Hello people with autistic disabilities

I mean, hello, Habr! If you can say the word "introvert" to yourself (like me), then you can most likely be included in this category. Another thing is that the category, to put it mildly, is blurred. And several syndromes are piled on it at once from the heart.



But first, the main thing. So, there is a version that the brain of primates has evolved to incredible heights of the genus Homo due to social interactions. This is when you need to think for yourself, then like that monkey-leader, then his immediate environment, then like all omega (you can count them as one, okay), you need to think through actions, understand what they will do in response, consider what they can predict this way of thinking. In general, it ends with recursion and high computational complexity. The mechanisms that allow us to predict the reactions of others - starting from mirror neurons - are so tightly sewn into us that if we watch a video about the dentist and his patient, we will feel an echo of his reaction.



Plus deviations of the autistic spectrum - this is when all this power, aimed at identifying thousands of patterns in social life, was transferred to something else. For example, the analysis of complex systems in mathematics or engineering. Or theoretical physics. Or to the music. Or for art. The hypothesis, of course, is not yet very provable, nor is it a fact that this “power” existed at all. But, nevertheless, this model is easy to use, reasoning about light autistic people.



Now let's get into the details.

Roof County Degree

The gradation is this: there is a schizotimic, this is an absolutely healthy person. A schizoid is still socially acceptable, but already strange. And a schizophrenic is when a person during the discussion of the code may ask: “Why are you so sad?” And throw the computer out the window. Well, or cut someone. But more often they don’t have the resource to do all this, they lie, saliva and watch the carpet. I'm exaggerating now. In general, I exaggerate a lot here, because I want to convey a couple of important things about the nature of behavior, which personally were very useful to me. The topic itself is terribly sensitive for parents and relatives, but now I will speak with you as an “Asper” with “Asper”.



So, schiz mows people for two main reasons:



1. Congenital factor

2. The environmental factor.



I mean, you can already be born a bright personality, but you can make an effort and become. Well, or someone else can direct you along this career ladder.



The first case of the gene environment is a bug in DNA, which at the same time pokotsat the nervous system. Because the probability of failing in such a section of code so as not to hurt the central nervous system is, in fact, quite small. That is, almost any good genetic abnormality is often accompanied by various types of damage to the nervous system. The second case is enough, for example, to damage the neck during childbirth. In fact, this is an environmental factor, but the disease will also turn out to be congenital. Blood flow to the brain will be damaged, and now you are growing without any data processing part. Not auto-function "inhale, exhale" to throw out, right? By the way, this is Ondine’s syndrome, and if some fragment of it hits this part of the limbic structure of the brain, then the person will die not from asphyxiation, but from lack of sleep. Guess why. In fact, the “gene-environment” situation is much more complicated. For example, if you get a defect that sends you to the hospital for the first few years of your life, then you will not have the usual incentives for a person, and half of your neural networks will learn from the wrong material. As a result, the defect could only touch the bones, and the environment associated with it played out in the psyche.





To become a schizoid or schizophrenic as an adult, you need to at least try a little. Great stress, interesting parents or other complicated family history, relatives and fellow bosses, all sorts of borderline conditions (such as three days of rolling and rolling back a big release or a year of a burnt deadline), various cool sleep and food deprivations, substance abuse (how about a squirrel) sir?) and so on. There are millions of ways, including organic brain damage. For example, if the mother is with the herpes virus, and the child has passed through the birth canal instead of the Caesarean section, the virus can gobble up a piece of nerve tissue.





If the cuckoo did not go so hard, then the honorary title of a schizoid psychopath is awarded. Like schizophrenics, they have striking differences from the norm (for the concept of norm, by the way, you can also arrange the most brilliant holivar among psychologists and psychiatrists), but basically, unlike schizophrenics, they remain in contact with reality. However, they have similar oddities that prevent them from living, are expressed in any life situations and constantly. This is where the first large group of autists lies. Let's just say, completely autistic, tightly.



By the way, this whole story is obviously simplified and not entirely accurate, plus it very much depends on the source. It’s also a good place for holivars, but I made the following: accentuants sadly stand around these two nested rings from the central schizophrenic and the next schizoid. It’s almost like psychopaths, only at the right moment they can pull themselves together and control the manifestation of the disorder. Such schizoids can learn, work and start relationships. They are also sometimes called autistic (for company, but why are they hanging out here).



