Autism and learning

Notice: This article is being worked on incrementally.

The Advantages of Autism in Learning: Neurophysiology
Many people are aware of the disadvantages: High sensitivity for information overload, difficulties in social skills, sleep disorders, and so on.

In this article, however, I wanted to share some of my findings on the advantages of autism including my own thoughts as an autist myself.

#1: People With Autism Rely Less on Semantic Learning
For many people, memorizing “Doctor-Nurse” (= semantic) is easier than “Doctor-Beach”. For people with autism, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case. This, usually, allows them to learn and remember stuff a lot more quickly than others.

An atypical medial temporal lobe (which hosts the hippocampus) could explain this less reliance on semantic learning. In short, the medial temporal lobe encodes and transfers new explicit memories to long-term memory.

In my own experience, I definitely can recognize a significant boost in my memory capabilities in comparison to others.

Relevant source:

Autism and working memory on Wikipedia

#2: People With Autism Have Superior Perceptual Capacity
According to a study, people with autism need to experience higher extraneous cognitive load in order to reduce their performance in terms of accuracy and speed. This, in turn, suggests people with autism may have superior perceptual capacity.

In my experience, this allows me to react a lot faster in video games.

Relevant source:

Selective attention and perceptual load in autism spectrum disorder on NCBI

#3: People With Autism Undergo Less Synaptic Pruning
The major disadvantage of having too many synapses is, of course, high vulnerability to information overload.

The major advantage, however, is that it allows one to learn things a lot more quickly. It also allows for a lot more creativity between concepts that some people would see as “ridiculous”.

Of course, in my own experience too, this can cause one to create connections that are less advantageous, which can produce high neuroticism, anxiety, depression, and so on.

So it really can go both ways.

Abstract
This is a follow-up chapter of 10/16/2019 — E-Learning Theory. In this chapter, I want to connect autism with the cognitive load theory, how people with autism get affected differently than neurotypicals, and how they can manage things more effectively.

Autism and the three types of cognitive load
If we look at the three types of cognitive load, how does autism affect each one separately? Let’s take a look.

Extraneous cognitive load and autism
The extraneous cognitive load in people with autism is usually that high, that it affects the other two types of cognitive load a lot, and makes them not think or act clearly in a structured manner (intrinsic cognitive load) nor adapt to the environment as quickly when under pressure (germane cognitive load).

This idea is also mostly reflected in the intense world theory, namely how people with autism process the things (including irrelevant stimuli) 10x as much as neurotypicals. But this doesn’t make people with autism less smart or anything. No, they just need to find ways to reduce their extraneous cognitive load.

Intrinsic cognitive load and autism
People with autism usually don’t have a smaller intrinsic cognitive load capacity than neurotypicals. In my experience, they usually have a bigger capacity than neurotypicals, but they can only make excellent use of that if their extraneous cognitive load is low.

So what are some things we can see in people with autism in relation to intrinsic cognitive load? Well, in a busy environment with a lot of distractions (high extraneous cognitive load) while studying, they act like they don’t know anything or can’t learn anything. We all have this, but people with autism simply need fewer stimuli to experience the same effects (intense world theory). So even in a classroom where everyone is silent, there still could be too much stimuli in visual form.

In an effective environment with low extraneous cognitive load, however, people with autism can do wonderful creative things in fields they usually excel at (a typical characteristic of autism is having an obsession about something e.g. history). Or maybe they are a math prodigy and can solve math problems within seconds, but only if the environment doesn’t increase their extraneous cognitive load too much. I, for instance, probably can’t type out this chapter even in a quiet library. I need a familiar and comfortable environment i.e. my home.

Germane cognitive load and autism
Germane cognitive load is essentially the amount of working memory resources used to access long-term memories as well as creating them (e.g. creating principles).

In a high-extraneous cognitive load environment, people with autism usually cannot spend a lot of working memory resources on reminding themselves what they should do in situation X, because they don’t have the working memory resources in such an environment. Even if they do have the long-term memories stored in their brains where they, for example, learned to behave in a particular way within a certain social setting, they don’t have much working memory resources left to access that as well as to adapt to that slightly different social setting in comparison to the environment where they learned their things, because most of the working memory resources are spent on processing extraneous cognitive load.

