Thinking in pictures

Many people have been fascinated by the terrific feats of memorization of savants. According to Bernard Rimland, of the Autism Research Institute in San Diego, approximately 9 or 10 percent of people with autism have savant skills. Some are like calendar calculators who can tell you the day of the year for any date; others can perfectly play a piece of music they have heard only once. Another type can memorize every street in a city or every book in a library. There are also savants who can rapidly identify all the prime numbers in a list of numbers, even though they are incapable of doing basic arithmetic calculations. Hans Welling, a researcher in Portugal, speculates that mathematically weak savants may have a method for visually analyzing the symmetry of numbers, which would enable them to distinguish prime from nonprime numbers.

Savants are usually very impaired in learning other skills, such as socializing. One mother told me about her teenage savant son, who could do extraordinary computer programming but simply could not learn the meaning of money. Savants memorize huge amounts of information but have difficulty manipulating the material in meaningful ways. Their memory skills far exceed those of normal people, but their cognitive deficits are great. Some are incapable of making simple generalizations that cattle and other animals make easily.

It is no mystery how the autistic savant depicted in the movie Rain Man beat the casinos in Las Vegas and counted cards in the game of twenty-one. It was simply intense visualization and concentration. The only reason I can't count cards is that I can no longer concentrate intensely enough. My visualization skill has not changed, but I can no longer hold a single image steady for a long enough period of time. When I visualize equipment, I edit the images like a feature movie. I may visualize the system from a vantage point on the ground, but in the next instant I see it from another perspective. I am no longer able to hold a continuous video in my imagination. I would speculate that the true card-counting savant mind works like a video camera that is fixed to a tripod and continuously records the same scene. The vantage point of the savant's mind camera remains fixed for relatively long intervals. When the savant's concentration is locked onto one thing, it is difficult for him to shift attention. If a VCR could be plugged into his brain and his visual memories could be played on a TV, his memory would likely resemble a very long home movie taken from a single, stationary vantage point. This intense ability to hold an image constant may also contribute to the rigid and inflexible behavior of most savants.

What interests me most about autistic savants of the extreme type is that they do not satisfy one of Marian Stamp Dawkins's chief criteria for thinking. Dawkins, a researcher at the University of Oxford, is one of the few specialists who studies thinking in animals. She makes a clear distinction between instinctual behavior and true thinking. Similar to the main operating programs of a computer, instincts are behavior patterns that are programmed in the animal. Some instincts are hard-wired like computer hardware, and others can be modified by experience. An example of instinctual behavior is a calf following its mother. Animals are also capable of learning behavior that is not governed by instincts. For example, cows can quickly learn to line up for milking at 4:00 P.M.But cows lining up at milking time or running after a feed truck are simply responding to straightforward stimulus conditioning. Animals are also capable of learning simple rules of thumb. An animal can remember that he gets food when a green light turns on or he must jump a barrier to avoid a shock when a red light turns on. But to determine whether or not the animal is really thinking requires testing under novel conditions where he cannot use a simple rule of thumb. Numerous studies reviewed by Dawkins clearly indicate that animals can think and are capable of using previously learned information to solve problems presented under novel conditions. Animals have the ability to generalize, even though they do not use language.

Dawkins's work begs the deeper question of whether a child with autism who is unable to generalize can think. For example, a person with classic Kanner autism can be taught not to run out into the busy street in front of his house because it is dangerous. Unfortunately, he often fails to generalize this knowledge to a street at somebody else's house. In another scenario, the autistic person may learn the procedure for buying a candy bar at Safeway but have difficulty figuring out how to buy a candy bar at Wal-green's. Such people are not able to comprehend any deviations from the pictures in their memory.

According to Dawkins's criteria, then, savant autistics are not capable of true thought. Autistic people like myself are able to satisfy her criteria for thinking, but I would be denied the ability to think by scientists who maintain that language is essential for thinking.

When a well-respected animal scientist told me that animals do not think, I replied that if this were true, then I would have to conclude that I was unable to think. He could not imagine thinking in pictures, nor assign it the validity of real thought. Mine is a world of thinking that many language-based thinkers do not comprehend. I have observed that the people who are most likely to deny animals thought are often highly verbal thinkers who have poor visualization skills. They excel at verbal or sequential thinking activities but are unable to read blueprints.

