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AUTISM FIRST STEPS
AUTISM DAILY NEWSLETTER
Monday December 24, 2001
INDEX:
* Choosing the Right Job
for People with Autism or Asperger's Syndrome
* A Letter from Dr. Jeff Bradstreet
* His Own Beat
* MMR Links to 170 Cases of Autism
******************************
Choosing the Right Job for People with Autism or
Asperger's Syndrome
Temple Grandin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
(November, 1999)
Jobs need to be chosen that make use of the strengths of people with autism or
Asperger's syndrome. Both high and low functioning people have very poor
short-term working memory, but they often have a better long-term memory than
most normal people. I have great difficulty with tasks that put high demands on
short-term working memory. I cannot handle multiple tasks at the same time.
Table 1 is a list of BAD jobs that I would have great difficulty doing. Table 2
is a list of easy jobs for a visual thinker like me. I have difficulty doing
abstract math such as algebra and most of the jobs on Table 2 do not require
complex math. Many of the visual thinking jobs would also be good for people
with dyslexia.The visual thinking jobs on Table 2 put very little demand on
fast processing of information in short-term working memory. They would fully
utilize my visual thinking and large long-term memory. Table 3 is a list of
jobs that non-visual thinkers who are good with numbers, facts and music could
do easily. They also put low demands on short-term working memory and utilize
an excellent long-term memory. Table 4 shows jobs that lower functioning people
with autism could do well. For all types of autism and Asperger's syndrome,
demands on short-term working memory must be kept low. If I were a computer, I
would have a huge hard drive that could hold 10 times as much information as an
ordinary computer but my processor chip would be small. To use 1999 computer
terminology, I have a 1000 gigabyte hard drive and a little 286 processor.
Normal people may have only 10 gigabytes of disc space on their hard drive and
a Pentium for a processor. I cannot do two or three things at once.Some job
tips for people with autism or Asperger's syndrome:
Jobs should have a well-defined goal or endpoint.
Sell your work, not your personality. Make a portfolio of your work.
The boss must recognize your social limitations. It is important that high
functioning autistics and Asperger's syndrome people pick a college major in an
area where they can get jobs. Computer science is a good choice because it is
very likely that many of the best programmers have either Asperger's syndrome
or some of its traits. Other good majors are: accounting, engineering, library
science, and art with an emphasis on commercial art and drafting. Majors in
history, political science, business, English or pure math should be avoided.
However, one could major in library science with a minor in history, but the
library science degree makes it easier to get a good job.Some individuals while
they are still in high school should be encouraged to take courses at a local
college in drafting, computer programming or commercial art. This will help
keep them motivated and serve as a refuge from teasing. Families with low
income may be wondering how they can afford computers for their child to learn
programming or computer aided drafting. Used computers can often be obtained
for free or at a very low cost when a business or an engineering company
upgrades their equipment. Many people do not realize that there are many usable
older computers sitting in storerooms at schools, banks, factories and other
businesses. It will not be the latest new thing, but it is more than adequate
for a student to learn on.In conclusion: a person with Asperger's syndrome or
autism has to compensate for poor social skills by making themselves so good in
a specialized field that people will be willing to "buy" their skill
even though social skills are poor. This is why making a portfolio of your work
is so important. You need to learn a few social survival skills, but you will
make friends at work by sharing your shared interest with the other people who
work in your specialty. My social life is almost all work related. I am friends
with people I do interesting work with.
Table 1
Bad Jobs for People with High Functioning Autism or Asperger's Syndrome:
Jobs that require high demands on short-term working memory
Cashier -- making change quickly puts too much demand on
short-term working memory
Short order cook -- Have to keep track of many orders and cook
many different things at the same time
Waitress -- Especially difficult if have to keep track of many
different tables
Casino dealer -- Too many things to keep track of
Taxi dispatcher -- Too many things to keep track of
Taking oral dictation -- Difficult due to auditory processing
problems
Airline ticket agent -- Deal with angry people when flights are
cancelled
Future market trader -- Totally impossible
Air traffic controller -- Information overload and stress
Receptionist and telephone operator -- Would have problems when
the switch board got busy
Table 2
Good Jobs for Visual Thinkers
Computer programming -- Wide-open field with many jobs available
especially in industrial automation, software design, business computers,
communications and network systems
Drafting -- Engineering drawings and computer aided drafting.
