other words, we should expect that, all else equal, a list of notable autistics should have four men for every woman. The chance of this arising out of sheer coincidence is around .032% (0.2 to the fifth power), which, in my opinion, is fairly miniscule.

If it's not random chance, though, there has to be a reason. Unfortunately, there is an overabundance of potential causes for this, ranging from biological (e.g. hormonal) differences between the genders to differences in Western childrearing practices for boys and girls.


I suspect that the explanation involves the latter, in combination with differences in social expectations between the genders.