It is very likely that animals think in pictures and memories of smell, light, and sound patterns. In fact, my visual thinking patterns probably resemble animal thinking more closely than those of verbal thinkers. It seems silly to me to debate whether or not animals can think. To me it has always been obvious that they do. I have always pictured in my mind how the animal responds to the visual images in his head. Since I have pictures in my imagination, I assume that animals have similar pictures. Differences between language-based thought and picture-based thought may explain why artists and accountants fail to understand each other. They are like apples and oranges.

Studies by Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and many other researchers have shown very clearly that primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas can think, though few scientists would also concede that farm animals have thinking abilities. Yet anyone who has spent any time working with cattle knows that they are able to recognize familiar objects when they see them in a new location. My experience suggests that these animals think in discrete visual images. They are able to make an association between a visual image stored in their memory and what they are seeing in the present. During an experiment on the farm at Colorado State University, for example, cattle were handled in a squeeze chute for blood testing once a month for five months. Most cattle willingly reentered the squeeze chute during each blood test after the first one, but a few refused to enter. These animals were very discriminating as to which part of the squeeze chute they disliked, often refusing to put their heads in the stanchion though voluntarily entering the body-squeezing part.

Apparently when the person operating the lever closed the stanchion too quickly, the animal got banged on the head. Animals that had been accidentally struck were more likely to balk at the head stanchion. Most of them marched right up to the squeeze chute and willingly walked into the body squeeze section, but they stopped short of the stanchion because they feared getting banged on the head. Some animals poked their head toward the stanchion and then quickly jerked it back before the operator could close the stanchion around their neck. They acted like sissy swimmers who put a toe in the cold water and then jerk it out.

Over the five-month period the animals grew too large for the manually operated chute, so they were taken to a hydraulically operated squeeze chute for the fifth and final blood test. The hydraulic chute was painted a different color and looked somewhat different from the manually powered squeeze chute. Likewise, the alleys and corrals leading up to the hydraulic chute were totally different. When the cattle approached the hydraulic squeeze chute, many of them balked and refused to put their heads into the stanchion. They recognized the squeeze chute in spite of the different design and new location. They had generalized their knowledge of squeeze chutes and stanchions to a new place.

Cattle I have worked with have had the ability to apply previously learned skills to new situations, which also indicates a capacity for thought. Cattle with large horns, such as Texas long-horns, have good spatial sense and will turn their heads to walk up a thirty-inch-wide truck loading ramp. But young cattle that have had no prior experience with narrow chutes and ramps will hit their horns on the entrance and be unable to enter. Turning the head to pass through a narrow place is not governed by instinct. Experienced animals learn to turn their heads. After they have learned, they will turn their heads before they enter a chute they have never seen before. When an experienced animal approaches the chute entrance, he turns his head and enters effortlessly.

Some very elegant research with birds has shown that even our feathered friends can think. Herb Terrace, the famous chimpanzee trainer, trained pigeons to peck at a series of lighted buttons in a specific order to obtain food. The task was designed to make it impossible for the pigeon to use a simple rule of thumb such as «red light equals food.» All of the experiments were conducted in an enclosed box and controlled by a computer to insure that the pigeons did not receive cues from the trainer. (Whenever animal thinking is being evaluated, the «Clever Hans effect» must be taken into account. Hans was a famous horse that had been trained to count by tapping his hoof. Many people were very impressed and thought the horse really could count. Hans did not know how to count, but he was a very perceptive horse who picked up subtle cues from his trainer.) Terrace designed a whole series of trials to show that the pigeons could apply previously learned knowledge about the button order to new button-pushing problems.

Irene Pepperberg has slowly and laboriously taught an African gray parrot named Alex to use language beyond mere repetition by having him watch two people talking to each other. One person would hold up an object such as a cork and ask, «What is this?» If the second person gave the correct name for the cork, she would be praised by the first person and given the cork. However, if the second person gave the wrong name for the object, she was told «no» very firmly After Alex watched many of these conversations, he started to use words in appropriate ways. Each small step was mastered before he went on to the next step.

For a reward, the parrot would be given the object. He had to learn that the correct word could get him things he wanted. People teaching language to severely autistic children use similar methods. The Lovaas language-teaching method requires seeing the object, hearing the word, and pairing the word with both the object and reward. After a child learns the objects, he is given pictures of objects. For some children severely afflicted with autism, relating to such pictures is difficult.