This job can offer many opportunities. Drafting is an excellent portal of entry
for many interesting technical jobs. I know people who started out at a company
doing drafting and then moved into designing and laying out entire factories.
To become really skilled at drafting, one needs to learn how to draw by hand
first. I have observed that most of the people who draw beautiful drawings on a
computer learned to draw by hand first. People who never learn to draw by hand
first tend to leave important details out of their drawings.
Commercial art -- Advertising and magazine layout can be done as
freelance work
Photography -- Still and video, TV cameraman can be done as
freelance work
Equipment designing -- Many industries, often a person starts as
a draftsman and then moves into designing factory equipment
Animal trainer or veterinary technician -- Dog obedience trainer,
behavior problem consultant
Automobile mechanic -- Can visualize how the entire car works
Computer-troubleshooter and repair -- Can visualize problems in
computers and networks
Small appliance and lawnmower repair -- Can make a nice local
business
Handcrafts of many different types such as wood carving,
jewelry making, ceramics, etc.
Laboratory technician -- Who modifies and builds specialized lab
equipment
Web page design -- Find a good niche market can be done as
freelance work
Building trades -- Carpenter or welder. These jobs make good use
of visual skills but some people will not be able to do them well due to motor
and coordination problems.
Video game designer -- Stay out of this field. Jobs are scarce
and the field is overcrowded. There are many more jobs in industrial,
communications business and software design computer programming. Another bad
thing about this job is exposure to violent images.
Computer animation -- Visual thinkers would be very good at this
field, but there is more competition in this field than in business or
industrial computer programming. Businesses are recruiting immigrants from
overseas because there is a shortage of good programmers in business and
industrial fields.
Building maintenance -- Fixes broken pipes, windows and other
things in an apartment complex, hotel or office building
Factory maintenance -- Repairs and fixes factory equipment
Table 3
Good Jobs for Non-Visual Thinkers: Those who are good at math, music or
facts
Accounting -- Get very good in a specialized field such as income
taxes
Library science -- reference librarian. Help people find
information in the library or on the Internet.
Computer programming -- Less visual types can be done as
freelance work
Engineering -- Electrical, electronic and chemical engineering
Journalist -- Very accurate facts, can be done as freelance
Copy editor -- Corrects manuscripts. Many people freelance for
larger publishers
Taxi driver -- Knows where every street is
Inventory control -- Keeps track of merchandise stocked in a
store
Tuning pianos and other musical instruments, can be done
as freelance work
Laboratory technician -- Running laboratory equipment
Bank Teller -- Very accurate money counting, much less demand on
short-term working memory than a busy cashier who mostly makes change quickly
Clerk and filing jobs -- knows where every file is
Telemarketing -- Get to repeat the same thing over and over,
selling on the telephone. Noisy environment may be a problem. Telephone sales
avoids many social problems.
Statistician -- Work in many different fields such as research,
census bureau, industrial quality control, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, etc.
Physicist or mathematician -- There are very few jobs in these
fields. Only the very brilliant can get and keep jobs. Jobs are much more
plentiful in computer programming and accounting.
Table 4
Jobs for Nonverbal People with Autism or People with Poor Verbal Skills
Reshelving library books -- Can memorize the entire numbering
system and shelf locations
Factory assembly work -- Especially if the environment is quiet
Copy shop -- Running photocopies. Printing jobs should be lined
up by somebody else
Janitor jobs -- Cleaning floors, toilets, windows and offices
Restocking shelves -- In many types of stores
Recycling plantR -- Sorting jobs
Warehouse -- Loading trucks, stacking boxes
Lawn and garden work -- Mowing lawns and landscaping work
Data entry -- If the person has fine motor problems, this would
be a bad job
Fast food restaurant -- Cleaning and cooking jobs with little
demand on short-term memory
Plant care -- Water plants in a large office building
http://www.autism.org/temple/jobs.html
******************************
A Letter from Dr. Jeff Bradstreet
Dr. Wakefield's abrupt departure from the Royal Free
Hospital points to the absolute necessity of an independent research campus,
where government and drug lobbying influences will not preclude exposing the
truth about the causes of autism. The International Child Development Resource
Center (ICDRC) is a partnership of researchers, parents, and therapists with a
heart for helping children with autism. Drs. Wakefield, Bradstreet and Kartzinel
have agreed to donate the tuition from their conferences to keep Dr.
