Quotes from Temple Grandin

I feel that my local bias frees me from the global bias that gets in the way of top-down thinkers.

we generally focus more on what they can't do, and tend to overlook the positive traits many of these individuals possess.

Kozhevnikov, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at the visual-spatial cognition lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, is one of the first scientists to differentiate between two kinds of visual thinkers: spatial visualizers and object visualizers. In her 2002 landmark

miles a day, which is illegal in most towns. Even if it's not illegal, it's dangerous. So you have to figure out substitute behaviors that keep your dog happy

Positive control is the opposite (of aversive control). Even though the teacher or psychologist has created an environment that controls the persons behavior through positive reinforcement, the person doesn't feel like he's being controlled probably because he is getting reinforced for behaviors he didn't have to do ... described as those that we 'like' or 'chose' to engage in.

So it's not that autistics don't respond to eye contact, it's that their response is the opposite of neurotypicals'.

How many people would even try to be Jane Goodall today? Jane Goodall was a superb fieldworker who lived with animals, observed them closely, and understood them. She did her work in the field, not behind a computer making mathematical models of chimpanzee population.

You know how when you're cleaning out a closet, the mess reaches a point where it's even greater than when you started? We're at that point in the history of autism now.

What I was actually doing was observing.....I feel like my local focus frees me from the global bias that gets in the way of top-down thinkers

It's not really helpful to diagnose a teenager with autism, because we already know it." The younger the subject, the earlier the possibility of intervention. The earlier the intervention, the greater the potential effect on the trajectory of an autistic person's life.

that you cannot turn a non-social animal into a social one. Your focus should be teaching people with autism/AS to adapt to the social world around them, while still retaining the essence of who they are, including their autism/AS. Learning social survival skills is important, but I cannot be something I am not. Social

Thomas McKean, an autistic champion of self-advocacy

author Donna Williams, who is autistic

How do I teach my child not to run into the street?" or "He knows not to run into the street at our house, but at Grandma's he runs into the street." In the first situation, the child actually has no concept of danger at all; in

Computerized medical records will enable statistical analysis to be used to determine which treatments are most effective.

I am also a believer in an integrated treatment approach to autism.

A treatment method or an educational method that will work for one child may not work for another child. The one common denominator for all of the young children is that early intervention does work, and it seems to improve the prognosis.

There is a tremendous range of children with a PDD label.

You got to get away from words if you want to understand any animal. It thinks in pictures, it thinks in smells, it thinks in touch sensations - little sound bites like, it's a very detailed memory.

Let's get into talking about how autism is similar animal behavior. The thing is I don't think in a language, and animals don't think in a language. It's sensory based thinking, thinking in pictures, thinking in smells, thinking in touches. It's putting these sensory based memories into categories.

We have got to work on keeping these children engaged with the world.

When I was younger, I was looking for this magic meaning of life.

Autism's an important part of who I am, but I'm a college professor and an animal scientist first. And I wouldn't want to change 'cause I like the logical way I think.

I like to figure things out and solve problems.