More evidence to support the idea of animal thought can be found in Benjamin Beck's extensive review of the published scientific literature. While it is well known that monkeys and chimpanzees can use tools, Beck found many reports of tool use in birds and nonprimate mammals. Tool use is another sign that animals can really think. Elephants will push uprooted trees onto electric fences to break them, and one elephant even used a bamboo stake to scrape off a leech. Eskimo lore is full of accounts of polar bears throwing chunks of ice at seals. I have watched seagulls carry shellfish up over the roof of a steel boathouse and then drop them to break them open. The gulls also dropped clams on the road and waited for cars to run over them, exposing the tasty morsels. Beck's review of the literature indicated that birds can learn tool use by observation. When one bluejay in a captive colony had learned to use reaching tools, five other jays also learned. A Galapagos finch that does not usually use sticks for probing learned to use them after observing another species of bird using this tool.

At the University of Illinois farm where I worked as a graduate student, the pigs in one pen learned to unscrew the bolts that held the fence to the wall. As fast as I could screw the bolts back in, their little tongues were unscrewing them. All five pigs in that pen learned to unscrew bolts. My aunt had a horse that learned to put its head through a gate to lift it off the hinges; and at every large cattle feedlot, there are always one or two cattle who rival the techniques of the great escape artists among us. One time I witnessed a twelve-hundred-pound crossbred Brahman steer jump six six-foot gates. He just levitated over them. A horse has to run to jump a gate, but this big Brahman rose up like a leaping whale and effortlessly cleared the top of the gates. The vast majority of cattle are content to stay in the pens and don't try to get out, but a bull that has learned how to break barbed-wire fences is impossible to keep in, because he has learned that he will not get cut if he presses against the posts. Fences only work because cattle do not know that they can break them.

Dolphins at the University of Hawaii are being taught to understand symbolic sign language. Initial training is conducted by a person who makes hand signals that represent a simple sequence of commands. After the dolphin learns how to do a series of these tasks with a person, the next step is to have it look at a videotape of the person. This helps to prevent the Clever Hans effect. The simple command sentences are rearranged into hundreds of different combinations so the dolphins cannot memorize a set routine. Dolphins can easily transfer instructions from a real person to a videotape of the person. A third step further prevents possible cuing from the trainer. The trainer is now dressed in black and videotaped against a black curtain. The only thing the dolphin can see is the trainer's white gloves making the signs against a black backdrop. The dolphins are able to understand the videotaped hand signals, too. At this point, the images are more abstract, and the dolphins are taking the first steps toward understanding symbolic representation of words.

My experience as a visual thinker with autism makes it clear to me that thought does not have to be verbal or sequential to be real. I considered my thoughts to be real long before I learned that there was a difference between visual and verbal thinkers. I am not saying that animals and normal humans and autistics think alike. But I do believe that recognizing different capacities and kinds of thought and expression can lead to greater connectedness and understanding. Science is just beginning to prove what little old ladies in tennis shoes have always known: little Fifi really does think.

Bird Savants

The ability of birds to migrate is based on capabilities that resemble savant skills. It is possible that savant skills are part of an older memory-imaging system that is masked by higher thinking skills. Professor Floriano Papi, in Italy, has written an important book, titled Animal Homing, on the abilities of animals and birds to migrate and home. Since the ancient Romans, carrier pigeons have been used to carry messages. How does a pigeon find its way home after it has been taken far away in a cage?

Birds navigate by using a combination of an innate sense that enables them to detect the earth's magnetic field and memories they have acquired. In some birds, the innate magnetic detection system is coupled with genetic programming that forms the basis of an instinct to migrate. This will get the bird headed in the right general direction, but information from memory is also essential for accurate homing and migration. If a young bird migrates with its flockmates, it simply learns visual landmarks and other information, such as constellations and orientation of the sun. Some birds, such as the European teal, can distinguish and memorize the constellations. Papi reports that some birds can make visual calibrations of constellations, correcting for the earth's rotation during different times of the year, which doesn't seem all that different from the intense savantlike visual memory.

