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Being Subjective about AutisticThinking and Learning to LearnStuart D. Powell a & Rita R. Jordan aa Educational Research into Autism Group , University ofHertfordshire , UKPublished online: 23 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Stuart D. Powell & Rita R. Jordan (1993) Being Subjective aboutAutistic Thinking and Learning to Learn, Educational Psychology: An International Journal ofExperimental Educational Psychology, 13:3-4, 359-370, DOI: 10.1080/0144341930130312

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Educational Psychology, Vol. 13, Nos 3 and 4, 1993 359

Being Subjective about Autistic Thinking andLearning to Learn

STUART D . POWELL & RITA R. JORDAN, Educational Research into AutismGroup, University of Hertfordshire, UK

ABSTRACT In this paper, we discuss the deviant pattern of the development of thinking inautism and outline our thesis that the problem with autistic memory is in developing a personalepisodic memory, and that this difficulty arises because of a deficit in the development of anexperiencing self, which we have termed (after Brewer, 1986) an 'ego-self. We discussconstraints which we suggest result in learnable thinking skills remaining domain specific:difficulties with (i) language, (ii) coding, storage and retrieval of information and (iii) the roleof emotions. We discuss what 'improving the thinking' of individuals with autism would entailand draw implications regarding fundamental requirements and caveats of teaching thinkingfor all individuals.

Our current work brings together two strands of thought in the area of 'improvingthinking'. One author had been working within the mainstream context with specificcomputer-presented problem solving activities (Riding & Powell, 1990; 1991) with theaim of 'improving thinking' (Riding & Powell, 1985; 1986; 1987). The second authorhad been engaged in the education of pupils with learning difficulties and, in particular,with those with autism, and had been trying to develop ways of moving beyond a'skills-based' compensatory curriculum (Kiernan et al., 1978) to one that would helpthe pupils 'learn how to learn'. In our initial work together, we attempted to extendsome of the successes of the earlier Riding and Powell studies. Those studies had shownthat it was possible to improve children's scores on tests designed to assess clearthinking (e.g. Raven's matrices, 1956) through the use of particular problem solvingactivities. We wanted to see whether the same results would be found in pupils withautism for whom problem solving is a specific area of difficulty (Webster et al, 1980).The results we obtained (Jordan & Powell, 1990a) led us to question both the natureof the autistic difficulty with problem solving (Jordan & Powell, 1990b) and fundamen-

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tal issues concerning the possibility of improving thinking in all pupils. In this paper, wetrace the development of our own understanding in relation to these two questions.

Domain Specific 'Thinking Gains'

Although in our experiment with the computer programs there was an overall improve-ment in the scores for the pupils with autism (on the Raven's and, later, on the BritishAbility Scales [Elliot et at., 1983]), it was clear, on further analysis of individualperformances on subtests of the BAS, that there were wide variations both between andwithin subject scores. It seemed that it was possible to improve performance in specificcognitive domains (e.g. visual perception, short-term visual memory) for some pupilswhile having little or no effect on other domains or on measures of a more general'thinking' ability such as matrices. In some senses this echoes the kinds of concerns withall 'thinking' programmes, in both normally developing (Powell, 1987) and exceptionalpopulations (Spitz, 1986), that gains may be domain specific. But, rather than pursue,for example, the question of how usable discrete cognitive skills are in various academicdomains, we questioned why it should be that gains should remain specific and why thisspecificity should be so pronounced within the group of individuals with autism. Itseemed to us that the autistic population was a useful one in which to examine thisphenomenon precisely because they present a clear and extreme example of this kindof domain specificity.

Constraints Resulting in Learnable Thinking Skills Remaining DomainSpecific

Difficulties with Language

One obvious candidate for a constraining factor on generalisability is the level oflinguistic ability. The question of how far thinking is dependent on language has a longhistory (Vygotsky, 1962; Furth, 1966; Weiskrantz, 1988) and clearly, in part, dependson the kind of thinking that is involved. Yet, even in procedural and sensori-motor skillssuch as walking and dressing, where language ability is not seen as necessary foracquisition or execution in normal development, language can be used to 'override'damaged areas of sub-cortical motor control and, thus, effect the skill (Hari & Akos,1988). So, though language may vary in the role it normally plays in thinking,dependent on the domain, it is both powerful and non-specific and, thus, ideally fittedto serve as the medium for an executive control of function. The interesting questionis whether language is a necessary and sufficient condition for executive control andtherefore metacognitive development. If it is, then its role in critical thinking abilitieswill be central. Again, autism presents a context in which this question can beexamined.

