The world needs all kinds of minds

Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.

I think I'll start out
and just talk a little bit

about what exactly autism is.

Autism is a very big continuum

that goes from very severe --
the child remains nonverbal --

all the way up to brilliant
scientists and engineers.

And I actually feel at home here,

because there's a lot
of autism genetics here.

(Laughter)

You wouldn't have any --

(Applause)

It's a continuum of traits.

When does a nerd turn into Asperger,
which is just mild autism?

I mean, Einstein and Mozart and Tesla
would all be probably diagnosed

as autistic spectrum today.

And one of the things
that is really going to concern me

is getting these kids to be the ones

that are going to invent
the next energy things

that Bill Gates talked about this morning.

OK, now, if you want
to understand autism: animals.

I want to talk to you now
about different ways of thinking.

You have to get away from verbal language.

I think in pictures.
I don't think in language.

Now, the thing about the autistic mind
is it attends to details.

This is a test where you either
have to pick out the big letters

or the little letters,

and the autistic mind picks out
the little letters more quickly.

And the thing is, the normal brain
ignores the details.

Well, if you're building a bridge,
details are pretty important

because it'll fall down
if you ignore the details.

And one of my big concerns
with a lot of policy things today

is things are getting too abstract.

People are getting away
from doing hands-on stuff.

I'm really concerned
that a lot of the schools

have taken out the hands-on classes,
because art, and classes like that --

those are the classes where I excelled.

In my work with cattle,

I noticed a lot of little things
that most people don't notice

would make the cattle balk.

For example, this flag waving
right in front of the veterinary facility.

This feed yard was going to tear down
their whole veterinary facility;

all they needed to do was move the flag.

Rapid movement, contrast.

In the early '70s when I started,
I got right down in the chutes

to see what cattle were seeing.

People thought that was crazy.

A coat on a fence would make them balk,
shadows would make them balk,

a hose on the floor --
people weren't noticing these things.

A chain hanging down ...

And that's shown
very, very nicely in the movie.

In fact, I loved the movie,
how they duplicated all my projects.

That's the geek side.

My drawings got to star in the movie, too.

And, actually, it's called
"Temple Grandin,"

not "Thinking in Pictures."

So what is thinking in pictures?

It's literally movies in your head.

My mind works like Google for images.

When I was a young kid,
I didn't know my thinking was different.

I thought everybody thought in pictures.

Then when I did my book,
"Thinking in Pictures,"

I started interviewing people
about how they think.

And I was shocked to find out
that my thinking was quite different.

Like if I say, "Think
about a church steeple,"

most people get this sort
of generalized generic one.

Now, maybe that's not true in this room,

but it's going to be true
in a lot of different places.

I see only specific pictures.

They flash up into my memory,
just like Google for pictures.

And in the movie,
they've got a great scene in there,

where the word "shoe" is said,
and a whole bunch of '50s and '60s shoes

pop into my imagination.

OK, there's my childhood church;
that's specific.

There's some more, Fort Collins.

OK, how about famous ones?

And they just kind of come up,
kind of like this.

Just really quickly,
like Google for pictures.

And they come up one at a time,

and then I think, "OK, well,
maybe we can have it snow,

or we can have a thunderstorm,"

and I can hold it there
and turn them into videos.

Now, visual thinking
was a tremendous asset

in my work designing
cattle-handling facilities.

And I've worked really hard
on improving how cattle are treated

at the slaughter plant.

I'm not going to go
into any gucky slaughter slides.

I've got that stuff up on YouTube,
if you want to look at it.

(Laughter)

But one of the things
that I was able to do in my design work

is I could test-run a piece
of equipment in my mind,

just like a virtual reality
computer system.

And this is an aerial view
of a recreation of one of my projects

that was used in the movie.

That was like just so super cool.

And there were a lot of, kind of,
Asperger types and autism types

working out there on the movie set, too.

(Laughter)

But one of the things
that really worries me is:

Where's the younger version
of those kids going today?

They're not ending up in Silicon Valley,

where they belong.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

One of the things I learned very early on
because I wasn't that social,

is I had to sell my work, and not myself.

And the way I sold livestock jobs
is I showed off my drawings,

I showed off pictures of things.

Another thing that helped me
as a little kid

is, boy, in the '50s,
you were taught manners.

You were taught you can't pull
the merchandise off the shelves

in the store and throw it around.