Clara Parks, whose autistic daughter has great artistic talents, noted that when her daughter painted a picture of their house, the constellations she included were very accurate. Mrs. Parks has commented that her daughter's eye is like a camera. Possibly, her visual skill and birds' navigational skills have similarities. This explains migration, but it fails to explain how a carrier pigeon can find its way home over a landscape it has never seen before. The pigeons rely on visual landmarks when they fly over familiar territory, but when they fly over unknown territory, they rely on smell. When a pigeon is transported from its home loft to the release point, it remembers smells along the way, and it uses these smell cues to get back home. Pigeons deprived of their sense of smell will become lost. Those with their sense of smell intact will also get lost if they are transported in a container that blocks smell. It appears that visual landmarks are the preferred method of homing, but a bird will switch gears and use olfactory cues when it finds itself over strange territory where familiar visual landmarks are absent. It may be using «smell pictures.»

A fairly high percentage of people with autism have a very acute sense of smell and become overwhelmed by strong odors. I am embarrassed to admit it, but when I was a young child, I liked to sniff people like a dog. The scents of different people were interesting. Some animals have highly developed senses which are more acute than ours. Bloodhounds can track a fugitive for miles by smell, and predatory birds have greater visual acuity than humans. Many animals have very sensitive hearing and can hear high-frequency noises that are out of the range of human hearing. Many people with autism share these hyperacute senses. They are unable to concentrate in the classroom because they can hear talking in three other rooms. I have often observed that the senses of some people with autism resemble the acute senses of animals.

Emotions in Farm Animals

The manager of a very large swine farm once asked me in all seriousness, «Do pigs have emotions?» To him, pigs were simply pork-producing entities. We have seen that their ability to think and learn exceeds conditioned stimulus response, but do they experience true emotions? Are the feelings of a sow defending her piglets or an antelope running in fear from a lion similar to feelings in people under similar circumstances? Even a chicken can be highly motivated; Ian Duncan, at the University of Guelph, found that a hen would push open a very heavy door to reach a nest box, though she was not motivated to push open a lightweight door to reach a rooster. Is this behavior driven by emotion?

Early in my career I befriended two pet steers at the Kelly feedlot in Maricopa, Arizona, while I was doing a photography assignment for a company that made meat packaging equipment. The advertising agency wanted a photo of a great majestic Angus steer against the blue Arizona sky. To get the picture I had to lie down on the ground and wait for the cattle to come up to me. Cattle are less afraid of people when they reduce their size by kneeling or lying down. These two black steers let me touch them, and by the end of the afternoon they would allow me to pet them. At first they seemed to be afraid, but then they started to like it. They stretched out their necks to get stroked under the chin.

About two weeks later I returned to the feedlot, and I wanted to see if the steers would remember me. I stopped my truck in front of the pen, and the black steers immediately ran over to the fence and stuck their heads out to be petted. They wanted to be petted even though I did not offer them food. They simply wanted to be stroked.

There are many other examples of both farm animals and wild animals seeking pleasurable contact with people. Sows that have become pets will turn their bellies toward people so the people will scratch them. At one farm, a pet sow would squeal and become agitated if people walked by and failed to stop and rub her belly. When they stopped and rubbed, she would lie down, stretch out, and appear to be in bliss. Rhinos in a game park in Texas also solicited petting. When people walked up to their enclosure, one fellow would push his body up against the fence so that visitors could rub a soft spot where his rear leg joined his body. After he was petted and fed a few oranges, he would run along the fence and jump up and down like a calf on a spring day. To me, he appeared to be happy.

To the scientist who wants objective data, these anecdotes do not prove that animals have emotions. But scientists have proved that laboratory rats are capable of recognizing a familiar person and seeking him out. Psychologist Hank Davis found that lab rats will bond with a person who has petted, handled, and fed them. When a rat is placed on a table between a familiar caretaker and a stranger, it will investigate both of them and choose the familiar person most of the time. In most mammals and birds, the young will become very upset when they are separated from their mother. When calves are weaned, both the cows and the calves bellow for about twenty-four hours. Some calves bellow until they are hoarse.

