Unit 2
Cognition
Perception, attention, memory, thinking, language, and intelligence.
Perceptual Processing
Bottom-up vs. top-down processing
Some research suggests autistic perception leans more on bottom-up detail and less on top-down expectations, great for noticing details, harder for filtering.
Perceptual Processing
Selective attention & the cocktail party effect
Picking one voice out of a noisy room is exactly what can be hard during sensory overload. 'Just ignore it' assumes a filter that may work differently.
Selective attention
Monotropism & attention
Monotropism (Dinah Murray) describes attention that flows deeply into a few channels at a time. It explains intense interests, hyperfocus, and why switching tasks is so costly.
Memory Encoding & Storage
Working memory
Working memory differences can make multi-step instructions hard, which is why written lists and chunking help so much.
Thinking & Problem Solving
Heuristics & confirmation bias
People often use a representativeness heuristic ('autistic people look like X'), which is part of why autistic girls get missed. Confirmation bias also keeps the 'lazy' label sticking.
Language Acquisition
Semantics & implied meaning
Social language is full of implied meaning. Tag questions like 'right?' are a way of checking meaning that was never said out loud.
Intelligence
Multiple intelligences & spiky profiles
Gardner's idea fits autistic 'spiky profiles', very high skill in some areas and real struggle in others. A single IQ number hides this.
Intelligence
Stereotype threat
Students aware of negative stereotypes about their group can perform worse. Autistic students told they're 'lazy' or 'difficult' may carry that into every test.
These connections are study aids, not medical advice. Some ideas (like the excitation/inhibition theory) are still being researched.