Autism, dogs, etc.

Our standing orders on Samizdata are to write not just about certain specific areas of thought and policy, but about what is on our minds. I take this as an invitation to stray beyond the obvious and beyond our core expertises, such as they are. Not everything here is even supposed to make complete sense.

In that spirit, let me tell you about two pieces of writing which, taken together, struck me as interesting. They are pretty interesting even separately, but together they get even more interesting. Anyway, see what you think.

The first piece of writing is a book called The Cradle of Thought, by Peter Hobson, who is an expert on autism, but not only on autism. Hobson’s subject matter is not just the particular form of unusual thought and experience called autism, but also the light that this and other abnormalities throw on the processes of normal human thought. (One of the best ways to understand how something is supposed to work is to examine what happens when something or someone damages it or in some way interrupts its smooth working.)

What comes across from this book is that thinking, of the sort that most of us do most of the time, is an intensely social thing. It starts not just with me thinking about that. It starts with me thinking about that by learning what you already think about that. What you (typically my mother) think(s) is the thing that gets me started with my thinking.

So, if I am the sort of me who is especially disposed not to pay attention to what you (my mum) are (is) thinking, that changes how I think, about everything. I may become very expert, by default, about things, but remain permanently baffled by people, and in particular by the notion that other people have a point of view of their own which I can tune into, and by the idea that other people are accordingly very different from other mere things.

This book seems to be quite well known and quite highly regarded, so there is no shortage of further verbiage to read about it should you feel the urge, now that you have heard a little of my point of view about it.

The other piece of writing was this article and related discussion, about dogs, and about the differences between dogs and such animals as wolves and foxes, which I got to via the ever interesting and stimulating Arts & Letters Daily. Dogs are, as we most of us know, intensely social and sociable animals, and they are particularly special in their willingness – nay, their enthusiasm – for socialising with us. If ever there was an animal who tunes in to our point of view, and who is willing to organise its own life and feelings around how we feel about things, that animal is the dog.

Have you ever heard of a dog immitating vocal exercizes? As a singer, I sometimes do this descending ooh sound, down an octave. I had a jack russell that copied me, and even could be prompted by a pitch pipe to do the exercize, and pretty in tune too! [Question from Tom Boyer to Adam Miklosi – very near the bottom here.]

And you can bet that the reason this jack russell was doing this was because that way it got to be involved, to socialise, to muck in with everyone and get lots of pats on the back. Hey! Whatever it takes! And besides, it’s fun!

Dogs, in short, are absolutely not autistic. Not when they are, as it were, proper dogs, doing for us and with us what dogs are supposed to do. Dogs are so doglike that we instinctively understand that to deprive a dog of another point of view to share, whether that of another dog or of a human, is a definite form of cruelty, as real as beating it or starving it.

Wild dogs – such as foxes or wolves – are very different:

Two years ago, Ms. Virányi and other graduate students began hand-raising a group of wolf cubs. They coddled and hand-fed them, took them for walks and played with them, while other students raised dog puppies of the same age. Dogs descended exclusively from wolves some 15,000 to 135,000 years ago, according to genetic studies, and the researchers wanted to see if wolves could be socialized to communicate with people.

At five weeks of age, the wolf cubs were introduced to a room containing their hand-raiser and an adult dog, both sitting motionless, and the human staring into space. Mr. Miklósi shows a video of what happened: A gawky wolf cub stumbles awkwardly up to the dog, sniffs it a bit, then does the same to the human before climbing into the person’s lap and going to sleep. No eye contact is made with its caregiver; the cub appears to treat the person like a comfortable piece of furniture.

No eye contact. The cub treats the person like a piece of furniture. That is very human-autistic.

That the differences between different kinds of animals, or between the same kinds of animals differently reared, might illuminate human differences and human behaviours is obviously not a new idea. Nor is the idea that the dog/wolf difference might in some ways be analogous to the human/autistic-human difference, and that the former might throw light on the latter, as the page at the other end of this link makes very clear. Talking of autism alongside talking about “feral” children and about feral creatures of other sorts is clearly a well-established notion.

All the same, I found it all very interesting. I could ramble on, but that is really all I want to say here on this subject.

Or, to summarise it rather more succinctly: woof.

Just going woof and adding a few links, is, I think, one of the things that blogging is all about. (Blogging, like dogs, and like normal people, is also very social and sociable.)