Full interview with Temple Grandin

my name is Temple grandon and I am professor of animal science at Colorado State University uh Dr grandon tell us what you're doing here in fav Arkansas today well I'm going to be doing a talk on animal behavior because they're having a service dog um conference today I'm going to talk about my experiences with autism U I had no speech until age uh four give them tips on how to work with autistic kids and give them insights into animal behavior because a dog lives in a sensory based world it doe

sn't think in in words it it thinks in smells touch Sensations visual Sensations it's a sensory based world and another thing I'm going to discuss is different ways people think you have visual thinkers that think completely in pictures they're going to be good with animals they'll be good with art photography and mechanical things all kinds of mechanical things then you have a mathematical thinker they see in patterns music and math go together and then you've got your word thinkers and then th

ere's a lot of people that are combinations and when you have autistic person you might have an extreme visual thinker or an extreme mathematician and what we need to be doing with these kids is developing their strengths you take the video game addicts introduce them to car mechanics that's been very successful in weaning some of the kids off of video games and then they end up going into car mechanics for career when I started out in animal behavior being a visual thinker was really helpful be

cause I was working on cattle handling facilities and I observed that sometimes the animals would stop at a shadow stop at a reflection there'd be a rope hanging down a coat on the fence little things we don't notice the animals noticed and I noticed these things and if you remove these distractions then the animals would walk through the shoot easily other people weren't seeing it now I didn't know at the time when I was in my 20s that other people thought in words they thought it was weird to

be getting into the shoot to see what cattle were seeing but since I think in pictures that was a totally sensible thing to do and I found that I could fix problems with the shoot by maybe changing a light to get rid of a reflection I had a lot of problems with anxiety and now at my aunt's ranch when I was a teenager I noticed when they put cattle in a squeeze shoot for vaccinations sometimes they relaxed and some people with Autism can be calmed down with deep pressure so I built a squeezing ma

chine that would apply deep pressure now sensory issues are often a problem in autism and I some kids are very sound sensitive sometimes you can reduce that if the child controls the noisy device okay they're afraid of the vacuum cleaner you let the child turn that vacuum cleaner on and off okay if they're going to go in the shop they can take the electric drill and drill all kinds of stuff where they control it they can sometimes get uh where they can tolerate the sound better you know some ind

ividuals are wearing headphones all the time you wear headphones all the time it'll make you more sensitive you can wear them for the really bad stuff like when the fire alarm went off in the hotel last night night yeah you'd wear it for that but then other times take them off when it's not noisy I'm going to give them insights into how animals perceive the world and get across the idea that an animal is a sensory based thinker not a word-based thinker talk about that a little more all of its me

mories you know people that think verbally they're going to remember things as words but the dog will remember a certain smell or remember something it sees something it hears and different things it remembers sens are associated with good and bad things but their memories are all sensory based they're not word-based well they'll give them Insight in helping to train service dogs but I also want to give them some insight how to work with some of these autistic kids because we need the skills whe

n I was out working with large Meat Packing plants on construction and I was supervising the construction of equipment I had designed I worked with metal fabricators that invented equipment they were very definitely autistic they owned their shops and the problem is these people are not getting replaced they're playing video games in the basement they ought to be fixing things over at the Tyson plant right now and there's a real problem as these people are retiring out um in the last number of y

ears we we started to understand more that more of us are on the Spectrum than not um and and I think there's become a wider understanding about that and I think I think a lot of your your work and your research has has probably helped in that area don't you think well I what's happening now it used to be now it's one in 36 as some degree of autism you see in the mildest forms of autism is personality variant you got some people more interested in Social the autistic tends to be more interested

in what they do okay a great flight for me is a two-hour construction on tilt up Warehouse construction or concrete forming that's something that is really interesting people that are really social probably wouldn't want to talk about that for two hours you see I am what I do that's why it's so important to help um people in the autistic Spectrum to get into good careers that they like I've talked to lots of TV Camera people and there a lot of them they're either autistic dyslexic or ADHD and th

ey're not getting replaced because I they're getting kind of pigeon hole and they're not having the strengths developed another type of autistic is a mathematician and just in the last two weeks I've heard really bad uh reports of like elementary school kids that are super smart math not being allowed to get more difficult math books and they're getting completely bored doing baby math and they need to be moved ahead you uh for me I can't I don't understand algebra but there'll be another kid wh

ere an algebra book given to a third grader is going to open a gigantic door you should just be allowed to work on that algebra book in the third grade class because they turn into behavior problems when that board's stiff when are they going to put you in charge well I don't know they um it's um but the problem with the math G genius kids being held back I've heard of three bad cases of that in the last two weeks in my book visual thinking hidden Gifts of people who thinking pictures patterns a

nd abstractions I talk about that we need these skills because there's a lot of people retiring out like people I worked with not getting replaced factories don't have anybody to equipment I've been on many many questionable elevators they are not getting serviced these are mechanical devices the other good thing about these Hands-On jobs they will not be replaced by artificial intelligence that's another reason right now for the autistic individuals pushing some of the more skilled trade jobs b

ecause they are artificial intelligence proof I just want to say the kids that are different get out and get into good careers because what's made life satisfying for me is having it an interesting career I've worked on improving how animals are handled and I I want to see these kids get out do worthwhile things get into careers that they're really going to like and another big problem we're having is they're not making the transition from school to work because grandads come up to me all the ti

me and they go oh I had a paper route when I was a kid I learned how to work and that Granddad discovered he's autistic when the kids get diagnosed well we got to find paper root substitutes for kids now they need to be walking the next door neighbor's dog they got to learn how to do a job it's outside the home with somebody else's the boss maybe Church volunteer jobs instant illegal get into jobs but let's avoid the chaotic rapid multitasking jobs like a chaotic takeout window I want to avoid t

hat the other thing is I have problems remembering long strings of verbal information so give me a pilot's checklist for a task that involves a sequence like closing out a a cash register give me step one step two I get a pilot's checklist format that would save a lot of jobs because I need an external working memory that's written that's a very easy accommodation sure uh there were two appren uh electrician apprenticeships lost because the boss went yak yak yak yak yak and The Apprentice instal

led the wrong light fixtures in the wrong places see if they had just written that down that wouldn't have happened very smart love it okay I think that should do it