As Allport (1983) has suggested, even where cognitive process can be shown to befunctionally dissociated from communicative language, this does not take account ofthe social basis of human cognitive development. Allport claims that it is this socialfactor that makes human cognition ultimately dependent on natural language and theimplication of this is that the effects of language on thinking and learning processes aredue to its operation within the social dimension rather than its effects per se.

In the case of individuals with autism, the social deficit is present irrespective oflanguage ability and Allport's position would predict that consequent cognitive abilities

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Autistic Thinking and Learning to Learn 361

should be equally affected by this social deficit, irrespective of linguistic level. The factthat some studies, for example Rutter (1971), show a positive correlation betweencognitive ability (IQ) and linguistic ability in autism may reflect the fact that these arealso positively correlated with social ability, but also the fact that measureability ofcognitive level (i.e. performance on IQ tests) may reflect greater facility with languageeven when nonverbal tests are used. An examination by the authors of the test resultsfor 14 children with autism indicated no significant correlation between nonverbal IQand level of linguistic ability. Partialling out the effects of social ability would be likelyto reduce this correlation further. This suggests that language is not a sufficientcondition for the development of an executive capacity through which higher orderthinking abilities can be developed, though whether it is a necessary condition remainsto be resolved.

We have addressed the issue of the necessity of language, within the higher orderthinking demanded by problem solving activities, by attempting to teach reflection andplanning to nonverbal (and non-signing) pupils with autism through the use of visualrepresentations (e.g. photographs, diagrams) of the task and the pupil's role in the task(Powell & Jordan, 1992). The results are not conclusive, but suggest that, while thereis definite improvement in pupil's ability to perform certain tasks in this way (such asreproducing a past event by sequential ordering of photographs and consequent moreindependent functioning at that specific task), the learning remains dependent oncueing and is limited to the task specific conditions. For example, one pupil learned tomake a sandwich independently, whereas she had previously waited for prompts at eachstage in the process or perseverated at a stage until cued to move on. However, thephotographs themselves became a substitute cueing system for this activity and thepupil did not learn to make her sandwich without first sequencing the pictures, nor didshe learn to perform other tasks spontaneously without specific cues. This cannot,therefore, answer the question about the necessity of language for this kind of higherorder thinking.

When using language in a similar way to encourage reflection and planning inaccordance with pedagogical principles for the improvement of thinking (Jordan &Powell, 1991) with verbally able pupils with autism, similar limitations on learningarose. Such pupils could improve performance on specific tasks through reflection andplanning, but were unable to generalise their learning to new tasks or situations withoutverbal prompting (and, even then, only with difficulty). This provides another exampleof the fact that language alone is insufficient to develop this executive functioning inthinking. Thus, while there are good a priori reasons for believing that language playsa crucial role in the kind of thinking necessary for problem solving and, therefore, inlearning to think critically, our work with pupils with autism has failed to demonstratethat role and suggests a need to consider other candidates for the explanation of thethinking difficulties in autism.

Difficulties with Coding, Storage and Retrieval of Information

A second candidate for the failure of intellectual processing in autism is a deficit in thecoding, storage and/or retrieval of information on which the development and use ofcognitive strategies are based. One of the paradoxes in the functioning of individualswith autism is their good, and in some cases prodigious, rote memory abilities com-pared to deficits in the recall of personal event memory (Boucher & Lewis, 1989).Boucher and Lewis attribute memory problems in autism to problems in cued episodic

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recall, but we have suggested (Jordan & Powell, 1992) that the problem lies not inepisodic memory as such (which may, in fact, operate more effectively than semanticmemory in certain conditions), but in the part of autobiographical memory that Brewer(1986) has referred to as 'personal episodic memory'. A deficit in this memory wouldmean that the individual would be able to recall autobiographical facts about them-selves (personal semantic memory), episodes that did not include a personal element,general semantic/categorical knowledge and procedural knowledge for skills, but wouldbe unable to remember themselves performing actions, participating in events or possess-ing knowledge and strategies.