Cattle will also bellow for departed penmates. This is most likely to occur with Holsteins, which are very calm cattle. Their social behavior is easy to observe because the presence of an observer is not likely to disturb them. I have seen Holstein steers bellowing to penmates that were departing in a truck. The cattle that were left behind watched as their fat penmates walked up the ramp to get on the truck that would take them to Burgerland. Two steers stared at the truck as it turned out of the parking lot. One stretched out his neck and bellowed at the truck, and his penmate on the truck bellowed back. The nice feedlot manager was worried that his cattle knew they were going to die. They had no way of knowing this; they just didn't like being separated from their buddies. Research by Joe Stookey and his colleagues at the University of Saskatchewan confirms that cattle do not like being alone; the cattle in their study would stand more quietly during weighing on a scale if they could see another animal in front of them.

Studies of animal responses to stress and fear may provide more reliable evidence that human and animal emotions are similar. Hundreds of studies of rats, cats, cattle, pigs, monkeys, and many other animals have shown that when animals encounter something that scares them, the levels of cortisol (stress hormone) in their blood rise. Adrenalin is pumped throughout the body, and both heart rate and breathing greatly increase to prepare the animal for fight or flight from danger. Research has shown that fear is a universal emotion in mammals and birds. Of course, people have these same physiological responses. A person mugged on a city street and an animal chased by a predator have the same increases in adrenalin, heart rate, and breathing rate. In both animals and people, fear causes fight or flight.

Fear can have very bad effects on the productivity of farm animals. The Australian scientist Paul Hemsworth found that when sows were afraid of people, they had fewer piglets. Fear was measured by determining how quickly a sow would approach a strange person. Each pig was tested by placing it in a small arena with a stranger. Pigs that had been mishandled by workers took longer than other pigs to walk up and touch the strange person. They also had lower weight gains.

Further studies indicated that tender loving care improved both reproductive performance and weight gain. Many large Australian swine farms started a training program to improve employees' attitudes toward pigs. As the workers learned more about pig behavior and became more interested in why pigs act the way they do, productivity increased. Farms where the attitude of the employees improved showed an increase of 6 percent more piglets born per sow. Employees who had a good attitude toward pigs engaged in more positive behaviors, such as petting, and fewer aversive behaviors, such as slapping. Hemsworth also found that pigs that had been slapped regularly had learned to stay away from people and still had sufficient anxiety to cause a chronic elevation of stress hormone and decreased weight gain. They clearly felt threatened when people were around.

Other animals also have the ability to anticipate an unpleasant experience. In one study, dairy cows that had been shocked in a restraining chute had a much higher heart rate when they approached the same restraining chute six months later than cows that had been restrained in the same chute with no shock.

Anatomical and Neurological Measures

The best hard scientific evidence that animals have emotions may come from the study of brain anatomy and neurophysiology. This evidence will help convince the skeptics. I had the opportunity to audit an anatomy class on the human brain at the University of Illinois Medical School. I had dissected many cattle and pig brains, but this was the first time I was going to see what a human brain actually looked like. When the brain was sliced down the middle, I was astounded to learn that the limbic system, which is the part of the brain associated with emotion, looked almost exactly like the limbic system in a pig's brain. At the gross anatomical level, the single major difference between a human brain and a pig's brain is the size of the cortex. The limbic system in both is very similar in size, but the human's is covered by a great massive cortex, like an overgrown cauliflower that engulfs the brain stem. The cortex is the part of the brain that gives people their superior thinking powers. The seat of emotion is buried deep beneath it.

The major difference between the human brain and the brains of other higher mammals, such as dogs, cats, cattle, and horses, is the size of the cortex. Both animal and human brains may get emotional signals from the limbic system, but since people have greater abilities to process information, their expression of emotions is more complex. A sad person may write a beautiful piece of poetry, while a sad dog may whine and scratch on the door when he is left alone. The emotion may be similar, but the expression of the emotion is vastly different.

The chemical messenger systems in the brains of people and higher mammals are the same. Messages between brain cells are transmitted by substances called neurotransmitters. High levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin are associated with calmness and reduced aggression. Prozac makes people feel better because it increases serotonin levels. Some of the other neurotransmitters are norepinephrine, GABA, dopamine, and endorphins. GABA is the brain's own natural tranquilizer, similar chemically to Valium. Endorphins are the brain's own opiates. Drugs such as Naltrexone, which block the action of endorphins, are used in the treatment of heroin overdose and alcohol abuse. Dopamine and norepinephrine have an activating effect. The wild delusions and hallucinations of a schizophrenic are often stopped by drugs that block the action of dopamine.