When kids get to be
in third or fourth grade,

you might see that this kid's going
to be a visual thinker,

drawing in perspective.

Now, I want to emphasize

that not every autistic kid
is going to be a visual thinker.

Now, I had this brain scan
done several years ago,

and I used to joke around about having
a gigantic Internet trunk line

going deep into my visual cortex.

This is tensor imaging.

And my great big Internet trunk line
is twice as big as the control's.

The red lines there are me,

and the blue lines are the sex
and age-matched control.

And there I got a gigantic one,

and the control over there, the blue one,
has got a really small one.

And some of the research now is showing

that people on the spectrum actually
think with the primary visual cortex.

Now, the thing is, the visual thinker
is just one kind of mind.

You see, the autistic mind
tends to be a specialist mind --

good at one thing, bad at something else.

And where I was bad was algebra.

And I was never allowed
to take geometry or trig.

Gigantic mistake.

I'm finding a lot of kids
who need to skip algebra,

go right to geometry and trig.

Now, another kind of mind
is the pattern thinker.

More abstract.

These are your engineers,
your computer programmers.

This is pattern thinking.

That praying mantis is made
from a single sheet of paper --

no scotch tape, no cuts.

And there in the background
is the pattern for folding it.

Here are the types of thinking:

photo-realistic visual thinkers, like me;

pattern thinkers, music and math minds.

Some of these oftentimes
have problems with reading.

You also will see these kind of problems
with kids that are dyslexic.

You'll see these different kinds of minds.

And then there's a verbal mind,
they know every fact about everything.

Now, another thing is the sensory issues.

I was really concerned about having
to wear this gadget on my face.

And I came in half an hour beforehand

so I could have it put on
and kind of get used to it,

and they got it bent
so it's not hitting my chin.

But sensory is an issue.

Some kids are bothered
by fluorescent lights;

others have problems
with sound sensitivity.

You know, it's going to be variable.

Now, visual thinking gave me
a whole lot of insight

into the animal mind.

Because think about it:
an animal is a sensory-based thinker,

not verbal -- thinks in pictures,
thinks in sounds, thinks in smells.

Think about how much information
there is on the local fire hydrant.

He knows who's been there --

(Laughter)

When they were there.

Are they friend or foe?
Is there anybody he can go mate with?

There's a ton of information
on that fire hydrant.

It's all very detailed information.

And looking at these kind of details
gave me a lot of insight into animals.

Now, the animal mind, and also my mind,

puts sensory-based information
into categories.

Man on a horse,

and a man on the ground --

that is viewed as two
totally different things.

You could have a horse
that's been abused by a rider.

They'll be absolutely fine
with the veterinarian

and with the horseshoer,
but you can't ride him.

You have another horse,
where maybe the horseshoer beat him up,

and he'll be terrible for anything
on the ground with the veterinarian,

but a person can ride him.

Cattle are the same way.

Man on a horse, a man on foot --
they're two different things.

You see, it's a different picture.

See, I want you to think
about just how specific this is.

Now, this ability to put
information into categories,

I find a lot of people
are not very good at this.

When I'm out troubleshooting equipment

or problems with something in a plant,

they don't seem to be able to figure out:

"Do I have a training-people issue?

Or do I have something wrong
with the equipment?"

In other words, categorize
equipment problem from a people problem.

I find a lot of people
have difficulty doing that.

Now, let's say I figure out
it's an equipment problem.

Is it a minor problem,
with something simple I can fix?

Or is the whole design
of the system wrong?

People have a hard time figuring that out.

Let's just look at something
like, you know,

solving problems with making
airlines safer.

Yeah, I'm a million-mile flier.

I do lots and lots of flying,

and if I was at the FAA,

what would I be doing a lot
of direct observation of?

It would be their airplane tails.

You know, five fatal wrecks
in the last 20 years,

the tail either came off,

or steering stuff inside the tail
broke in some way.

It's tails, pure and simple.

And when the pilots walk
around the plane, guess what?

They can't see that stuff inside the tail.

Now as I think about that,

I'm pulling up all of that
specific information.

It's specific.

See, my thinking's bottom-up.

I take all the little pieces and I put
the pieces together like a puzzle.

Now, here is a horse that was deathly
afraid of black cowboy hats.

He'd been abused by somebody
with a black cowboy hat.

White cowboy hats,
that was absolutely fine.

