Slide 37

It's informative to consider the possible cognitive developmental relationship between abnormal attentional and perceptual processes and the diagnostic features of autism.

Imagine that your life is a film, being screened in some Cartesian theatre, by a projectionist who doesn't know what he's doing.

Perhaps he gets the aperture wrong, so you can see only a small corner of the picture at a time, or perhaps you have sound without picture or picture without sound.

Everyone around you is talking about this film, and you'd very much like to understand it.

To have any hope of doing so, you'll need to rewind the film and watch it again and again.

When people with autism do this, we say that they're engaging in restricted and repetitive interests and behaviours.