Dritschel et al. (1992) suggest that the development of personal autobiographicalmemory depends on the existence of an 'experiencing self which codes events as partof a personal dimension. Although it has been shown (Baron-Cohen, 1989; Jordan,1989) that individuals with autism are able to distinguish self from other, this canremain at the level of a self as seen 'from the outside', rather than as a continuing senseof self experienced 'from the inside'. We contend that a deficit in developing an'experiencing self (an ego-self) would lead to the pattern of memory processingexhibited by pupils with autism. That is, there will be a difficulty in developing personalepisodic memories. Tulving (1983) conceived of episodic memory as being dependenton situational cues, rather than spontaneously available for free recall. Indeed, it hasbeen found that the memory of individuals with autism only shows a deficit inspontaneous, rather than cued, recall (Boucher & Lewis, 1989). We believe that theego-self enables the individual to search memory in a way that frees recall fromdependence on specific cueing and that a lack of such an ego-self in autism means thatsuch searching is impossible, leading to the characteristic pattern of abilities anddisabilities.

What we are suggesting here, then, is that the lack of an ego-self has a profound effectat all stages in the processing of information. At the perceptual stage, events would beexperienced but in a non-subjective way, that is, individuals with autism would beaware of what was happening but not aware that it was happening to them. Utley (1993)has reviewed recent work on consciousness and has pointed to the need for psycholo-gists to move beyond their concern with mind/body dualism to consider subjectiveexperience (i.e. conscious awareness) as a biological phenomenon. This is not to takethe reductionist position of viewing mental properties in terms of physical entities butrather to recognise the fact that "the existence of conscious mental events is anobjective fact and a scientific theory of consciousness should make clear the relationbetween how things are for conscious subjects, and how things are full stop" (Utley,1993, p. 36). If autism is a biological disorder (Steffenberg & Gillberg, 1989), then itis feasible that the biological properties of the brain that enable it to create thissubjective conscious awareness may be distorted in some way or even absent, leadingto the characteristic symptoms of autism, including their difficulties with problemsolving.

To bring this back to the context of thinking and learning in individuals with autism,we can see that one mechanism for reflecting on the nature of experiences, the natureof one's available strategies and knowledge base, and the ability to model goal-directedintentions would be to use a construct of the ego-self as a context for those processes.This fits with a notion of human problem solving that sees it as essentially subjectiveand more likely to use processes of intuition and model creation than analogicalreasoning (Johnson-Laird, 1983). It may be that subjectivity (conscious self-awareness)is essential to this mode of processing and disturbances in this ability will lead to

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attempts to solve problems through step-by-step learned 'set' procedures which need tobe cued to bring them into operation. Subjectivity, then, becomes a significant factorin the ability to 'think critically'.

Difficulties with the Role of Emotions

A third area in which constraints may exist is that of emotion and its relationship withcognition. Emotion and cognition can be separated for psychological study and, inreality, for some kinds of pathology, but in general these functions are highly interde-pendent. We suggest that it is a mistake to think of critical thinking as a higher form ofthinking involving rational processes and, thus, in some way in opposition to a morebasic irrational emotional mode of thought. We believe that, just as Lazarus (1991) hasproposed, cognition affects emotions through a process of 'cognitive' appraisal, so'emotional' appraisal is an integral part of problem solving. In other words, appraisalbelongs to the domains of emotion and cognition, and is a vital part of both. Here weleave aside Lazarus' argument on the necessity of appraisal in emotions and turninstead to the role of appraisal in problem solving.

