Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article explains a fun feature of the brain's ability to filter out irrelevant noise in regular living. This is a standard feature of the human brain. You are unlikely to be aware, every second, of the sound of a fan, or the hum of your computer, or the rumbling of the car on the road. Instead, these noises are filtered out in favor of noises that are novel or stick out: something falling off a shelf, a knock on the front door, or a car horn. This is an evolutionary advantage, because the person having to listen to all of that at once is going to be more stressed and less aware of the important information than the person that only has to process the important information.
Mice, apparently, work similarly. The article explains why this would be an evolutionary advantage, and I would not, frankly, be terribly surprised if mice also filter out the hum of electronics and other repetitive sounds, so they can listen more carefully to the movements of other creatures.
My particular brain doesn't filter noises very well. I'm typing this while my spouse drives us across the state, and the highway is making regular galloping sounds that sometimes change in pitch. I do not get to ignore them like he probably is. Every car or semi we pass, I hear the whoosh and rumble of their engines. These sounds are pretty much irrelevant, but they are not filtered out. As a result, I hear everything and have to spend mental effort to process it all.
One final thing to point out about this article. The quoted researcher at the bottom is pretty clearly not educated about what autism is. Describing autism as "the inability to learn the consequences of one's actions" is like describing flying as "flapping one's arms emphatically." The concepts are technically related, but only in the more superficial way.
Let me be very clear. "Social paralysis" is not what causes autism, and not what autism is. The absence of social intuition does not make a person unteachable. Autistic people can, and regularly do, learn to interact socially with neurotypical people. We simply have to be taught differently. I could not be here, typing my extreme disgust with this quote in an otherwise good article, if autistic people were unteachable. Thanks very much, academia...
Today's article explains a fun feature of the brain's ability to filter out irrelevant noise in regular living. This is a standard feature of the human brain. You are unlikely to be aware, every second, of the sound of a fan, or the hum of your computer, or the rumbling of the car on the road. Instead, these noises are filtered out in favor of noises that are novel or stick out: something falling off a shelf, a knock on the front door, or a car horn. This is an evolutionary advantage, because the person having to listen to all of that at once is going to be more stressed and less aware of the important information than the person that only has to process the important information.
Mice, apparently, work similarly. The article explains why this would be an evolutionary advantage, and I would not, frankly, be terribly surprised if mice also filter out the hum of electronics and other repetitive sounds, so they can listen more carefully to the movements of other creatures.
My particular brain doesn't filter noises very well. I'm typing this while my spouse drives us across the state, and the highway is making regular galloping sounds that sometimes change in pitch. I do not get to ignore them like he probably is. Every car or semi we pass, I hear the whoosh and rumble of their engines. These sounds are pretty much irrelevant, but they are not filtered out. As a result, I hear everything and have to spend mental effort to process it all.
One final thing to point out about this article. The quoted researcher at the bottom is pretty clearly not educated about what autism is. Describing autism as "the inability to learn the consequences of one's actions" is like describing flying as "flapping one's arms emphatically." The concepts are technically related, but only in the more superficial way.
Let me be very clear. "Social paralysis" is not what causes autism, and not what autism is. The absence of social intuition does not make a person unteachable. Autistic people can, and regularly do, learn to interact socially with neurotypical people. We simply have to be taught differently. I could not be here, typing my extreme disgust with this quote in an otherwise good article, if autistic people were unteachable. Thanks very much, academia...
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