We are interested in accents and those who received Asper for some other reason, not as an addition to the main diagnosis. And it was about them that I continued to communicate with psychologists. The root cause was that much can be corrected by games, but during the course of the play we somehow started talking about mathematicians, and I admitted that I myself am. And then it went, went.

Hooray, let's get down to business!

So, imagine that someone has a problem with the central nervous system due to natural causes or a little cuckoo went because of the environment. An excellent defensive reaction can be superimposed on top, which stabilizes a bunch of everything and fixes a lot, but it will also affect the sensory. Or just a person will not develop their neural networks in childhood. Well, or the roof will fly off immediately in the right direction, and one way or another there will be an autistic deviation. This, in short, is the result of another two-hour conversation with the correction psychologist.



Autism is a general term for the whole set of incomprehensible conditions when a person has a social deficit and a communicative deficit.



As a result, there are two large groups:

1. Kanner and other joys of situations when something radically broke. This is not you, because with Kanner you have a chance to read Habr somewhere in the delta neighborhood of zero.
2. Asperger is a schizotypic psychopathy. I mean, this is when a person is just a geek, otaku, hikkikomori or senior developer. I'm not kidding. Even if you just love to read books in nature, you can already be picked up by Kretschmer . This group dumps everything that at least gives away autistic abnormalities. By the way, the very definition of the syndrome is also the worst holivar among psychiatrists. Highly recommend for discussion.

How to get autism of the second type? Evil psychiatrists joke that the easiest way is to cross-breed physicists and mathematicians. As a result, you will have an interesting genetic combination with a tendency to focus on abstractions. And the upbringing that fully protects the child from being hit by a shovel in the nose, hugs and other sensory stimuli. A typical example: grandfather came to visit a family of hereditary mathematicians and watched his grandson play. And he expressed the thesis that playing is not a serious occupation, adults do not do this. Grandson respected his grandfather very much and, due to his age, could not postpone his thesis for the future. He asked what he should do to make it serious. Grandfather explained what to solve problems. Six months later, the boy constantly appears on the threshold of a psychologist’s office.

What is normal with such violations?

• Late development of speech . A child can begin to understand everything that happens much earlier than he learns to give at least some characters to the exit. And there is a rare reverse option: he spoke before he went. Moreover, it is possible that immediately with whole phrases.
• Selective sensitivity to external stimuli . If you can work with a rumbling puncher or under hard rock, but at the same time you are infuriated by the rustling of the package or the champing of your neighbor in open space - this is it. Or even not, if you are really angry about open space, even though at home you feel fine under the growl of the refrigerator and music. In the same category, the inability to stop noticing the sensations: this is if you put on comfortable pants, but after half an hour you still continue to feel them continuously on yourself. And in two hours too. And the ticking of the clock also does not disappear. Presumably, this is a processing bug when different stimuli go in different ways instead of multiplexing somewhere along the road.
• Often elevated levels of norepinephrine (this is norepinephrine, a precursor to adrenaline) - among other things, this thing is responsible for the transmission of nerve impulses. That is, the nervous system works "faster" than normal, but with any strong stressor it throws up the exercise. And then the brain simply cuts off this area for rebooting. From the side it looks like this: they touched the head of the out, and clap - he turned away and fell silent. After 10 minutes, he will return.
• By the way, touch . You go nuts now, but with out-deviations it often happens that a person is afraid of touching, but at the same time he lacks them. That is, due to the above-described features of the nervous system and the lack in childhood of the necessary incentives for training neural networks, every touch is a chance to cause a stress reaction. At the same time, the child avoids “normal” touches since childhood, and as a result, tactile stimulation begins to be sorely missed. This directly affects those toys and games that are given to such children for development - there are a lot, all kinds of things of different shapes, textures and temperatures. And, of course, as adults, outs are very sensitive to touch. If you can touch. Without proof, I was told that people with schizoautic features often have lower libido (the consequence is asexuality at the same level that you can sometimes forget to eat), but at the same time they really like touch - more than intercourse.
• There may be problems with thermoregulation , because it also lies in the area of ​​bodily sensations. One of the causes of the death of completely schizophrenics is malignant hyperthermia, which cannot be removed with antipyretic drugs, the reaction is only to severe suppression of the central nervous system.
• There are problems with the rhythm . More precisely, the rhythm can simply enrage, but can be processed along a long path, that is, not immediately. The beautiful Temple Grandin, for example, could not clap to the music - but she could clap the whole rhythm after the music ended. If you have problems dancing, maybe this is it.

