Human, but More So:
What the Autistic Brain Tells Us about the Process of Narrative

Matthew K Belmonte

In: Autism and Representation (Mark Osteen, ed.), pp 166-179. New York: Routledge, 2008 (23 November 2007).

Originally presented at "Autism and Representation: Writing, Cognition, Disability," a meeting of the Society for Critical Exchange, Cleveland, 28-30 October 2005.

ABSTRACT

The human juxtaposition of mental and physical existence demands of us a constant denial of the potential for death, and more generally an aversion to direct experience of disorder and entropy. The requisite overlaying of cognitive order on sensory chaos is enacted within neurophysiological processes that integrate fragmented percepts into coherent scenes, and link unconnected events into coherent narrative. In autism, when failures of neural connectivity impede narrative linkage and each element of a scene or a story exists in isolation, the world can seem threateningly intractable. Autistic withdrawal into repetitive scripts can be read as a defence against this threat, and thus as an exaggerated form of normal human psychological development and cognitive representation.

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conference version, 2005

CITED IN PUBLICATIONS BY OTHERS:

  1. Herbert MR. Autism: a brain disorder, or a disorder that affects the brain? Clinical Neuropsychiatry 2(6):354-379 (2005).
  2. Badcock C, Crespi B. Imbalanced genomic imprinting in brain development: an evolutionary basis for the ætiology of autism. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19(4):1007-1032 (July 2006).
  3. Quayson A. Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press (8 June 2007), pp 156-157.
  4. Roth I. Autism and the imaginative mind. In: Imaginative Minds (I Roth, ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press (27 December 2007), p 279.

CITED IN MY OTHER PUBLICATIONS:

  1. Belmonte MK. Does the experimental scientist have a “theory of mind”? Review of General Psychology 12(2):192-204 (June 2008).
  2. Belmonte MK. What’s the story behind ‘theory of mind’ and autism? Journal of Consciousness Studies 16(6-8):118-139 (June-August 2009).