One characteristic that played a key role in my Autism diagnosis is my “vibrant inner life.” And I find imagination and intuition to be closely related, if not conjoined at the birth of awareness.
I think a lot of people acknowledge that Auties can display heightened perception (“sensory issues”), which I feel are akin to intuition and empathy. When we absorb and see and feel everything in our environments and beyond, yes, we can get a little worked up. We “know” too much, sometimes.
But while researching this, I found a disturbing number of articles presenting research on intuition and autism which propose that we Auties are strong on logic and weak on intuition.
I disagree, in part. In my view, based on observation of myself and others, many Autistics who engage in society are acutely intuitive.
Warning: the rest of this post contains geeky references and links to wordy scientific articles, sprinkled in with my yammering. Feel free to skim past the links; they’re there merely to share what got me riled up, and to demonstrate that I did some homework before launching into my tirade.
Related links:
This article (above) from Scientific American, titled “Knowing Me, Knowing You: How Social Intuition Goes Awry in Autism,” by Bruce M. Hood, makes me particularly angry. No. It makes me want to scream “bullshit!” loud enough that Mr. Hood would hear me.
Hear me. Because you’re not talking about me, despite your broad generalizations and “scientific” study results.
Hear me. Because my son and I are both painfully intuitive, empathic, and Autistic.
Hear me. Because Autism is a spectrum. We are not all alike. Shame on you for implying that we are.
Hear me. Because, with my confounding intuition, what I see in “most normal” people is the opposite of what you see, Mr. Hood.
Disclaimer: I do not pretend to speak for others. And I know my Autism may look deceptively “normal” to many.
But I count. Especially when strangers attach inaccurate labels to me.
When I “look” at “normal” people I often see humans so devoid of empathy and intuition – and knowing themselves – that the only way they can survive socially is, yes, by mimicking other “normal” people. I’ve seen this in toddlers, teens, college students, professionals, parents, and the elderly.
That’s particularly unfortunate in these times when “normal” includes carrying firearms and harboring hostility which ranges from petty meanness through bullying to relationship abuse and exploitation. And wanton murder.
Now, this isn’t scientific (outside of my mental laboratory), but I believe that most empaths or intuitives know instinctively when they are being manipulated. Even if we cannot speak or otherwise communicate, or are blind, deaf, or “mentally impaired.” But we cannot always express it or name it. We simply know that something is terribly wrong.
And, based on my experience, we often know when our actions might harm others.
But, as hypersensitives, and when we’re raised entrenched in the mores of current social fads and expectations, we might find ourselves deeply confused. We know we’re being expected to modify ourselves “to fit in.” So, if we’re compliant, yet fortunate, someday we end up in therapy, trying to unlearn the toxic lessons gleaned from going against our grain for years or decades. Or from convincing ourselves that we’re correct to follow mistaken guides and guidelines.
If we’re unfortunate, we suffer throughout our entire lives at the hands of those who think they know better. Goodness, help us, please.
I chose to comply and mimic from birth. When I did, I won Mom’s conditional love. There was a tangible reward. Yes, tangible; it could be felt and seen. To fight for myself was so painful I could not bear it.
World, please think of that before you send a child to ABA “therapy.” And before you think they’re doing well because they’re getting better at fitting in.
In fairness, Mr. Hood’s article was written twelve years ago. So let’s move on.
Here’s another, published by the US Government, in 2017, titled “Brief Report: Intuitive and Reflective Reasoning in Autism Spectrum Disorder”:
I’m not going into the Dual Process Model or “reflective reasoning,” because I want to keep your attention. I found it interesting reading, but I’m a nerd.
The impression I get from reading several related articles and trying to boil it all down (and I may be wrong – please let me know if I am) is that Science is trying to understand Autism, but the tools in its box are heavily weighted towards, well, science and reason. I find it hilarious that science attempts to measure intuition.
I suspect most of these studies used timers and multiple-choice questions, and the questions or problems arise from a “normal” social construct. Also, I read that the distinction between intuitive responses and reasoned responses was based on the time it took for the subjects to answer. I consider that to be a shallow metric.
As I read these articles, I started stimming. My mind was spinning, thinking about all of the limitations scientists face. They don’t really have a way to measure “intuition” other than by looking at brain activity, do they?
I hope you’ll catch the connection when I tell you a bit about my history – as an Autistic – answering multiple-choice questions that required reasoning.
I did very well in school. Valedictorian in high school and college; scored high on college entrance exams. And I think I’ve got a pretty high IQ, although I’ve never bothered with a proctored, sit-down IQ test.
Over the years I noticed a pattern: I don’t reason like most test writers. And I suspect the questions were often checking our ability to reason, more than our raw knowledge of a subject. So, during those kinds of exams, my mind spent most of its response time checking my intuition and not trusting my personal reasoning process. Eventually, I would choose the answer that I thought the test wanted, not always the one I felt was right.
When I had access to the answers on a test, it was often frustrating when I disagreed with the answer. I don’t mean that I just missed the answer or didn’t know the material. I would shake my head, asking myself, “Do they realize they have two correct answers?” Pretty humorous. Or arrogant. But that’s also why I dreaded those tests. I’ve never had a chance to converse with a test author to hear what their reasoning was.
My point is that I may not be alone. I may not be the only Autistic sitting at a test, trying to second guess the author rather than going with my gut and reasoning. If that’s true, and if I’m understanding these studies… their conclusions seem off-base. Or at least incomplete. It’s like comparing oranges and apples.
On the flip side, here’s an anecdote about my (also Autistic) son.
When he was in High School (and during his younger years), he tended to make good grades, even though studying was a struggle. That thrilled this parent – the world would be wide open to him!
One night we sat in a pizza parlor prepping for a math test over dinner. He was having a hard time, and I felt confused.
“Lucas, if you don’t understand these homework problems, how is it that you’re making Bs?”
“I just guess.”
“You guess…”
“Yeah, I just go down the list and fill in the circles. And then I wait until someone else turns their test in before I turn mine in.”
So much for Autistics not using intuition. I rest my case.
I’d like to mention the artwork in this post. I created it in Photoshop by layering images I prompted into MidJourney AI. Thank goodness all the key facial features aligned in all three images. They were all generated from the same seed file; I just tweaked the prompts. It’s a happy coincidence that this girl looks very much like I did at this age. Go figure.
Leslee Hare
leslee hare 