Memory in autism

Memory may take many forms. Some people tend to remember concepts and ideas. This is conceptual memory. Conceptual memories contain vast amount of information in a highly abstract, logically ordered form (Sacks 2012). ‘Items’ of... Read more

Concept formation in Autism: When a ball is not a ball but Oliver and cinema are the same

We all start our lives with sensory experiences. The aspects of perceived experience are stored in long-term memory and form ‘perceptual symbols files’, to be used later for reference. From vision, visual images are acquired. From... Read more

Attention in Autism

{Intro]We are surrounded by thousands of sights, sounds, smells and other sensory stimuli.  Consciously we can process only a limited amount of stimuli, and the decision on which stimuli are to be processed in each situation is of... Read more

Fluctuation – An Unstable Reality

One of the baffling features of autistic people is their inconsistent perception of sensory stimuli. Although we could address hyper- and hyposensitivities by desensitising a child and/or providing the aids to help them cope (in the case... Read more

Vulnerability to sensory overload

Many autistic children are very vulnerable to sensory overload. They may become overloaded in situations that would not bother other people. They may become overloaded in situations that would have been taken in more than they can keep up... Read more

Agnosia – difficulty interpreting a sense

If information overload is not diffused in time, it can result in temporal sensory agnosia – an inability to process touch, sound or visual information. The consequence of being unable to filter sensory information and being flooded... Read more

Synaesthesia in Autism

Synaesthesia (Greek syn – ‘together’ and aesthesis – ‘perception’) or ‘cross-sensory perception’ is an involuntary physical experience of a cross-modal association, i.e. the stimulation of one sensory modality triggers a... Read more

AUTISM – Systems Shutdowns

Too much sensory overload may result in systems shutdowns, when the person loses some or all of the normal functioning. Shutdown may feel different to different people, but it is very unpleasant and often frightening. If the sensory... Read more

Challenging behaviour in autism? It’s often a positive sign

I’ve often encountered such words as ‘aggression’ or ‘violence’ when reading about autism. Perhaps it seems like aggression/violence, but let’s look at it from a different perspective. Those who work with so-called... Read more

Peripheral perception (avoidance of direct perception) in autism

Avoidance of eye contact is quite common in autism. One of the theories to account for this is that people with autism use peripheral vision because their central vision is hypo- while their peripheral vision is hyper-. Some autistic... Read more