Now, the thing is,
the world is going to need

all of the different kinds of minds
to work together.

We've got to work on developing
all these different kinds of minds.

And one of the things
that is driving me really crazy

as I travel around
and I do autism meetings,

is I'm seeing a lot of smart,
geeky, nerdy kids,

and they just aren't very social,

and nobody's working
on developing their interest

in something like science.

And this brings up the whole thing
of my science teacher.

My science teacher is shown
absolutely beautifully in the movie.

I was a goofball student
when I was in high school.

I just didn't care at all about studying,

until I had Mr. Carlock's science class.

He was now Dr. Carlock in the movie.

And he got me challenged
to figure out an optical illusion room.

This brings up the whole thing
of you've got to show kids

interesting stuff.

You know, one of the things
that I think maybe TED ought to do

is tell all the schools about all
the great lectures that are on TED,

and there's all kinds
of great stuff on the Internet

to get these kids turned on.

Because I'm seeing a lot
of these geeky, nerdy kids,

and the teachers out in the Midwest
and other parts of the country

when you get away from these tech areas,

they don't know what to do
with these kids.

And they're not going down the right path.

The thing is, you can make a mind

to be more of a thinking
and cognitive mind,

or your mind can be wired
to be more social.

And what some of the research
now has shown in autism

is there may by extra wiring back here
in the really brilliant mind,

and we lose a few social circuits here.

It's kind of a trade-off
between thinking and social.

And then you can get to the point
where it's so severe,

you're going to have a person
that's going to be non-verbal.

In the normal human mind,

language covers up the visual thinking
we share with animals.

This is the work of Dr. Bruce Miller.

He studied Alzheimer's patients
that had frontal temporal lobe dementia.

And the dementia ate out
the language parts of the brain.

And then this artwork came out of somebody

who used to install stereos in cars.

Now, Van Gogh doesn't know
anything about physics,

but I think it's very interesting
that there was some work done

to show that this eddy pattern
in this painting

followed a statistical model
of turbulence,

which brings up the whole interesting idea

of maybe some of this mathematical
patterns is in our own head.

And the Wolfram stuff --

I was taking notes and writing down
all the search words I could use,

because I think that's going to go on
in my autism lectures.

We've got to show
these kids interesting stuff.

And they've taken out the auto-shop class

and the drafting class and the art class.

I mean, art was my best subject in school.

We've got to think about all
these different kinds of minds,

and we've got to absolutely
work with these kind of minds,

because we absolutely are going to need

these kinds of people in the future.

And let's talk about jobs.

OK, my science teacher got me studying,

because I was a goofball
that didn't want to study.

But you know what?
I was getting work experience.

I'm seeing too many of these smart kids
who haven't learned basic things,

like how to be on time -- I was taught
that when I was eight years old.

How to have table manners
at granny's Sunday party.

I was taught that
when I was very, very young.

And when I was 13, I had a job
at a dressmaker's shop sewing clothes.

I did internships in college,

I was building things,

and I also had to learn
how to do assignments.

You know, all I wanted to do was draw
pictures of horses when I was little.

My mother said, "Well let's do
a picture of something else."

They've got to learn
how to do something else.

Let's say the kid is fixated on Legos.

Let's get him working
on building different things.

The thing about the autistic mind
is it tends to be fixated.

Like if the kid loves race cars,
let's use race cars for math.

Let's figure out how long it takes
a race car to go a certain distance.

In other words, use that fixation

in order to motivate that kid,
that's one of the things we need to do.

I really get fed up when the teachers,

especially when you get away
from this part of the country,

they don't know what to do
with these smart kids.

It just drives me crazy.

What can visual thinkers
do when they grow up?

They can do graphic design,
all kinds of stuff with computers,

photography, industrial design.

The pattern thinkers -- they're the ones
that are going to be your mathematicians,

your software engineers,
your computer programmers,

all of those kinds of jobs.

And then you've got the word minds;
they make great journalists,

and they also make really,
really good stage actors.

Because the thing about being autistic is,

I had to learn social skills
like being in a play.

You just kind of ...
you just have to learn it.

And we need to be working
with these students.

And this brings up mentors.

You know, my science teacher
was not an accredited teacher.

He was a NASA space scientist.

Some states now are getting it to where,
if you have a degree in biology

or in chemistry,

you can come into the school
and teach biology or chemistry.

