Autism and Intelligence
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http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00051F89-6E42-10A9-A47783414B7F0000
(Fascinating article on autism and intellectual function.)
Scientific American, May 24, 2004
A Transparent Enigma
Low-functioning autistics are not supposed to joke, write or creatively express a rich inner life. But then there's Tito Mukhopadhyay
By Madhusree Mukerjee
At 7 a.m. in a nondescript apartment in Hollywood, Calif., Tito Mukhopadhyay is hunched over his breakfast bowl, spooning milk and cereal into his mouth. His eyes flit around and his hand shakes. When he is finished, his mother, Soma Mukhopadhyay, pulls him off the chair and manhandles him into the shower, dashing in from time to time when he yells for assistance. Finally Tito emerges, dressed, to bend over Soma's tiny frame so she can comb his thick black hair. Abruptly he charges out the door and half-walks, half-runs down the hallways until he is outside. Golden sunshine on his face, he flaps and spins his hands with absorption.
Later I ask him: "Would you like to be normal?" In rough but legible script, he scrawls: "Why should I be Dick and not Tito?"
At 15, Tito displays all the signs of classic "low-functioning" autism. Years ago in India, a doctor told his parents that the boy could not understand what was happening around him. " 'I understand very well,' said the spirit in the boy," he related in The Mind Tree, a book he penned between the ages of eight and 12. (Tito typically refers to himself in the third person.) Indeed, he wrote about having two distinct selves: a "thinking self--which was filled with learnings and feelings" and an "acting self" that was "weird and full of actions" occurring independently of his thoughts.
Autistic intelligence varies widely, from severe retardation to savant syndrome. Tito combines extreme neurological disability with an ability to write--and so can tell the world of a bizarre internal condition.
Wanting to talk, Tito once stood before a mirror pleading for his mouth to move. "All his image did was stare back," he wrote. Parents often take an autistic's unresponsiveness to be stubbornness; Tito's writings dispel that notion. He has trouble moving his muscles at will, and now he speaks in barely intelligible grunts that his mother must often translate. He "saw himself as a hand or as a leg and would turn around to assemble his parts to the whole," Tito explains of another typical activity, rotation. Spinning his hands helps him to become more aware of bodily sensations.
(Much more at site...)
(Thanks to HeadsUp!)
(Fascinating article on autism and intellectual function.)
Scientific American, May 24, 2004
A Transparent Enigma
Low-functioning autistics are not supposed to joke, write or creatively express a rich inner life. But then there's Tito Mukhopadhyay
By Madhusree Mukerjee
At 7 a.m. in a nondescript apartment in Hollywood, Calif., Tito Mukhopadhyay is hunched over his breakfast bowl, spooning milk and cereal into his mouth. His eyes flit around and his hand shakes. When he is finished, his mother, Soma Mukhopadhyay, pulls him off the chair and manhandles him into the shower, dashing in from time to time when he yells for assistance. Finally Tito emerges, dressed, to bend over Soma's tiny frame so she can comb his thick black hair. Abruptly he charges out the door and half-walks, half-runs down the hallways until he is outside. Golden sunshine on his face, he flaps and spins his hands with absorption.
Later I ask him: "Would you like to be normal?" In rough but legible script, he scrawls: "Why should I be Dick and not Tito?"
At 15, Tito displays all the signs of classic "low-functioning" autism. Years ago in India, a doctor told his parents that the boy could not understand what was happening around him. " 'I understand very well,' said the spirit in the boy," he related in The Mind Tree, a book he penned between the ages of eight and 12. (Tito typically refers to himself in the third person.) Indeed, he wrote about having two distinct selves: a "thinking self--which was filled with learnings and feelings" and an "acting self" that was "weird and full of actions" occurring independently of his thoughts.
Autistic intelligence varies widely, from severe retardation to savant syndrome. Tito combines extreme neurological disability with an ability to write--and so can tell the world of a bizarre internal condition.
Wanting to talk, Tito once stood before a mirror pleading for his mouth to move. "All his image did was stare back," he wrote. Parents often take an autistic's unresponsiveness to be stubbornness; Tito's writings dispel that notion. He has trouble moving his muscles at will, and now he speaks in barely intelligible grunts that his mother must often translate. He "saw himself as a hand or as a leg and would turn around to assemble his parts to the whole," Tito explains of another typical activity, rotation. Spinning his hands helps him to become more aware of bodily sensations.
(Much more at site...)
(Thanks to HeadsUp!)
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