Visual Thinking
The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions
Temple Grandin 2022 / West Slope 152.14 GRANDIN
- 001 Born 1947, late speech, therapy
- 011 Cattle halt in chute ... shadows, dangling chains
012 U. Montreal Laurent Mottron / Sylvia Belleville
- 012 Autism visual perception and accuracy
- 015 Geniuses are usually pilers instead of filers / Linda Silverman
- 017 Grace Murray Hopper took apart 7 family clocks
017 TaskRabbit assemble Ikea furniture
- 024 1987 UCSD MRI, cerebellum 30% smaller than average, amygdala three times larger
- 025 Walter Schneider Diffusion Tensor Imaging, speech circuits 30% smaller, visual 400% larger
- 027 Magnetoencephalography (MEG) visual thinkers create visual area images, verbal thinkers relied on self-talk
027 Roger Sperry, we "neglect the non-verbal form of intellect. ... modern society discriminates against the right hemisphere."
- 028 autism ... multiple genes of small effect
- 029 25% blind use echolocation, the brain reuses visual cortex for other senses
031 Maria Kozhevnikov Harvard Med School 2002 Visualizer-Verbalizer Cognitive Style Questionnaire VVCSQ. folded paper with hole, where are holes when unfolded, Grandin terrible at this
- 032 Object visualizers (ie TG) and spatial visualizers (patterns and abstractions, music math EE physics)
- 036 TG draws accurate blueprints, tracing mental image onto paper, works with brilliants marginalized for weirdness
- 039 aphantasia, no visual imagery, hyperphantasia
- 039 Which green is lighter, leaf or pine needle? Leaves range from black to light green to red and brown, silly question.
- 040 hyperphantasia, excessively(?) detailed visual memories
- 044 Life, Animated documentary about autistic Owen Suskind (5 copies wccls)
047 RemoveDEBRIS "combat interstellar debris" sic
050 Elias Howe favorite inventor, Lockstitch sewing machine
- 051 2001 "No Child Left Behind" stripped away shop, theater, all hands-on learning
- 052 some interns never used scissors
- 053 field trips unfunded, but nearby "sidewalk field trips" also work
- 055 TG teaches veterinarians, but was screened out of veterinary school, couldn't master algebra
- 059 many gripes about math requirements
- 061 kids do better with real world examples
- 063 40% STEM drop out, twice attrition rate of other majors, "math-science death march"
065 TG taught phonics by mother, using interesting stories, similar to IEP
- 066 Boarding school, TG took care of horses
- 068 TG reads writing out loud, remembers teacher's grammar corrections, learned to pick out main points
069 Katherine Johnson, skipped grades as child
- 070 "Is it going to be on the test?"
- 072 SAT earns $1B for College Board, $1.1B for college prep industry, biased against minorities
- 073 UC and others no longer consider SAT
074 Iverson Larson Simple Thinking French
- 076 How to raise an adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success by Julie Lythcott-Haims
078 Navigating Autism TG 2021 "label locking"
081 TB built Ames Room for high school psychology class
085 Kid's book about inventions, long gone. Perhaps Famous Inventors and their Inventions by Fletcher Pratt, 1955
088 Engineering and the Mind's Eye Ferguson archive.org, PSU TA145.F37 1992
092 Perseverance Mars Rover 23 cameras
- 095 ASML lithography
- 095 Brookings Institution, US 16th/18 % people in manufacturing, lack of skilled workers,
099 Grit Angela Duckworth
- 104 Walgreens two warehouses reconfigured with low-reading terminals for disabled, outperforming other warehouses
- 106 Autism low interviewing and social skills, 15% employed
- 109 Jobs for kids, mantra: Early exposure, early intervention, early experience
109 Apprentice School Newport News Virginia
- 112 26,000 US apprenticeship programs, starting salary $72K, 92% employment retention rate
118 Amazon, Walmart, KFC, others pay for GED training
122 Haig Antranikian 1936 Flux valve
122 Maternal grandfather John Coleman Purves developed & patented magnetic compass 1945
- 123 Bendix renamed device fluxgate, Sperry legitimate license after war, Gyrosyn
123 A Thorn in my Pocket, Eustacia Cutler (mother)
125 Palo Alto, Klystron
- 126 "Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off of the goal" -- Henry Ford
- 127 Jim Uhl mid 1970s verbal thinking partner, TG made sales by showing drawings and photos
128 Center Track Conveyor Restrainer
- many youtube videos about slaughtering plants by TG
- 131 Verbal-thinking rationalizing schedule-fantasizing suits vs safety-aware techies TG driven by project loyalty over ego
138 Musk space helmets inspired by Daft Punk, Space suits by hollywood costume designer Jpse Fernandez
- 138 Musk spends 80% of his time in SpaceX and Tesla engineering and design departments
138 Gwynne Shotwell COO
- 139 Steve Jobs / calligrapy and fonts at Reed college
140 Woz wanted upgradeability, Job wanted less confusion, split after 10 years, new designer Jony Ive
- 141 Collaboration, different department individuals shadow one another
- 142 neurologically varied teams outperformed homogenous teams
143 Apollo Space suit platex gloves outperformed bulky Litton and Hamilton Standard
145 25y ago editor, current coauthor Betsy Lerner verbal thinker. TG writes first draft, Betsy rearranges, taught TG to explain better.
146 Writing of the gods : the race to decode the Rosetta Stone
- 147 Champollion and Young, object and spatial visualizer two aspects of decodign
- 150 Hammerstein wrote lyrics in PA, sent to Rogers who composed melodies in CT or NYC
- 152 Fusion Tokamak (hotter); Stellarator (stable) but harder to make, TG fave
- 155-6 young TG enamored with Wright brothers, Edison
- 157 Edison failed school, taught by mother and other mentors
- 159 Neurodiversity helps groups solve many different problems
- 163 paraphrasing Peter Thiel - hire "spectrum", not MBAs
- 164 Zuckerberg? Greta Thunberg Aspergers
- 165-178 brain observations and exceptional people
178 Turing and Hilbert's ''Entscheidungsproblem''
- 180 "Aspergers" . Bill Gates . Elon Musk
- 182 Steve Jobs again
- 186 Einstein
- 189 "Grade A Bookworms"Inflexible problem solvers
- Many vigniettes from here on, problems emerging from lack of input from many varieties of mind
- 237 Animal Consciousness and Visual Thinking
- examples of errant "expert" nonsense about animals