Temple Grandin

Some dyslexics are object thinkers, and some are more mathematical visual-spatial. Once again, the studies don’t sufficiently distinguish between the two types. Some spatial visualizers and people with dyslexia are great at big-picture thinking; they can both visualize and rotate 3D objects in their mind’s eye. I have worked with creative metalworkers who had dyslexia. They designed and built huge, elaborate feed mills. Object visualization skills are used to design complex systems consisting of conveyors, pumps, and feed-mixing equipment. The spatial visualizers make them work.

Temple Grandin in Visual Thinking

I’m a total picture-thinker, and Betsy lives in a world of words. It was a huge challenge for her to help me arrange my thoughts in a linear fashion. Not only do I think in pictures, but my mind is associative. It creates chunks of visualized information and makes associations. To a verbal thinker, these associations may appear random, but in my mind I’m continuously sorting the images. Betsy, on the other hand, is a strictly linear verbal thinker. She needs a sentence to be grammatically correct before she can understand it and move on to the next. We learned that we think completely differently, but that difference became the cornerstone of our future collaborations. To the uninitiated verbal thinker, my initial draft would have looked like a disjointed series of chunks. Betsy takes my pictures and puts them in order.

Temple Grandin in Visual Thinking

Film director Steven Spielberg wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until he was sixty.

Temple Grandin in Visual Thinking

Most of our traits are polygenic, which means they are affected by many genes. Another mechanism for understanding individual difference is single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. Each one of these refers to possible substitutions at a single rung on the ladder of DNA. Sometimes a rung on the ladder changes and nobody knows why. This is called a de novo mutation and occurs in a small percentage of people diagnosed with autism.

Temple Grandin in Visual Thinking

early on in my career I realized that the way to get things done was to be “project loyal.” More important than any ego was the goal to do the best work and get the job done. Most projects crash and burn, as far as I can tell, from an abundance of ego. I think I speak for most techies when I say we will go the distance to get a project done. That is our chief objective: our loyalty is to the project, not to management. We’ll sit around in the job trailer and complain about what an idiot the manager is, but we’ll get the machine working. I will grovel in the dirt if needed to get a job done right. I am completely driven by project loyalty over ego.

Temple Grandin in Visual Thinking

Generalization is death to a techie, because every minor detail has major consequences. Perhaps the biggest consequence of generalization is underestimating the time it takes to complete a project. And the bigger a suit’s ego, the more destruction they will do.

Temple Grandin in Visual Thinking