The best evidence that human and animal emotions are similar is the study of the effect of antidepressant and tranquilizing drugs on animals. Modern veterinarians are treating dogs, cats, and horses with the same drugs that are used to treat anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans. A recent seminar by Dr. Karen Overall, from the veterinary school at Pennsylvania State University, sounded like a session at the American Psychiatric Association.

The drug Anafranil, which has actions similar to those of Prozac, is being used to treat obsessive-compulsive behavior in both horses and dogs. A person with this disorder may wash his hands for two hours a day. In dogs, excessive grooming and licking causes open sores. In many cases, a dose of Anafranil will stop the behavior. Judith Rapoport, M.D., an expert on obsessive-compulsive behavior who works at the National Institute of Mental Health, speculates that symptoms in people may come from the older areas of the brain, which we share with animals.

The drug Naltrexone, which blocks endorphins, will stop self-injurious behaviors in both autistic children and horses. Just as a few very severely autistic people will cause self-injury by biting or hitting themselves, high-strung stallions confined to stalls will occasionally engage in chest biting. Dr. Nick Dodman at the Tufts Veterinary School, in Massachusetts, found that Naltrexone will reduce or stop this behavior. He is also successfully using Prozac, beta-blockers, BuSpar (busperone), and Tegratol (carben-mazepine) to control aggression in dogs. Beta-blockers such as Inderal (propranolol) are sometimes used by musicians and actors to reduce anxiety and fear before a performance. Inderal has similar fear-reducing effects in dogs. Dogs are even being treated for hyperactivity with Ritalin (methylphenidate). Both hyperactive dogs and hyperactive children become calmer on the drug.

I would speculate that the most basic emotions in people and animals have similar neurological mechanisms and that the difference between human and animal emotion is the complexity of emotional expression. Emotions help animals survive in the wild, because they provide intense motivation to flee from a predator or protect newborn offspring. Instinct refers to fixed behavior patterns in animals, such as mating rituals, but they are fueled by emotion. It is likely that an animal is motivated by fear to find a secluded place to nest that is safe from predators, but fear would not be the primary emotion in a hungry animal. Hunger and fear are both intense motivators.

Like a prey-species animal, many people with autism experience fear as the primary emotion. When I was charting my life in the visual symbol world, I did not know that most people are not driven by constant fear. Fear fueled my fixations, and my life revolved around trying to reduce it. I delved deeper into my visual symbols because I thought I could make the fear go away if I could gain an understanding of the significance of my life. It got to the point that everything I did assumed symbolic significance on my visual map. I thought that an intellectual understanding of life's great philosophical questions would turn off the anxiety. My emotions were primal and simple, but the symbolism of my visual symbol world was extremely complex.

I replaced emotional complexity with visual and intellectual complexity. I questioned everything and looked to logic, science, and intellect for answers. As a visual thinker, I could understand the world only in that way. I kept striving to turn off the fear until I discovered the powers of biochemistry.

Both people and animals have temperament traits that are genetic and inborn. A fearful animal and a fearful autistic person are both stressed and upset by new routines and strange things. Training and taming can mask flighty temperament traits, but they are still there under the surface, waiting to explode. A bull from a nervous genetic line may be placid and calm on his familiar ranch but go berserk when he is confronted with new surroundings and new people. Likewise, some autistic people are very calm when they adhere to familiar routines, but an outburst of temper or aggression can occur if something unexpected happens.

Dr. Jerome Kagan and his associates at Harvard University have found that inborn temperament traits first start to show up in children at age two. Their categories of inhibited and uninhibited children are very similar to those of calm and excitable cattle or horses. These basic traits become apparent during very early childhood. Shy or inhibited children are wary of others, and they tend to be cautious and avoid strangers. Uninhibited children are more outgoing and social and less afraid of new experiences. Learning and social influences mask and override most of these differences, but children at the extremes of the spectrum retain the differences.

In Kagan's study, the extremely shy, inhibited children had greater physiological reactivity. When they were exposed to new tasks and strange people, their heart rate increased. They also had higher cortisol levels than uninhibited children. Kagan speculates that shy children have a more sensitive sympathetic nervous system, which reacts quickly and intensely, so that novel situations are more likely to cause them to panic. Possibly they are like high-strung, excitable animals. In other words, they are shy to avoid danger. The ancient systems that protected us from predators are working overtime in these children. It is interesting that temperament testing in people and animals is yielding results that have many similarities.

