The Speed of Dark

Autistic individuals have differences in sensory processing.   They may have perfect vision according to an eye chart…perfect hearing when tested with pure tone audiometry–and yet be unable to “see” and “hear” what others see and hear.   In addition, autistic individuals react to environmental inputs others tend to ignore, and do not react to those others find important.  Thus the autistic child’s near-universal intolerance of tags in the back of shirts, seams in socks,  “floaters” in orange juice, and inability to judge the speed of oncoming traffic when crossing the street.

One of my textbooks on autism dismissed the idea that sensory processing problems could be central to autism because the writer saw no way that these differences could result in the more obvious social and language deficits.    That person clearly had no experience in programming computers, where “garbage in, garbage out” is a common mantra.

If a person is not getting the same sensory information in, they will not experience the world the same–and will not behave the same.   The color blind person does not see that the traffic light is red–and does not stop unless its position warns him.   Normal social interaction rests on the senses–on our ability to extract information from our senses, assign meaning to it, and respond in a way our society approves.

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