Lazarus (1991) distinguishes knowledge (beliefs about how things work in generaland in specific contexts) from appraisal (a personal evaluation of the significance of thisknowledge in a particular encounter or existentially) (p. 168). Lazarus uses appraisal todescribe a way of knowing that is not analytical, but perceives the situation directly and,in particular, in terms of its meaning for the self. This is very similar to what Baron andBoudreau (1987) and Forrester (1993) referred to as affordances; Jordan (1993) hasargued that individuals with autism may be unable to recognise and take advantage ofthe social affordances of situations. Appraisal functions by integrating the realities ofenvironmental demands, constraints and resources with personal interests and, thus,serves to make problem solving both intentional and meaningful. Personal meaning iscreated out of objective fact by this act of appraisal. The meanings are determined bythe emotional content of the appraisal process and will include curiosity, anxiety, angeretc.

U. Frith (1989) has suggested that the core difficulty in autism may be an inabilityto search for, and a failure to recognise, meaning. Her view of this seems to be a purelycognitive one in that she ties it to aspects such as coherence and holistic processing.Others suggest that individuals with autism create their own meanings, but do notparticipate in the cultural meaning of social groups (e.g. Tantum, 1988). We aresuggesting that it is the emotional aspect of determining meaning that may account forthese difficulties, which, in turn, may lead to difficulties in problem solving. Withoutmeaning, related to personal attitudes to the goal, problems cannot give rise tointentional behaviour which includes a model of the goal and the individual's directed-ness towards that goal (C. Frith, 1992). It is emotional states that allow that intentionto come into being.

Although there has been a move in recent times to rehabilitate the role of emotionsin learning (e.g. Morgan & Saxton, 1991), there is a continuing view of emotions notonly as separate from cognitive processes but even as disruptive of them. Yet it may bethat emotions play a significant role in critical thinking. The evolutionary function ofemotion may be to enable human problem solving to free itself from dependence onlearned procedures tied to set situations by creating the conditions for creative searchof alternatives. This would be the case whether the emotion is seen as one of positiveaffect (e.g. curiosity) or negative affect (e.g. anxiety). The role of emotions at this level

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would be associated with creative aspects of thinking and there would still be need forthe kind of emotional appraisal as outlined above in order to produce critical thought.It seems possible that the creative disturbance of cognitive functioning produced by thisaffective element is also the mechanism by which learning attached to one cognitivedomain may be generalised to another.

Can the emotional aspects of problem solving be the explanation of the particulardifficulties exhibited by individuals with autism? At one level we know that autism isassociated with difficulties in both understanding the emotions of others and incommunicating their own (Hobson, 1986). However, there is no suggestion thatindividuals with autism do not experience emotion and, indeed, some explanations ofthe behaviours characteristic of autism have focused on the role of stress and a highanxiety level (Elmhirst, 1987). What may be happening in autistic 'problem solving' isan example of what has been long established as the Yerkes-Dobson effect. In thiseffect, skilled performance on a task improves with levels of arousal and motivation upto a critical asymptote and then declines, producing the characteristic 'U-shaped' curvewhen performance is plotted against arousal. For some individuals with autism, thecharacteristics of the task may be insufficient to start the learning curve and socialmechanisms for arousal and motivation (i.e. teaching) may simply not be perceived.For others, or for the same group once the learning has started, any blocking of a setlearned routine (which is the inevitable feature of any problem) will cause such a highlevel of anxiety that all future learning is disrupted. In other words, the facilitatoryeffects of emotion on problem solving may operate within constraints, whereas inautism the emotional experience of individuals may be unconstrained (having norecourse to self-monitoring or socially learned inhibitions). This means that suchindividuals will be unable to make use of the positive effects of emotions on problemsolving and their learning will be restricted to the situation and domain of the originallearning.

Issues of Pedagogy

Use of Language

Where, then, does this leave the role of teaching in improving thinking? Language, aswe have seen, has an essential social communicative element and is the main way inwhich we can learn from one another. As the kinds of learning we engage in as humanbeings become more abstract, then this kind of 'teaching', or communication of waysof constructing reality, becomes more essential. There may be a real sense in which theconstruction of abstract symbolic systems, such as verbal and mathematical languages,has enabled us to think in different, more 'rational' ways, but this kind of thinking maynot be 'natural' to our biologically programmed ways of functioning. Our basicunderstandings about the world and one another may arise in more subjectivelymediated ways and our social consensus only achieved through a shared experience ofthe world and an in-built sense of intersubjectivity. In autism, this sense may be missingor disturbed (Hobson, 1986) and so this kind of intuitive understanding and modellingof one's own and others' intentions may not arise.