My ability to think visually has helped me to understand how an animal could think and feel in different situations. I don't have any difficulty imagining myself as the animal. But to be able to do this without being anthropomorphic, I have spent years observing animals behaving in different situations. I'm always adding additional information to my library of information by reading books and articles about animal behavior. I use the same thinking process I use for designing equipment to visualize how these animals think.

As Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs, would say, «Dogs have dog thoughts.» I would apply that to farm animals, too. One of my students remarked that horses don't think, they just make associations. If making associations is not considered thought, then I would have to conclude that I am unable to think. Thinking in visual pictures and making associations is simply a different form of thinking from verbal-based linear thought. There are advantages and disadvantages to both kinds of thinking. Ask any artist or accountant.

Update: Animal Behavior and Autism

You can read Animals in Translation to see my full views on how autistic thinking and animal thinking are similar. Briefly, the most important similarity is that both animals and people with autism can think without language. They think by associating sensory-based memories such as smells, sounds, or visual images into categories. My categorical method of thinking is explained in the Chapter 1 update.

The second similarity is that both animals and people with autism possess savant-type skills. This idea was first introduced in Thinking in Pictures. Animals and autistic savants can do feats of great memory. Squirrels can remember where they hid hundreds of nuts and birds remember a migration route after traveling it only once. After a squirrel hides a nut he rears up and «takes a picture» of the location. This is the same way I find my car in parking lots without numbering or lettering for spaces. I look at the buildings, trees, and poles and then «download» an image into my brain of what the angle of certain buildings looks like. To find my car when I return I walk back through the lot following the same path I used when I left and I stop when the images I am seeing as I walk match the «snapshot» stored in memory.

The third similarity is that both think in details. As described in the Chapter 1 update, my thinking involves putting details together to form concepts. A normal person forms a concept first and tends to ignore details. Animals and individuals with autism notice details that normal people may not perceive. In my work with slaughter plants, I have learned that cattle are afraid of lots of little visual details like reflections on a wet floor, a wriggling chain, or high-contrast colors such as a yellow ladder against a gray wall. If these distractions are removed the cattle quietly walk up the chute.

The fourth similarity between animals and autism is extreme sensitivity to tone. I did not perceive eye signals from other people but I did attend to tone of voice. Tone was the only subtle social signal that I perceived. Everybody who has a dog knows that he is very responsive to the intent in tone of voice. From tone of voice both a dog and myself can determine if a person is pleased or angry. People with autism who learned to speak late have told me that they thought that tone was the meaning instead of the words. This is another indicator of primal importance of tone. Animals can also have similar problems with sensory over sensitivity. Dogs that are scared of fireworks may be sound sensitive. Sound sensitivity in both autism and animals can be very pitch specific. A collie was afraid of the vacuum cleaner and barked loudly when it was set for rugs and he had no response when it was set for floors. At different settings the sound had a different pitch. Individuals with autism have similar reactions to different sounds.

Emotionally, there are both similarities between animals and people with autism and big differences. Dogs are highly social and are easy to train because they want to please their master. The sociability of dogs is totally different from autism, but other aspects of emotion are similar. Among the aspects of emotions that are similar is less complexity. Animals and people with autism have simpler emotions. They are either happy, angry, fearful, or sad. They do not have complicated mixtures of emotion. Another similarity is that fear is the primary emotion in both autism and animals. This idea has already been discussed in detail.

To finish this summary I would like to answer to people who might be offended by comparing autism to animals. Modern neu-roscience and genetics is showing that there is no black-and-white divide between people and animals. Research on sequencing the genome of people and animals is blurring the line. Long stretches of DNA in the human genome and the genome of animals such as dogs is either the same or similar.

As a person with autism, I do not feel offended when I compare myself to an animal. In some ways animals such as cattle or dogs have traits that are to be greatly admired. They do not get into horrible wars where large numbers of their species are killed or tortured. I have observed that the animals with the most complex brains, such as chimps and dolphins, engage in some of the nastiest behavior toward each other. They are fully described in Animals in Translation. As brains become more complex, the possibilities of wiring errors may increase. I speculate that wiring errors may create great genius but they may also create individuals who are capable of horrific acts unless they are brought up in a caring environment where they are taught right from wrong.