Of course, for one person it will not be all at once. But if you noticed any things from the list behind you - exhale and relax, it’s not you who are crooked and trying hard, it’s such a character that you got in childhood.

Okay, good to escalate, where are the promised advantages of this excellent condition?

So, I will remind you again of a simplified model: part of the power from the sensorics and social interaction is transferred to something else.

“Studies on crime among gifted adolescents have shown that these children score high in the field of so-called“ fluid ”, non-verbal thinking, and“ hard ”thinking, which requires prior education and training, is poorly developed. “Tough” thinking - verbal, consistent, logical - is encouraged, rewarded and considered almost the only possible in our education system. Therefore, many gifted children and adolescents with “fluid” thinking do not fit into the usual education system. Another study revealed people with an interesting and unique gift: the ability to perceive large portions of information and find a system where others see only meaningless chaos. Thanks to this, such people can successfully solve the most complex problems. ”

Temple Grandin

Let's go on the pros!



Adults with schizo-autistic features often have partial or complete immunity to chemical dependencies . The fact is that the ability to be addicted to a substance is similar to the ability to form attachment to another person. There is even a hypothesis that alcoholic schizophrenics are more preserved than the same schizophrenics without alcohol - they use it as a protector as the need arises, and not as the money for alcohol arises. Just do not rush to be treated like this, this remedy has not yet been clinically tested. But unsystematic attempts continue.



Autists make good use of social networks, write fine, design interfaces and so on. In general, they explain. I once gave similar calculations for introverts. In short, the introvert has no social context. The context is important in order to meet friends live, but it also interferes with communication with an unknown person (since there are no general protocols yet, you still need to find them). So, this gives a superpower to be understood.



Higher concentration on the task - on the same principle as that of introverts. In general, skim through this section of the Wiki about extroversion , there are a lot of myths debunked there (and still a bunch is created, follow the dates of the proofs). In short:

“Although extraversion is perceived in Western culture as socially desirable, it is not always an advantage. For example, extroverted youth are more prone to antisocial or delinquent behavior. Accordingly, some evidence suggests that extraversion can also be associated with psychopathy. Conversely, although introversion is perceived as less socially desirable, it is closely linked to positive traits such as intelligence and giftedness. Over the years, researchers have discovered that introverts tend to be more successful in an academic setting that extroverts may find boring. ”

There is also an amazing reference to the study “The behavioural immune system and the psychology of human sociality”, showing that documentaries about the zombie apocalypse are not entirely documentary. Sysadmins and autists will survive, because sysadmins in air-backed rooms and sweaters, and outs did not communicate with infected people with a high probability. And children with early childhood autism and early childhood schizophrenia have a survival bonus if they are abandoned at birth. A normative child in a child’s house begins to suffer wildly from a lack of love and attention, and an autistic child does not experience any significant discomfort. It is approximately the same in adulthood - there is no fear of parting in a relationship.



Well, and most importantly, autists can exercise to develop skills to compensate for their shortcomings. I mean, if these are the outs that got a high IQ. A simple example: the child does not distinguish the emotions of other people, and therefore can not understand what needs to be said in the dialogue and when. He was drawn diagrams of characteristic emotions and given an algorithm. He remembered the relative distance between the eyes, the relative size of the eyes, the position of the lips and so on - and trained to consciously distinguish facial expressions. Well, then I went to communicate with the ability to decrypt a person. And it worked. Hacked the first level of social interactions. But the same Temple to old age has even developed a sense of humor, inaccessible to the best of robots.



One of my friends writes tables about people: before meeting friends, she breaks through everyone on social networks, compiles a dossier, writes out important character traits, writes down who to talk about and not with, and so on. It turns out the algorithm "how to be a nice person." If you don’t see this and don’t know that she’s getting ready for her birthday almost as we are preparing for negotiations of 10 million rubles or more, it will always be the soul of the company for you. Until someone new and unknown comes in. But for him there is a set of standard reactions.

How to communicate?

If we are talking about a child with an autistic disorder, then you have three main problems in communication:

1. He does not respond to you or reacts poorly, that is, it is very difficult to get feedback from him in communication.
2. He has a fixation on something that interests him, and the rest in his world passes by.
3. A slightly different type of thinking allows you to find the relationship where you do not see them, but does not allow you to quickly learn boring repeating linear algorithms.

