Autistic Information Processing

Autistic brains think in systems

If we don't have a place to put something in the system we've set up in our brains, we won't remember it.

Which is why we have such a hard time retaining information that isn't directly relevant to us.

"Autistic people are bottom-up thinkers"

I've seen a lot of people saying this on social media recently, and I think what this actually means is getting lost in translation.

Mainly because most explanations say something like "autistic people need all the details about something before they can understand it."

I think what most people are missing when talking about autistic people being bottom-up thinkers, is that it's not a processing delay even though it looks like one…

OK, so why do so many autistic people struggle with decision-making and what does this have to do with bottom-up processing?

OK, let's talk about what bottom-up processing has to do with a person correcting others.

Because a lot of autistic people do this. And, unfortunately, most people just see the autistic person as an annoying "know it all."

Autistic people tend to think in complexities.

Someone can ask us to do something seemingly straightforward, but our brains will often make it into something extremely complex and nuanced.

We ask questions to untangle our thoughts...

3 reasons autistic people struggle with open-ended questions

Reason #1

Being a "visual learner" is not actually about the visuals, it's about the quick context you get from them.

It's like seeing the picture on the puzzle box before being handed the puzzle pieces.

There's a concept in adult learning that boils down to... adults learn when they understand why the thing matters to them. They call it the "WIIFM" (what's in it for me)

I actually think this is a human learning concept that somehow got completely missed when early childhood education principles and practices were being formed.