Temple Grandin

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Temple Grandin. Photograph courtesy Rosalie Winard.

Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a professor at Colorado State University and a professional designer of "humane" slaughterhouses.

[edit] Early life and education

Grandin is autistic and grew up before autism was diagnosed. Having been labeled and diagnosed with brain damage at age two, she was placed in a structured nursery school with what she considers to have been good teachers. Grandin's mother spoke to a doctor who suggested speech therapy, and she hired a nanny who spent hours playing turn-based games with Grandin and her sister.

At age four, Grandin began talking, and she began making progress. She considers herself lucky to have had supporting mentors from primary school onwards. However, Grandin has said that middle school and high school were the worst parts of her life. She was the "nerdy kid" the one that everyone teased and picked on. She would be walking down the street and people would say "tape recorder", because she would repeat things over and over again. Grandin states that "I could laugh about it now, but back then it really hurt."

Several years later her condition was recognized and in adulthood she was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a mild, or 'high functioning' form of autism and part of the autism spectrum.^[1]

After completing her schooling in the 1960s, attending the Hampshire Country School in Rindge, New Hampshire, Grandin went on to college. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Franklin Pierce College in 1970, her master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and her PhD in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.

Dr. Grandin regularly takes anti-depressants and uses a squeeze-box (hug machine) she invented at the age of 18 as a form of personal therapy.

[edit] Career, celebrity, advocacy

Grandin became well known after being described by Oliver Sacks in the title narrative of his book, An Anthropologist on Mars; the title is derived from Grandin's description of how she feels around 'neurotypical' people. Grandin has also been featured on major television programs, such as ABC's Primetime Live, the Today Show, and Larry King Live, and written up in Time magazine, People magazine, Forbes, and The New York Times.^[2] She was the subject of the Horizon documentary "The Woman Who Thinks Like A Cow", first broadcast by the BBC on June 8, 2006 and Nick News in the spring of 2006.^[3]

Based on personal experience, Grandin advocates early intervention to address autism and supportive teachers who can direct fixations of the autistic child in fruitful directions. She has described her hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli. She is a primarily visual thinker and has said that language is her second language. Temple attributes her success as a humane livestock facility designer to her ability to recall detail, which is a characteristic of her visual memory. Grandin compares her memory to full-length movies in her head that can be replayed at will, allowing her to notice small details that would otherwise be overlooked. She is also able to view her memories using slightly different contexts by changing the positions of the lighting and shadows. Her insight into the minds of cattle has taught her to value the changes in details to which animals are particularly sensitive, and to use her visualization skills to design thoughtful and humane animal-handling equipment.

I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.

Grandin's interest in animal welfare began with designs for sweeping curved corrals, intended to reduce stress in animals being led to slaughter.

Grandin is considered a philosophical leader of both the animal welfare and autism advocacy movements. Both movements commonly cite her work regarding animal welfare, neurology, and philosophy. She knows all too well the anxiety of feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being dismissed and feared, all of which motivates her in her quest to promote humane livestock handling processes. Her business website has entire sections on how to improve standards in slaughter plants and livestock farms. In 2004 she won a "Proggy" award, in the "visionary" category, from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.^[4]

One of her most important essays about animal welfare is "Animals are not Things," in which she posits that animals are technically property in our society, but the law ultimately gives them ethical protections or rights. She uses a screwdriver metaphor: a person can legally smash or grind up a screwdriver but a person cannot legally torture an animal.

As a proponent of neurodiversity, Grandin has expressed that she would not support a cure of the entirety of the autistic spectrum.^[5]

[edit] Books

• Emergence: Labeled Autistic (with Margaret Scariano, 1986, updated 1991), ISBN 0-446-67182-7
• The Learning Style of People with Autism: An Autobiography (1995). In Teaching Children with Autism : Strategies to Enhance Communication and Socializaion, Kathleen Ann Quill, ISBN 0-8273-6269-2
• Grandin, Temple (1996). Thinking in pictures : and Other Reports from My Life with Autism. Vintage. ISBN 0-679-77289-8. 
• Developing Talents : Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism (2004). ISBN 1-931282-56-0
• Animals in Translation : Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (with Catherine Johnson, 2005), ISBN 0-7432-4769-8
• The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism (with Sean Barron, 2005), ISBN 193256506X
• Introduction to Wild Birds of the American Wetlands (2008), 978-1-59962-034-3

[edit] See also

• Controversies in autism
• Hug machine
• Sensory Integration Dysfunction
• Sociological and cultural aspects of autism
• Wendy W. Jacob

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Grandin.com - Temple Grandin's commercial page
• TempleGrandin.com - 'Temple Grandin, PhD'
• BBC Documentary on Temple Grandin
• American Radioworks article
• Audio Interview to Temple Grandin on the Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC)