A New Window on Myself

A week ago yesterday (2/21/19), in the last of three interviews at the Center for Autism, I was informed that I place on that spectrum, albeit very close to the cusp.

I'd suspected for some years that this might be, but also thought that those aspects of my experience that suggested it could be symptoms of something else instead, such as social anxiety disorder, with which I already had been diagnosed. But the psychologist who assessed me said I showed too many other signs that aren't characteristic of social anxiety but are consistent with ASD. I still could (and, I think, do) have SAD, but I have this as well.

But this was still a rather abstract understanding. I accepted her expertise, but didn't feel strongly convinced -- until today.

She'd informed me a conference on autism was coming up and, at her recommendation, I was offered a scholarship to attend as a "self-advocate." So I went, and it was, almost literally, eye-opening.

I refer to an epiphany near the beginning of the first session. The presenter was talking about differences in attention patterns between young children who are neurotypical and those on the autism spectrum. He then remarked on how our ability to study these things has been improved by the development of eye-tracking technology.

Despite this lead-in, I still wasn't prepared for the revelation that came next. He showed a video of a woman researcher demonstrating for a child (not seen in the video) a novel way of removing a bottle from a plastic bin and then taking its cap off. The bin was one of a row of them of different colors. He repeated the video while verbally emphasizing the novel aspects of her behavior that were intended to engage the child's interest.

And now he showed the video a couple more times, but with a difference: there was also a red dot on the screen that moved around, showing where the observing child's eyes went while the woman was demonstrating the procedure. So I got to follow the eye movements of the neurotypical child, and then those of the child on the spectrum. And so, after the unusual bottle-removing-and-opening procedure itself, I had a second novel experience: the eye movements of the neurotypical child.

At the start of the video the child's eyes were grazing over the varicolored bins, until the researcher started doing something with her hands. Then his eyes shifted -- toward her face (hmm, that was unexpected!). Then to her hands, back to her face, etc., for the duration of the procedure.

In the last video the ASD child likewise is initially looking at the bins, until the woman starts demonstrating the procedure. Then he starts watching her hands, and stays focused on them for the rest of the video. Same as I had done! And it would never even have occurred to me that someone else might do otherwise.

The presenter then explained that this illustrated the difference between social learning -- focused on looking to another person for cues about their intention -- and instrumental learning -- focused only on the physical action itself. These two styles had been exhibited by the neurotypical child and the ASD child, respectively, in the eye-tracking videos. And the latter also by me.

There were some other revelations at the conference that were pretty striking too, but that was enough to convince me that I'd been diagnosed correctly.