I can explain how a person with autism thinks. I am very, very interested in how people think. It's been a gradual process of learning more and more about how my thinking process is different. You know it's bottom up - you take specific examples to make concepts and then I put them in categories.
Temple GrandinThe animal that I have worked with the most is beef cattle, so that's my favorite animal, but I like all animals.
Temple GrandinFear was my main emotion until I started taking anti-depressant medication. And I was one of the people where, as I got older, the fear got worse and worse. So I can really relate to an animal getting, you know, scared and traumatized.
Temple GrandinThere's no black and white dividing line between a mild Aspergers, which is the mild autism, and computer engineer, for example.
Temple GrandinThere tends to be a lot of autism around the tech centers... when you concentrate the geeks, you're concentrating the autism genetics.
Temple GrandinI think the mild Aspergers have always been there. You see, Asperger's diagnosis did not become common in the U.S. until the early '90s. And an Aspergers has more or less normal speech development and they've always been here, that hasn't changed. I can think back to when I was in high school, this is 40 years ago, I could name kids in my high school class and college class that, today, would be diagnosed as Aspergers.
Temple Grandin