Do We Live in the Same 'Time Zone'? (Delayed perception in autism)

Due to delayed processing autistic individuals may need some time to process the question and prepare their response. (Immediate responses are often given on 'autopilot', triggered by memories. In these cases, a person does not mean, and does not know what he 'has just said'.) Before proper response autistic people must go through a number of separate stages in perception, and if this long decision-chain is interrupted by the outside world (e.g., we repeat the same question), the autistic person must start all over again because overselectivity has changed the scene completely (VanDalen, 1995). In other words, an interruption effectively wipes away any intermediate result, confronting the autistic person literally "for the first time" with the same object/event/situation. VanDalen suggests that autism could possibly be understood as an extension of the processing time of impressions. This definition implies importance of giving autistic people time to enable them to finish their perceptual work successfully and "to experience meaning that is awaiting in the end of the long road of perception" (VanDalen, 1995).

All these "continuous obligatory thinking activities connected with everyday object-perception" (VanDalen) require much effort and energy. That is another reason for autistic children to resist any changes, and prefer familiar surroundings where it is much easier for them to control their perceptual world.

Every step of perception they experience explicitly, in a not-automatic way with a great mental effort involved.

There are several consequences of delayed processing:

• They are often unable to start the action immediately as they need time to interpret and comprehend the situation.
• When they finally reach 'comprehension', the situation has changed. It means that they 'experience meaning' out of the context it should have been experienced. That is why, new experiences, no matter how similar to previous ones, are perceived as new, unfamiliar and unpredictable, and responses to them are poor regardless of the number of times the person has experienced the same thing (Williams, 1996).
• The amount of time needed to process any experience often remains slow (or delayed) regardless of having had similar experiences in the past, things do not get easier with time or learning (Williams, 1996). They are not able to apply something they have learned in one situation to another.

Their subjective experience of time is also different from that of non-autistics. For them, time might seem faster, whereas non-autistic people may think that autistic children are slow in their decision-making.

What we can do to help:

Give them time to

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