Wakefield's research efforts alive, and to help the construction and funding of
the ICDRC research campus in central Florida. Drs. Wakefield, Bradstreet and
Kartzinel with an impressive guest faculty including Stephen Shore, Jeff Sell
(2 ASA Board Members), behavioral therapists, nutrition experts and others will
be presenting the first "Open Windows" Conference in Disneyland
California, January 11 and 12, 2002. The conference theme is "Opening
Windows of Hope for Children With Developmental Disorders." All attendees
receive a comprehensive training manual to assist them with implementing all of
the therapeutic interventions currently being used at ICDRC. Groups of 3 or
more can receive a 10% group discount and autism support groups, The conference
includes two lunches with the doctors and therapists so you have even more time
to get all of your questions answered. ASA chapters or FEAT groups who organize
attendance can receive an additional 10% to support their local chapter (or
kindly donate that to autism research with Dr Wakefield and ICDRC). Couples ca
also receive discounts if they request only one training manual. The next
conference will be in Orlando Florida January 26 & 27, 2002 next to the
Animal Kingdom entrance of Disney World. Disney has agreed to prepare gluten
and casein free meals upon request. The conference will provide practical
therapy guides, the latest research and a review of the medical literature, and
will be appropriate for parents of special needs children, therapists, teachers
and physicians. This is your chance to support critical research and show your
support for Dr. Wakefield who continues to make tremendous sacrifices for our
children. Simultaneously, you will receive the tools you need to help your
child. Continuing education credits are being applied for.For more information
you may go to Dr.Bradstreet's website:
Welcome to The Good News Doctor Foundation
http://www.gnd.org
Click on News/Events
http://www.gnd.org/news/news.htm
and you will be able to get information on both the California and Florida
Conferences. Thank You All, Jeff Bradstreet, MD, FAAFP
Director & Founder, ICDRC
******************************
His Own Beat
"I feel happy," said Matthew Savage of playing
music. "I feel really involved in the music." His Own Beat
Autistic Youngster Wows Jazz World
Nov. 14 — Since birth, Matthew Savage has marched to his own beat — but his
parents never suspected where that would lead.
Now 9 years old, Matthew is an acclaimed jazz pianist who plays to
sold-out crowds alongside veterans of the Boston area jazz scene.What makes
Matthew's success even more remarkable is that he is diagnosed with a form of
autism — a condition that often forces a child into a world of his own, prone
to traumas and an inability to communicate. Along with autism can also come a
precocious ability to remember and to mimic things repetitively. But Matthew
also improvizes with extraordinary creativity in the classic tradition of jazz,
and he has schooled himself intensively in the history of his musical heroes,
including Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. When Music Was PainfulIronically,
in his earlier years Matthew couldn't stand the sound of music. The mere
presence of it would send it him into a tantrum, a characteristic trait of
autism. So the Savages sent Matthew to what is called auditory integration therapy,
a technique used with many autistic children to desensitize their reactions to
certain sound frequencies.His parents devoted countless hours of therapy for
Matthew — speech therapy, emotional therapy and teaching him to deal with the
unexpected.Matthew began to respond. "All of a sudden the environment is
sending him signals that he's hearing and seeing and smelling and
understanding," says Matthew's dad, Larry. So we were breaking into his
world, into his shell.""And he was coming into ours," says his
mother, Diane.His parents believe that part of Matthew's talent stems from a
condition that accompanies his autism called hyperlexia — an intense fixation
on words and numbers that contributed to his ability to memorize books and,
very quickly, read music. He began playing with a toy piano when he was about 6
1/2. His mother helped him transfer the information to the real piano, and an
unexpected career took off from there.Matthew has three CD's under a label that
was formed by his parents to raise money for autism research.Though his talent
is a remarkable mystery, particularly for a 9-year-old, his experience with
music is as simple and profound as it is for all musicians."I feel
happy," he said. "I feel really involved in the music. I feel like
I'm hanging on to the music.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/DailyNews/2020_011114_Savage.html
******************************
Rerun By Reader Request
MMR Links to 170 Cases of Autism
Dr. Andrew
Wakefield who first raised concerns about MMR vaccinations has disclosed that
he has identified nearly 170 cases of a new syndrome of autism and bowel
disease in children who have had the triple-dose injection.