So people with autism usually do know the things very well, they just need to lower their extraneous cognitive load.

Conclusions
The main lesson we can really learn, is that when you lower the extraneous cognitive load in people with autism, they can really start to shine in whatever things they excel in. Second, people with autism usually spend a bigger amount of working memory resources on extraneous cognitive load, because they “filter” (irrelevant) stimuli less effectively than neurotypicals, which reduces the available working memory resources for intrinsic and germane cognitive load.

Again, people with autism are not “dumb” in social settings, they actually know the things very well. They also can adapt to social settings in extreme precise detail (germane cognitive load), but only after they are removed from the high-extraneous cognitive load environment.

Introduction
In the previous chapter 10/21/2019 — Chapter One: Cognitive Load Theory and Autism I have been talking about the idea how people with autism experience a high extraneous cognitive load, and how it decreases their task-performance. In this chapter, I want to talk about certain methods I have seen or use myself to lower extraneous cognitive load. These methods also apply to neurotypicals and can enhance learning and focus.

Reducing auditory extraneous cognitive load
People with autism have a much harder time to filter out irrelevant stimuli including auditory stimuli. In other words, they hear everything happening around them, like you speaking while simultaneously hearing that clock ticking in the background. Now, in my experience, things like the sound of a ticking clock doesn’t cause a high extraneous cognitive load in myself, and I usually get habituated to such sounds after a while. Sounds that aren’t repetitive, however, like a random person that’s talking in the background, does give me a rather high extraneous cognitive load. So what are some methods to reduce such auditory extraneous stimuli?

One thing I see people with autism do, or rather wear, are headphones that can also block sound, called noise-cancelling headphones. Some people with autism prefer that way, while others like me actually do prefer some music in the background. So this is one way to reduce extraneous auditory stimuli.

Reducing visual extraneous cognitive load
This one is more rare, but I have seen some people with autism getting rather distracted if the environment contains all kinds of exciting things to look at in a visual way e.g. a lot of colors. Now, the colors of the environment seems to affect everyone, from people with autism to neurotypicals, albeit subconsciously e.g. the color blue seems to be appetite-suppressant.

So some people with autism might prefer a minimalist environment in order to reduce extraneous cognitive load and improve concentration.

Another thing is eye contact. People with autism are not necessarily afraid of making eye contact, but rather that it requires a lot of neural resources to process it continuously while occupying valuable working memory slots. Neurotypicals tend to process eye contact in the background i.e. subconsciously, and therefore also not taking up any working memory slots (or at least not continuously), which is not the case, usually, in people with autism.

Although extraneous cognitive load usually refers to stimuli that is irrelevant and eye contact is actually very relevant, in the sense that it can give you a lot of information, it can be very irrelevant for people with autism who may not understand certain behavior as well i.e. lacking or having less of a theory of mind.

Reducing haptic extraneous cognitive load
Haptic means anything related to touch e.g. hugging. My skin happens to be very sensitive to whatever clothes I am wearing. The cloth needs to feel not too distracting. And what kind of clothing distracts me a lot in a haptic sense? Well, clothing that got a lot of wrinkles so that whenever I make a movement, I can feel those wrinkles scraping against my skin. So, that is my story.

Other people with autism might also share my story, or maybe they don’t like a lot of touching at all, even with their significant other. Or maybe they do like touching, but it just overloads their system with all kinds of thoughts and information.

I guess haptics can also be seen in a “far proximity” sense (proxemics), like sitting next to each other might be more cognitive demanding than sitting next to each other, while for some people it is the opposite. I like to sit next to each other, but at a distance. I guess, for people with autism, the “personal space” or “intimate space” radius is a little bit bigger than neurotypicals.

Reducing extraneous cognitive load through clear instructions
People with autism usually like to have clear instructions and a goal. They might paralyze and collapse when the possible options and information becomes too much (just like neurotypicals, it’s just that people with autism need less stimuli to collapse).

By giving them clear instructions and a goal, they know better what to focus on and what not i.e. ignoring extraneous stimuli.

Afterword
So there are many more examples to give, like smell maybe, but I think this will suffice for now.