Animal expert Temple Grandin shares trials, triumphs of living with autism
The Autism News | English
UNIVERSITY PARK — Temple Grandin, a world renowned animal behavior expert and autism advocate, said having autism has affected her perception of the world around her — and even helps her relate to the livestock she studies.
Grandin, 64, has high-functioning autism, a developmental brain disorder that impairs her ability to socialize normally and affects the way she forms ideas.
Grandin said unlike most people who think using language and abstract thought, she thinks in pictures.
“There’s world of visual thinking, musical thinking, pattern thinking, that’s hidden under language,” she said.
When most people think of an image, like a church steeple, they picture a vague, generalized steeple, Grandin said. But when she is asked to picture a church steeple, specific images of steeples that she has seen in her past flash through her mind “like Google images,” she said.
Grandin, who has written numerous books on the livestock industry, animal behavior and autism, and is a professor at Colorado State University, spoke Thursday evening in Schwab Auditorium.
She said although her autism has been challenging at times, her visual thinking has been a big asset while working in the livestock industry.
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