The other day, my older daughter failed to recognize her uncle, an aspie, in a public place even though she actually interacted with him. This was distressing to him, of course, but hardly less distressing to her! I related to her a couple of similar instances of my own; one where a programmer friend and I missed each other when we planned to meet, though we apparently sat next to one another while waiting; and reminded her of another frequent happening where my family members don't see me moving around the house, if I'm doing it when zoned out and intensely preoccupied. So today, in clicking through the links of a psych researcher in Wisconsin who is championing neurodiversity, I found a blog with a link reading "Autistic Superpowers: Invisibility." I clicked, and assumed it was referring to social invisibility or invisibility with regard to healthcare - something more political. But no, it was about exactly this phenomenon of being not present, or being overlooked...
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/2007/08/autistic-superpowers-invisibility.html
The second surprise stemmed from an excited call from my father about a newspaper article that referred to measurable auditory processing delays being absolutely correlated with autism. He related it to his ability to take a continuous string of auditory input and process it accurately with a long delay period. I ran across a different article today that probably refers to the same research:
http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=20307
Dr. Roberts and his colleagues have found a slightly different pattern in the magnetic activity from the brain in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) than normally developing children. “Children with autism respond a fraction of a second more slowly than healthy [sic] children to vowel sounds and tones,” Dr. Roberts was quoted as saying.
No comment on that "healthy children" business. No, wait, I am commenting.
The third surprise was another article, reporting on an upcoming publication from researchers who claim that a low frequency magnetic field around the brain can relieve hyperactivity and sensory overload in autistic people. (Interestingly, reported in a business journal first. A marketable therapy, of course.)
http://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/stories/2008/12/01/daily12.html
“Our results are preliminary, but they show a great deal of promise in reducing the severity of symptoms that people with autism find most distressing without affecting areas in which many autistic patients are gifted,” Casanova said in the release.
While I'm relieved to some extent to see this researcher's sensitivity, I have to still consider symptomatic treatment with some trepidation. There are areas where people who are hyperactive and hypersensitive have powerful advantages - read any of the business research on hyperactive entrepreneurs, for example. I worry that overzealous parents will rush to desensitize children who could learn to manage and benefit from their gifts.
Not that I've achieved anything appreciably beneficial with my own sensory sensitivities. (Unless you count being able to smell rattlesnakes, which I think has been a definite evolutionary advantage for my genetic line...) I wouldn't want to desensitize even my hearing, though, which is what gives me the most trouble. It makes a lot more sense to carry earplugs and avoid painful stimuli.
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