What we do when we try to teach thinking necessarily involves making the processcommunicable and, in doing so, we may distort its essential nature. This may be lessthe case with abstract and 'higher order' reasoning tasks which, as we have suggestedabove, may be less dependent on biologically programmed subjective experiences. But

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everyday problem solving and making sense of the world does not normally occur inthis stepwise fashion. It is our view, in line with others (Benner & Wrubel, 1989;Lazarus, 1991) that much thinking occurs at a pre-conscious level (and may bemediated by the ego-self) and that it is only brought into conscious awareness when weare required to 'explain' or 'justify' it. There then becomes the problem of whether this'explanation' or 'justification' is, in fact, a replica of the thinking that originally tookplace or an entirely different process by which we give a 'communicative gloss' to ourthinking in order to make it explicit. If this is the case, then attempts to teach thinkingmay, in fact, distort the thinking process in favour of this particular kind of rationalstep-by-step process and away from the intuition and imaginative 'leaps' that are afeature of human intelligence.

For some pupils, such as those with autism, we may have little choice but to useexplicit structures, in that the basic underlying mechanisms for an alternative approachmay not be there. But we should be aware that for them, and for others, we are as likelyto be teaching a 'disabling' form of thinking as an 'enabling' one. Earlier in this paperwe referred to the use of language in certain therapies for cerebral palsy. In thesetherapies, language is used to bring normally unconscious mechanisms that controlbody movement under conscious control. This is necessary, because the biologicalprocesses for unconscious control are damaged, but it is clear that the resulting motorskills are far from the smooth skilled processes of the able-bodied performer. It is alsoclear that we can seriously disrupt our own skilled performance of any action, normallyperformed automatically, by paying too much attention to it (Lazarus, 1991) and thatthere is a "dissociation between verbal knowledge and task performance" (Brewin,1989, p. 380). We suggest that the same considerations need to be made when it comesto teaching thinking skills. By attending to, and verbalising about, our ways of thinking,we may distort these ways and disrupt our skillful implementation of them.

There is the danger, then, that teaching thinking programmes may overlook the waysin which using language to explicate thinking may distort that thinking process andtherefore lead to an artificial and cumbersome learnt style. Also, it is clear from researchon individual differences in learning style (e.g. Riding & Cheema, 1991) that individualways of thinking may differ fundamentally and over a range of dimensions, and,therefore, to describe to somebody how one thinks about a problem is not necessarilyto tell them how they would, or indeed should, think about it. For example, visualisinga specific problem in diagrammatic form may be the way in which a particular teachergoes about mentally representing that problem for effective resolution, but that strategymay not be the one that is the most amenable to, or effective for, a particular pupil.Therefore language as a device enabling generalisable learning in how to think moreeffectively is (a) not enough and (b) not necessarily beneficial.

Clearly, in general, what teachers need to do is to be aware of these dangers and insome instances to use language sparingly. In the case of teaching those with autism—where pupils may have little or no productive language, though amounts of receptivelanguage may vary—then teachers need to separate out attempts to improve a pupil'sthinking effectiveness. Teaching thinking skills may need to be done nonverbally,whereas attempts to enhance linguistic abilities may need to be done with explicitattention paid to the making of meaning and with less demand placed on a problemsolving task. This will enable the pupil's resources to be directed to the learning ofmeaningful language rather than to the use of language to solve a problem. Failure toseparate out these aspects in the way we suggest is likely to lead to ineffective learningon both counts. Indeed, this is what is sometimes observed in classrooms for pupils

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with autism where pupils struggle with a problem solving task, which is within theircognitive grasp, because of the opacity (for them) of the language 'masking' taskdemands; while, on other occasions, they struggle to learn meaningful language becausethe context within which it is presented is in areas beyond their experience or is in aproblematic format which is beyond their intellectual capacity.