We need to be doing that.

Because what I'm observing is,

the good teachers,
for a lot of these kids,

are out in the community colleges.

But we need to be getting
some of these good teachers

into the high schools.

Another thing that can be very,
very, very successful is:

there's a lot of people
that may have retired

from working in the software industry,

and they can teach your kid.

And it doesn't matter
if what they teach them is old,

because what you're doing
is you're lighting the spark.

You're getting that kid turned on.

And you get him turned on,
then you'll learn all the new stuff.

Mentors are just essential.

I cannot emphasize enough
what my science teacher did for me.

And we've got to mentor them, hire them.

And if you bring them in
for internships in your companies,

the thing about the autism,
Asperger-y kind of mind,

you've got to give them a specific task.

Don't just say, "Design new software."

You've got to tell them
something more specific:

"We're designing software for a phone

and it has to do some specific thing,

and it can only use so much memory."

That's the kind of specificity you need.

Well, that's the end of my talk.

And I just want to thank
everybody for coming.

It was great to be here.

(Applause)

(Applause ends)

Oh -- you have a question for me? OK.

(Applause)

Chris Anderson:
Thank you so much for that.

You know, you once wrote --
I like this quote:

"If by some magic, autism had been
eradicated from the face of the Earth,

then men would still be socializing
in front of a wood fire

at the entrance to a cave."

(Laughter)

Temple Grandin: Because who do you think
made the first stone spear?

It was the Asperger guy,

and if you were to get rid
of all the autism genetics,

there'd be no more Silicon Valley,
and the energy crisis would not be solved.

(Applause)

CA: I want to ask you
a couple other questions,

and if any of these feel inappropriate,
it's OK just to say, "Next question."

But if there is someone here
who has an autistic child,

or knows an autistic child and feels
kind of cut off from them,

what advice would you give them?

TG: Well, first of all,
we've got to look at age.

If you have a two, three or four-year-old,
no speech, no social interaction,

I can't emphasize enough: Don't wait.

You need at least 20 hours a week
of one-to-one teaching.

The thing is, autism comes
in different degrees.

About half of the people on the spectrum
are not going to learn to talk,

and they won't be working
in Silicon Valley.

That would not be a reasonable
thing for them to do.

But then you get these smart,
geeky kids with a touch of autism,

and that's where you've got
to get them turned on

with doing interesting things.

I got social interaction
through shared interests --

I rode horses with other kids,
I made model rockets with other kids,

did electronics lab with other kids.

And in the '60s, it was gluing mirrors
onto a rubber membrane on a speaker

to make a light show.

That was, like,
we considered that super cool.

(Laughter)

CA: Is it unrealistic for them

to hope or think that that child
loves them, as some might, as most, wish?

TG: Well, I tell you,
that child will be loyal,

and if your house is burning down,
they're going to get you out of it.

CA: Wow. So most people, if you ask them
what they're most passionate about,

they'd say things like,
"My kids" or "My lover."

What are you most passionate about?

TG: I'm passionate
about that the things I do

are going to make
the world a better place.

When I have a mother
of an autistic child say,

"My kid went to college
because of your book

or one of your lectures,"

that makes me happy.

You know, the slaughter plants
I worked with in the '80s;

they were absolutely awful.

I developed a really simple
scoring system for slaughter plants,

where you just measure outcomes:

How many cattle fell down?

How many got poked with the prodder?

How many cattle
are mooing their heads off?

And it's very, very simple.

You directly observe a few simple things.

It's worked really well.

I get satisfaction out of seeing stuff

that makes real change in the real world.

We need a lot more of that,
and a lot less abstract stuff.

CA: Totally.

(Applause)

CA: When we were talking on the phone,
one of the things you said

that really astonished me

was that one thing you were passionate
about was server farms.

Tell me about that.

TG: Well, the reason why I got really
excited when I read about that,

it contains knowledge.

It's libraries.

And to me, knowledge is something
that is extremely valuable.

So, maybe over 10 years ago
now, our library got flooded.

This is before the Internet
got really big.

And I was really upset
about all the books being wrecked,

because it was knowledge being destroyed.

And server farms, or data centers,
are great libraries of knowledge.

CA: Temple, can I just say,

it's an absolute delight
to have you at TED.

Thank you so much.

TG: Well, thank you so much. Thank you.

(Applause)