With the lack of reaction, a simple example is this: an ordinary child (close to the mental norm) is perfectly able to screen himself from external stimuli. For example, if the child is often scolded, after some time he completely turns off speech from the perception, because it does not make sense, but it upsets. Why is she? Similarly, if there are too many colored and vibrant objects around, the child may become unknowingly. The more introverted the child, the faster he develops tolerance to information incentives. There is a hypothesis that modern children are “not interested in anything,” as teachers say, precisely because of the overload of stimuli. Although next to this hypothesis it is necessary to check another one that the grass 20 years ago was greener.



Well, if we are talking about a child with out-violations, then the situation is even funnier: you can talk with him for a while, and he will look at you and be silent. This is not because he doesn’t hear or see you, but because everything is going well and nothing needs to be changed. But you will be brutally uncomfortable.



Now commit. Suppose a child seriously hit a race car. He, in his, say, 7-9 years old, shows incredibly geeky qualities and can spend hours talking about them, watching videos or reading (if he can). And he needs to learn physics. If you want him to do it, you need to reformulate the tasks. Not “the boat sailed from point A”, but “the first driver left the start, and the second one was standing at the pit stop after a kilometer at that time ...”, not “a squirrel threw a nut into a tree”, but “a squirrel jumped from an accelerated car” - and if you show that physics can be useful in studying cars, then after a while it will be passed on "excellent". In terms of race cars, of course.



The game behavior looks very interesting. Since we have been testing the tables for more than a year with corrective psychologists, speech therapists and other very interesting people, I have something to tell.



So, for an asper type, any person sitting next to them is a source of threat. And it’s very difficult to move from competitive behavior to strategic alliances.



On the other hand, do not forget that autistic abnormalities are offset by intelligence and built crutches. That is, like this: here the young chess champion comes to dine. There he sat three times in one particular chair, and today he is busy. The child is still thinking about chess, so it does not occur to him that you can ask the occupier to move. He just takes and shoves it as an object. After about a year of working with psychologists, he will have a conscious driver who will say: “yeah, let's talk before shoving it.” He will lose the conversation script, and everything should work out. If this does not work out, he will go to ponder and lick his mental wounds (or he will return to the previous strategy and still push the invader). So, this child is playing a new game. He can easily grasp the essence of a strategic alliance with a forecast of dozens of moves forward. But he will not be able to explain his position to the players (most likely), and he will purely emotionally want to take and take the neighbor. Therefore, if a game of psychology like the Mafia, greedy algorithms will win more often, and the child will be “endured” with enviable constancy.



That is, yes, logical games are safe and interesting without direct competition. Preferably with a controlled environment, without the wild influence of randomness.



Still schizo-autistic people lack the bodily experience. Therefore, up to a venerable age, they may like simple sensory stimulation. Such, by the way, can be caught on a sticky tape. If a person does not release it until the last bubble - keep autistic. Well, for the diagnosis, of course, you need a couple more factors, but in general, just imagine the person who was given the roll of pupyrin, and he patted it all in a row over the evening. If a child in childhood is not interested in a bear or dolls, but he is very excited about feeling nettles - you need to pick up more sensory toys. As a result, children with autism love toys, where the water overflows, then the balls ride. They love kinetic sand very, incredibly - but only if they are not turned off by its smell and there are no other sensory defenses (many are incredibly infuriated by stickiness, and clay and sensory sand are just sticky). It’s just an unconscious feeling that sticky is dangerous. By the way, if we add to this a schizoid mother with the idea that if plasticine was bought for a child, then if he, a bastard, sculpts at all costs, then we can get quite hysterical reactions.



Psychologists use vibrators. I mean, in correctional work too. They find those that are not very similar to the assortment of a sex shop (best of all, a ball with a tail that rolls around a cardboard box and is often sold near the metro) and is applied to children. Children are incredibly happy that they finally feel their body.



For very severe cases such as Kanner’s syndrome, the toy must be childish in fact, but from non-killable materials. The fact is that children with different types of mental retardation grow much larger than toy manufacturers expect at an appropriate level of development. But no one canceled the sopromat. And a hefty bull can break an entire stool, not like some small things. In this regard, wooden constructors and other things are pleasant. Just keep in mind that everything that can be thrown will sooner or later fall into someone's forehead, because children really like to throw different objects, almost like lower classes from Sapkowski. But, unlike the lower classes, they cannot always evaluate a possible trajectory.