Using an Experiencing Self

Whereas the role of language in teaching thinking is an issue with wide applicability, therole of an experiencing self clearly has a special significance where such a 'self may notexist, i.e. in autism. If the cognitive difficulty in autism was, as Leslie (1991) hassuggested, to do with the inability to form metarepresentations, then this would tie inwith a range of attempts in the literature to teach metacognitive skills as part of teachingthinking (Sugden, 1989). However, there is evidence against this assumption (Jordan &Powell, 1991; Leekam & Perner, 1992). If we are right in our analysis of a key difficultyin information processing in autism being a failure to develop and utilise an experienc-ing self, then this may lie within the domains that Power (1981) has labelled 'unteach-able' in principle.

In the effort to establish autism as a cognitive developmental disorder rather than anemotional illness, psychologists have also moved away in teaching from approaches thatdeal with the establishment of 'the self. It is true that psychodynamic approaches havenot been found to be effective in autism (Bartak & Rutter, 1973), but it also seems thatskills-based approaches never get beyond skill acquisition and fail to develop anygeneralisable ability to learn to learn. It may not be possible to teach individuals toperceive and experience the world in certain ways if they are not biologically predeter-mined to do so and Spitz (1986) has made a case for the futility of many such attempts.However, it may be possible to achieve the same (or similar) ends by different routesand, as we saw with the use of language in teaching thinking above, we may be able toimprove the thinking of individuals with autism by getting them to think 'as if they hadthis experiencing self. Indeed many of the more able individuals with autism appear tofunction as if this is precisely what has occurred (Grandin, 1986; Williams, 1991).Powell and Jordan's (1992) attempt to use instant photographs of the autistic learnerto try to establish autobiographical event memory (as referred to above) may enable an'outside' sense of the self to develop and this may help with problem solving, withoutnecessarily altering the way that events are experienced.

The lack of an ego-self in autism proves devastating in terms of the problem solvingcapability of individuals; as they are unable to develop memories of themselves asproblem solving agents, they are therefore unable to build up stores of rememberedskills in such a way that they can reflect on them in strategic ways. This leads to theconsideration of the importance for all learners of this ego-self in problem solving and,more pointedly,in the learning and use of generalisable thinking skills.

As we indicated above, teaching cannot deny biological constraints on learning and,therefore, the implications for teaching are complex. If we are to teach individuals withautism how to learn, then we need to move on from a compensatory curriculumoperating at a behavioural level. Yet, a truly remedial curriculum may not be possibleeither. What is needed is a compensatory curriculum operating at the cognitive levelwhich aims to give pupils with autism access to cognitive skills that, though notreplicating the biologically determined 'natural' ones, can be employed behaviourally'as if they do.

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When working with those with autism, then, teachers need to continually drawpupils' attention back to their own role in any problem solving situation. Pupilsneed to be helped to work at the level of recognising their own involvement, becausewithout such recognition subsequent development of usable memories will notoccur. When working with non-autistic pupils, the teacher needs to recognise theimportance of an ego-self for problem solving and to give pupils experience of recog-nising their own role in the resolution of problems. This requires both allocatedtime for reflection and ways of directing attention that make that reflection morethan simply a recalling of procedures undertaken. In particular, for those non-autistic pupils who have learning difficulties, they may learn in school to feelthat problems are outside of their locus of control, that they are unable to actupon situations (Jordan & Powell, 1991). In a sense, then, they may exhibitsimilar problem solving behaviours to those seen in autism, but it is important tonote that they have arrived at those behaviours by very different routes. The kindof support they need is therefore different in that they may not need to be taught atthe level of recognition. Nevertheless, they do need to be taught that they are notat the mercy of problems and that they have recourse within their own intel-lectual capacity to tackle problems. In short, they need to learn to become lessdependent on teachers for answers to problems and less dependent on extrinsic rewardsfor motivation; they need to leam about their own abilities, available strategies andproblem solving potentials.

Using Emotion

The same constraints may well apply when we consider the role of emotions inthinking and the possibilities of teaching emotional involvement. Harris (1989)has shown that children learn about emotions and come to have a greater under-standing of their own emotions (or at least come to talk as if they do), and, thus,what can be learned can also be taught. Whether this can be accomplished withinthe biological constraints of autism is more debatable. Certainly, there are ped-agogical implications of attempting to do this within problem solving. It is commonpractice to look for (and advocate, Jordan, 1990) ways of defusing emotionalconcommitants of failure or frustration in problem solving tasks, but real improvementsin thinking may only come about if we encourage awareness of the emotionalstate instead.