In the "majority" of cases parents had documentary evidence that
their child's physical and mental decline had followed the vaccination. The
Department of Health says that the safety of MMR has been proven. The argument
is untenable. It cannot be substantiated by the science. Tests have revealed
time and time again that we are dealing with a new phenomenon. The Department
of Health's contention that MMR has been proven to be safe by study after study
after study just doesn't hold up. Frankly, it is not an honest appraisal of the
science and it relegates the scientific issues to the bottom of the barrel in
favour of winning a propaganda war.It emerged recently that a rising number of
doctors and nurses were worried about giving second doses of the vaccine, and
pressure is growing for its separation into its three component vaccinations,
spread over three years.The vaccine, which contains live measles, mumps and
rubella virus, has been given to millions of children in the UK since its
introduction in 1988 but the take-up rate has fallen sharply since Dr Wakefield
made his original claims. Electronic Telegraph January 21, 2001DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT: Contributed by David Foster dfoster@ucsd.eduThe controversy over an
alleged link between the MMR vaccine and autism will certainly become even more
contentious. It is important to note that this is NOT the first time Dr.
Wakefield has spoken publicly about this since his Lancet paper in 1998. He has
testified before a US Congressional Subcommittee in June of 2000, and gave an
excellent talk at the Second International Public Conference on Vaccination,
sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), in September 2000.
The take-home message in all this should be that for parents who still believe
that one or more of these diseases (measles, mumps, and rubella), warrant
protection through vaccination, the vaccines should be given individually and
separated by time. The government agencies will continue to proclaim the safety
of the combined MMR vaccine, regardless of the evidence found to the contrary,
citing studies which are hopelessly flawed, with some presenting with serious
financial conflicts of interest. The Taylor study, for example, which is
repeatedly hailed as proof that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, actually
found evidence SUGGESTING a connection. They found a significant cluster of
parental concern about their children six months after vaccination; this
finding was summarily dismissed by the authors. Also, when their data is
analyzed correctly, taking into account the British "catch-up"
campaign which vaccinated children up to 3-4 years of age when the MMR vaccine
was introduced, the step-up in the incidence of autism occurs precisely after
the MMR vaccine was first used. A very similar step-up occurs in the United
States ten years earlier, precisely when the MMR vaccine was introduced. This
seems to be asking too much of coincidence.There is also a Finnish study which
is often cited in defense of the MMR vaccine.(This will be posted next week)
What is usually not mentioned is that this study was funded by Merck, the
manufacturer of MMR vaccine. Dr. Wakefield himself points out, in his testimony
before a US Congressional committee in June 2000, many problems with this
study, not the least of which is that it tested the wrong hypothesis and its
conclusions are therefore invalid.The evidence supporting a relationship
between MMR and autism is more than enough to warrant serious concern. Dr.
Wakefield has found measles virus in the guts of over 170 autistic children,
and Dr. Kawashima from Japan has confirmed that the virus found comes from the
MMR vaccine. Dr. Vijendra Singh has found brain antibodies in autistic
children, suggesting that this is an autoimmune disorder which is attacking the
brain, and finds a strong relationship between measles antibodies and these
brain antibodies. There is a long line of research which suggests that the
combination of measles and mumps infection increases the risk for inflammatory
bowel disease. Dr. Scott Montgomery, a colleague of Dr. Wakefield's, has found
that children who are given the measles vaccine in temporal proximity to mumps
infection have an increased risk of bowel disease.Is this not enough evidence
to question the safety of the combined MMR vaccine? The British authorities
claim that they are concerned about a resurgence of epidemics as a result of
this "scare", yet they deny their citizens access to monovalent
(single) vaccines. As Dr. Wakefield suggests, this is no longer a quest for
scientific truth, it has become a "propaganda war".Unfortunately, the
casualties are our children.Related Articles:Testimony to Committee
on Government Reform, US Congress (Click on Andrew Wakefield...by far the best
single reference I've found)Increase in Incidence of Autism (Dr. Edward
Yazbak)The autism increase: research needed on the vaccine connection (Bernard
Rimland)
http://www.mercola.com/2001/jan/28/mmr_autism.htm
Other link of interest:
Autism Congressional Hearing Andrew Wakefield Testimony:
http://www.house.gov/reform/hearings/healthcare/00.06.04/wakefield.pdf
(NOTE: large PDF file) May take a few
minutes to load.
******************************
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