One of the coolest things for speech development is playing the game. Here is a toy, see:







Here you need to blow the ball into a specific hole. I got it from the fifth, it’s even more difficult for children. There is a similar exercise in our board “ The Wizard of the Emerald City ”, where you have to throw the chip in different ways (including blowing it out) on certain fields. When a child controls the power of the “duva”, stem structures develop. That is, speech and the ability to wield two hands at once. But at a tender age it is speech. Another child in the correctional garden crush on " Pushkin ", growls, does not give and does not want to play another. This is useful now, but it is gradually being shifted through the topic of pirates to other games, because the fixation is not quite the one that can be useful for years.



Immediately there was an opportunity to clarify why suddenly the game “ Danetka ” showed the development of communication skills on long tests in schools. The main hypothesis is that to approach and ask is the social interaction of rather complex complexity. If you do not believe it, then remember that there are adults who are simply embarrassed to go to the doctor in certain cases.



One of the most social things is constructors like Lego, but only when several children are playing. Because there is a heavy B2B market: you need to agree on the exchange of parts. The first stage - you can observe how the child contemplates the part in his hand and is trying to put it somewhere. At this time, the second sees the thing he needs and grabs it from the hands of the first. The second stage is teaching the phrase “can I take it?” The third stage is learning to wait for an answer after this phrase. I have known adults, for whom it is already a dark forest.



Puzzles work in a similar way: they also teach communication. But with designers, unlike puzzles, there is still a fourth layer: you can build something in common. For example, parking for cars (don’t ask me why children like to play it, although there is a feeling that the two most beloved construction objects are a house and a car, but a mobile house is rarely built). In general, designers without prompting what to assemble from are almost like Factorio, only for children. By the way, I send greetings to geeks from JUG.RU from 1500+ hours played in this game.



Another damn important game for childhood is learning how to lose. If a child from a young age gets used to the fact that everything he wants is fulfilled, then it will end sadly. Adult training is described in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Everything is simpler for children: there is a walker where you sculpt plasticine figures. Instead of throwing a die, you can slam another player’s figurine into a cake. Then he will need to sculpt again and get up to the start. That is, it is fundamentally impossible to win, and through snot and cry this understanding comes. I do not recommend playing at home: this is one of those things that is done only and strictly under the supervision of a psychologist. But I’ll add from myself that the most cunning children can agree not to clap on the figures and still win. Alas, practice at this age is inexorable and does not know such cases.



Well, I have to stop. Here is a list of games that are somehow useful for the development of children (it is written on the cards, what and at what age). Here in the mosigra t-channel there are more details about any hell with the psychology of the game, and my colleague Anya, who has gone over this story, will continue to talk about all kinds of things from time to time. Well, now you know that out-deviations - it can be aristocratically cool, although it brings a lot of trouble to others and carriers. And it can be very sad.



Now we need to make out the latest story - why autistic children often bite themselves. Here the story is simple: there is a focus of excitement (unpleasant state, stress), and suddenly it turns out that you can create a competitive focus, for example, in the form of physical pain. Once you chew yourself or pick it up - and now it’s getting calmer. Psychologists use aromatic lamps for the same purposes: from the odor sensor to the hippocampus, there is only one neural connection, and the same smell of mint soothes very quickly. Well, or infuriates to madness, if there is sensory protection for smells. This is generally a very good example of crowding out. Similar mechanisms cause stress to go to the refrigerator, although there is no need.



That's all for now. It remains for me to thank the correctional psychologist Elizaveta Klyuchikova (I called ElizavetaKluchikova to Habr, here is her first post on the topic), the team of MRC-Children, the psychologists of the Three Sisters rehabilitation center and apologize for the one-sided distant from science story from which many eyes leak out . Well, send you to read Temple Grandin’s book “Opening the Doors of Hope” (in Flibust her name is spelled as Temple Grandin). Show a cool and extremely strange manual in English , how to survive in this wild world with very basic things, written by an autist. The light version of some aspects of another person in relation to IT is this translation . And here is one of the funniest studies about self-isolation of network communities, inside there are a few words about the general context. From fiction it is worth reading a couple of chapters of “Mysterious night killing of a dog”: the writer is not an expert, but a very observant comrade, and he conveys the atmosphere of a rather seriously developed out-trend well in the first person. Well and still, if you suddenly think that I am wrong, or if you have something to tell on this topic professionally, I’m still very interested.