Again, the starting point for teachers of those with autism and those withoutwill differ. For those working with autism, there will be a need to try to establishin the pupil a reflecting awareness of his/her own emotional states and thismay need to be done in a situation which is 'emotionally charged' and which maythen put education within a therapeutic context. For those working with thenon-autistic, there is a need to make use of the emotional construct which wecan assume will be present in a pupil's tackling of any problem. If it is the emotionalconstruct which enables thinking to move from the reproductive to the productive,then clearly it is this affective domain that needs to be used by teachers when 'teach-ing thinking'. In trying to make a pupil a more effective thinker, we need to usethat pupil's ability to feel emotion within problem solving situations as a triggerfor emotional appraisal and we need to increase (already existing) pupil awareness ofhis/her own emotional state in relation to the problem state rather than either ignore

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or try to inhibit it. This implies that problems will need to have meaning for the pupilsand this will present particular problems for 'predetermined' curricula of any kind.

Conclusion

In this paper we have looked at the deviant pattern of the development of thinking inautism. We have discussed what 'improving the thinking' of individuals with autismwould entail and, as a result of this discussion, have examined some of the fundamentalrequirements and constraints of teaching thinking for all individuals. In our discussionof autistic thinking, we have separated out the development and use of language fromthe development of an experiencing self and, in turn, from the role played by emotionin thinking. We have done this as a device by which to analyse problems with autisticthinking and implications for the teacher. But such partitioning may obscure thepsychological reality in which these aspects of thinking operate in a transactional waywhenever the individual faces a problem state. Clearly the teacher needs to work withinthat reality; and, therefore, while suggesting as we do earlier in this paper that teachersmay need on occasions to separate out their objectives for teaching, we need to stressthat such a strategy should arise from an understanding of the whole of the individual'sdifficulties, abilities and potentials as a problem solver.

The way in which language is used, or not used, when trying to improve theeffectiveness of thinking in all pupils needs to be related to the development of anexperiencing self on the part of the learner. The presence or absence of language, andits use of, for example, analogy or metaphor must address for the pupil the need tolearn about how he/she is acting on the world; it needs to realise in the pupil a senseof 'first person' functioning within a problem state. Clearly, from our discussion earlier,the dimension within which such learning needs to take place (and by implication theteaching, where teaching is possible) is one of personal, emotional involvement. In thiscontext we can note that the child without autism first gains control over the use of thefirst person pronoun 'I' in the context of assertive declarations of will Jordan, 1989),which is a manifestation of the interdependence of linguistic, emotional and cognitivedevelopment.

The starting point and the aim will be different for the teacher of the autistic asagainst the non-autistic (and different again for the non-autistic pupil who has learningdifficulties). But the common principle remains that the pupil needs to engage in aprocess which involves the experiencing self in emotional appraisal; pupils need to learnto be subjective and to learn through their subjectivity. To be useful, therefore, aproblem state needs to relate to personal meanings and the resolution of a problemneeds to be seen in terms of changing the learner's view of himself/herself rather thansimply changing his/her view of the problem.

If subjectivity is a significant factor for pupils in learning to think productively, thenit must also be significant for teachers in terms of understanding and improving theirown teaching. When teaching individuals with autism, we have suggested elsewhere(Powell & Jordan, 1993) that teachers need to reflect on their intuitive understandingsabout the relationship between autism and particular teaching and learning situations.Similarly, when teaching those without autism, with the aim of improving pupils' abilityto learn how to learn, teachers need to make use of an emotional appraisal of their ownexperience. In this view, remaining objective in one's teaching at all times is anunhelpful dogma, while using one's subjective judgements as constructs for criticalreflection becomes a potentially powerful pedagogical device.

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Autistic Thinking and Learning to Learn 369

Correspondence: Stuart D. Powell, Educational Research into Autism Group, Universityof Hertfordshire, School of Humanities and Education, Wall Hall Campus, Aldenham,Herts, WD2 8AT, UK.

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