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Different kinds of minds contribute to society

Published on June 2, 2014   43 min

A selection of talks on Neurology

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0:00
It's a real honor to be doing a Henry Stewart talk. My name is Temple Grandin. I am professor of animal science at Colorado State University. And today, I'm going to be talking about how different kinds of minds can contribute to society.
0:19
On this next slide, I want you to gain insight into how different kinds of people think and process information differently. When I was three years old, I was very severely autistic, no language until age four. Fortunately, I had really good early educational intervention. I had really good teachers, who worked with me. And when I was young, I thought everybody processed information the same way I do. And I'm going to show you how different kinds of minds process information differently.
0:54
On this slide, I asked the question, when does normal variation become an abnormality? Because research has shown that people that are bipolar often have more siblings in creative careers. And Simon Baron Cohen has found that people with autism, there's more relatives in technical careers. At what point is just being quirky and nerdy become an absolute abnormality? There is no black and white dividing line between geeks and nerds, Silicon Valley, and just a mild autism or an Asperger's syndrome. Also, these diagnostic categories are not precise. They're not like a diagnosis for tuberculosis, where you can do a lab test that says, yes, you have tuberculosis.

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Different kinds of minds contribute to society

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