There are many parents of autistic children who feel that their child is much more intelligent than the tests has shown. Children who have been labeled “deeply mentally retarded” while parents feel they are normally gifted. Children who have been labeled “mentally retarded” while their parents feel they are highly gifted. So pretty big differences.
In 2008 I started to delve into autism research. In 2008 I also found out that I had a photographic memory and I started a drawing website and studied composition theory. These two subjects turned out to have a curious similarity.
Composition theory explains why you can stand looking at a painting by Rembrandt for minutes while flipping through a friend’s holiday photo album within thirty seconds.
This difference isn’t due to the quality of the painting or the photos, but to a few techniques used in the composition (the structure of a painting, photo or drawing). Rembrandt already knew 400 years ago that people (in the Western world) view drawings, paintings (and photos) from left to right. That is our reading direction and we are used to making that movement with our eyes and brain. But just as our eyes dart from one line to another, so do they tend to dart from one painting to another.
To prevent this, the painter (illustrator or photographer) should paint something on the right side of the painting that draws attention and leeds the eye up. A curtain or a tree or a church tower. At the top he needs to paint something that draws the eyes to the left. A chandelier or low hanging branch or clouds. Then the eyes come back to the left side of the painting and go down and to the right again. Only when the viewer has completely viewed the painting in this way does he find out whether the painting has quality.
A painter uses a number of techniques to hold the viewer’s attention
When the subject is in the middle of the painting (drawing or photo), people experience the painting as boring. You can divide the painting horizontally and vertically into thirds. If the subject is on a third line, people experience the painting as interesting. But in principle it is also possible to place the subject on the left or right edge, above or below on the edge or in a corner and you come across all those situations.
What does all this have to do with autism?
In 2008 I was also busy reading about the symptoms of autism and the autism research. The test was a little weird. I’m quite curious, so when I’m being examined by a doctor or psychologist I constantly ask “What is this for? What is that for?” My experience is that you always get an answer. Sometimes a somewhat curt answer from a busy expert, but you get an answer. But not in autism test. The research consists of about ten parts. After each part I asked “what is this for”. The psychologist stared at me for a bit, but refused to answer.
So after I got the results, I started looking into the test online. Especially in one part. I had to describe a drawing. A simple line drawing of a car that had hit a lamppost. A group of spectators is watching and in the distance a police officer comes running. I described this drawing from left to right:
Why do some autists describe drawings from left to right?
“First there is a row of houses. Then there is a group of people looking at something. Then there is a 19th century car with a rich lady in the back. There is a driver in the front. Oh, it hit a lamppost. Then another group of people is watching. In the distance a cop comes running. Then there is another row of houses.”
I was diagnosed with Kanner autism, the more severe form of autism. Delving into autism via the internet, I discovered that this diagnosis is almost never given. In fact, it has not been given at all since 2013. Autism is now a spectrum disorder. Which means that the light form, medium form and heavy form are swept into a heap. Which is actually very strange.
It makes a significant difference to the treatment and guidance whether someone is blind or partially sighted, deaf or hard of hearing, low level mentally handicapped or high level mentally handicapped. So it is strange that it does not matter for treatment and guidance whether someone has the severe or mild form of autism.
Deepening my knowledge, I discovered that the diagnosis depends on the the way you describe that drawing. And then it gets weird. Apparently, psychologists researching autism have a theory that runs counter to the theory that artists have been teaching for the past 400 years.
Whether someone has the more severe or milder form of autism depends on whether they have a visual thought process or an internal dialogue. According to psychologists who research autism, only autists with a visual thought process view drawing from left to right. Autists with an internal dialogue and neurotypicals (neurotypicals always have an internal dialogue) start by looking at a drawing with the subject. So, according to these autism experts, 95% of people in the western world, when looking at a drawing, painting or photo, start with the subject.
Psychologists who research autism use a theory that painters have known for 400 years to be wrong
But that’s impossible. Taking into account that the subject of a professional drawing is never in the center. You have to look at the whole drawing before you find out where the subject is. So this theory of how people with internal dialogue view drawings is clearly wrong.
People with an internal dialogue also view drawings from left to right. But in their description they start from the subject. I think this must be a learned skill. But how do children learn this?
That depends on when they were born. People born before 1973 learned this from their parents when they were read to. Parents also described the pictures in the reading book and in this way children learned how to describe a drawing. Kanner autists didn’t start talking until they were six. By that time, they were also being taught reading, so reading to them fell through.
But children born after 1973 learn this from Sesame Street. Literally no episode of Sesame Street goes by without a song in which a drawing is described, for example: “Johnny needs a bath”. A very large bath in the center of the drawing. On the left in the doorway is a pretty big mother. In the bottom right corner, very small, sits Johnny. “Johnny has to take a bath” and it is clear to every child that Johnny is the subject of the drawing.
By the time autistic children with a visual thinking process are tested for autism at age six, they have learned how to describe a drawing. As part of the test, they also receive an intelligence test. If they describe the drawing from left to right, they are given the test that takes into account that children with a visual thinking process have great delay in language skills. But if they start their description with the subject, they get the test that doesn’t take that into account.
Apparently, psychologists who research autism have never noticed that Sesame Street has been teaching children how to describe drawings for decades
As a result of this error, children with the more severe form of autism are not diagnosed with Kanner Autism but with the diagnosis PDD NOS. As a result of using the wrong intelligence test, normally gifted children are labeled profoundly mentally retarded and highly gifted children are labeled mentally retarded
Since 2013, describing the drawing is no longer part of the autism research. This means that children with the more severe form of autism always get the wrong intelligence test and are automatically diagnosed with profound intellectual disabilities.
When I went to a boarding school for child abuse in 1969, when I was eight, I was given an oral intelligence test. In 1981 I spoke to the pedagogue who preformed that test. She told me I didn’t cooperate with the test because I couldn’t speak. But I read my father’s newspaper (a newspaper with vertaald no pictures) looking for articles about the Apollo missions. From this she concluded that I must be very intelligent.
As a result, I am one of the few highly gifted autists with a visual thought process who has not been labeled “mentally retarded”.
However, what I still don’t understand is how it is possible that psychologists on the one hand thought that my inability to talk was a result of child abuse. But at the same time I also thought that I could participate in an oral test. How is it possible that psychologists thought that a child who could not speak could take an oral test?