Postcards From My Mind: Perspectives of Asperger's Syndrome

(4) Attention Inhibition and Impulsivity

Many students on the autism spectrum have extreme difficulty with attention. In order to attend to certain stimuli, one must concentrate on the particular relevant stimuli and filter out other irrelevant stimuli. For example, if I’m looking around my office to find a memo that I know I wrote on pink paper I need to ignore all stimuli that’s not pink paper and ignore all stimuli that’s not 3x5 in size. A child on the autism spectrum might have difficulty with memory (what was I looking for again?), sequencing (I looked in one place and now I’m done), relevancy (is this an important clue? Is that an important clue?) or visual over-stimulation (There are so many things in this office, I can’t interpret the information coming in).

As a child I was extremely impulsive. Whatever my vision saw, that’s what I attended to. Today I continue to have many difficulties with attention regulation and shifting. Today I had a list of three things I needed to get at the drug store. I went into the drug store and became fascinated with these sparkling red tassels which reminded me of a childhood curtain I once saw. I became engrossed in my reverie and happily went home. Later I realized my goal for entering the drug store was to pick up toilet paper – I had a lovely time in the drug store, but never managed to get the toilet paper. My attention was captured somewhere else. I’m sure everyone can relate to this example in some way. Unfortunately, everyday is like this for me and sometimes the things I need to remember are more important than toilet paper.

As much as I have difficulty remembering short-term items and switching my attention, my memory for rote facts is incredible! For some reason I have a great ability to remember specific dates and events that occurred on these dates. I can also remember floor plans of places that I’ve visited as far back as age 5. I have a plethora of road maps memorized as well as driving directions and certain routes that my family would take.

As a child one of my favorite passions was watching the ticker tape (stock market quotes). I had memorized symbols on the New York Stock Exchange ticker tape and would take great joy in comparing stocks each day. In forth grade I wanted to trade commodities and for my birthday wanted a briefcase. My kind parents indulged me in my desires, which were sweet, but it didn’t earn me points on the playground!

By age 13 my parents smartened up. I was going away to overnight camp and, of course, wanted to bring the Fuzzy Pumpper Barber Shop (paraphernalia for play dough). My mother refused to let me bring it, however while at camp during a trip to the mall I spotted it and had to purchase it. Upon arrival back at camp I was tormented and beat up. Defeated I threw my Fuzzy Pumpper Barber Shop in the trash and had a miserable rest of the summer. The advice I give parents today is if you child asks for a developmentally inappropriate gift, it’s best not to indulge or keep the object in a safe spot (away from peers view) and only have specific times to bring the object out.

Ironically, today I’m also great at mental multitasking. I can “run” several applications in my mind simultaneously. The confusion comes in when I need to change modalities. If I have to interact with my environment while multitasking then I have extreme difficulty. For example, I could have one “application” opened in my mind and make ice cream (primarily a tactile stimuli with taste components) and one playing chess (primarily a visual stimuli with some auditory components). Once I tried to literally (not mentally) make the ice cream both applications are lost. I remember my second grade teacher was fascinated when I would simultaneously write two different sentences with my right and left hand. It seemed easy because I was taking two mental tasks and transferring them to two motor (tactile) tasks. In essence, although they were two different tasks, because the motor and thought process was the same, it was processed as one stimuli.

Many people on the autism spectrum have a fantastic ability to memorize facts (or rote information), but in order to truly learn information; one must be able to manipulate the information to use for future events. For example, memorizing facts can be useful such as knowing birthdays, holidays, the train schedule, etc. But if the information stays compartmentalized, can be harmful. As a child I never learned to read phonetically, it was easier just to memorize all words. In general this method continues to work for me today, however when I come to a new word, I’m unable to read it.

On one occasion I was consulting to a team whose child’s main issue was flexibility. He had learned at 2:30 each day he took number 3 bus home. One day he was ill and needed to leave early. Because it was not 2:30, he had a meltdown and was unable to leave the building.

In a situation such as this, a short and long-term plan needs to be created. The short-term plan was in the next five minutes how to get this child outside and the long-term plan is why is this child so inflexible in the first place. For the short-term plan, I carried him into his car (kicking and screaming). At this point he had become so upset that he was beyond negotiation and explanation. The long-term plan involved teaching him what-if skills and the goal behind the lesson. By isolating out the goal and discussing several possibilities, he was able to overcome this difficulty.

Of interesting note, as my system was deconstructed and new, more functional systems replaced old ineffective systems, I noticed a decline in my memorization abilities. Like a child who is blind and compensates with perfected auditory skills, I surmise that my extraordinary memory skills were some form of compensation. Because now I have the ability to store information based upon function rather then concrete object, my memory skills have considerably declined.

 

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