AUDIO TRACK 1.

29 4:35 min
Interview
Page 67, Exercise E, Listen for Main Ideas
HOST: Good afternoon. As a part of our series on our university's graduate students,
Sarah Denby is here from the School of Education to talk about her research. Welcome,
Sarah.
SARAH DENBY: Thank you!
HOST: So, could you give us an overview of your work?
SARAH: Sure. I research people with unusual brains. At some point in their lives, all of
them were told that they could not learn, but later became successful. And interestingly,
for many of them, their success is not in spite of their so-called differences and
limitations, but rather because of them.
HOST: That's interesting. Could you provide some clarification by talking about someone
in your study?
SARAH: Sure. Dr. Temple Grandin was diagnosed with autism in 1949 at the age of two.
At that time, little was known about the condition, and people with autism were not
expected to do much with their lives. After diagnosis, many ended up in institutions
where they got progressively worse and eventually died.
HOST: I assume that was not the outcome for Dr. Grandin?
SARAH: Fortunately, no. She's a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State
University and a writer. She also designs equipment to handle animals that are raised for
food, such as cattle for beef. She's designed the facilities for almost half of the cattle in
the United States.
HOST: So how has she been so successful?
SARAH: Well, Dr. Grandin is highly intelligent, as her achievements show. However, she
still finds many everyday things difficult or impossible to do. For example, she is unable
to remember more than three simple instructions, and she has extreme difficulty with
abstract thinking. These difficulties could have meant the destruction of her dream of
becoming a scientist.
HOST: So how did she do it?
SARAH: Her family's support was important, but scans of Dr. Grandin's brain also
provide some answers. The part of her brain that controls the coordination of movement
is 20% smaller than average. The area that handles short-term memory is also small. On
the other hand, the side that processes visual information is unusually large. This helps
explain her effective approach to thinking and learning.
HOST: So what is that approach?
SARAH: Dr. Grandin thinks in pictures, rather than words. For example, she can design a
complex cattle facility entirely in her mind, image by image, and later draw it from
memory. She says that her thinking process is similar to animals. She believes that's one
of the reasons she's so good at her work.
HOST: Can you give us an example?
SARAH: Sure. One time she was asked to solve a problem in a cattle processing facility.
To handle a large number of cattle, you often need to get them to calmly walk in a line. In
this facility, something strange kept happening. The cattle would be walking along when
suddenly one of them would become paralyzed with fear and stop moving. This always
happened at exactly the same place. However, nobody in the plant was able to see
anything different about that spot. It was then that they contacted Dr. Grandin.
As soon as Dr. Grandin saw the facility, she identified the problem. There was a hole in
the roof that let light in exactly above the spot where the cattle stopped moving.
Once the hole was covered, the cattle immediately calmed down.
HOST: But why was it so obvious to Dr. Grandin, when it wasn't visible to anyone else?
SARAH: Because of how her brain works. When she looks at something, her mind
creates an exact image of that thing and everything around it. For most people, this would
be a serious problem. Our brains cannot handle all of the visual information that is
constantly entering it -so we miss a lot of things. However, the visual part of Dr.
Grandin's brain is so well-developed and she has learned to use it so effectively that she
notices things that others miss.
In fact, Dr. Grandin believes that autistic people could solve problems that seem
impossible to people with "normal" brains, if they-and we - stopped focusing so much on
their disability.
HOST: Fascinating! So, what do you hope to achieve through your research?
SARAH: Well, I think Dr. Grandin is right. We must transform our way of looking at
brain differences, and stop thinking of them as disabilities.
HOST: Thank you, Sarah. Good luck with your research.
SARAH: Thank you.