Autism spectrum
In his book NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman wrote that Grandin helped break down years of shame and stigma because she was one of the first adults to publicly disclose that she was autistic. Bernard Rimland, a father of an autistic son and author of the book Infantile Autism, wrote the foreword to Grandin's first book Emergence: Labeled Autistic. Her book was published in 1986. Rimland wrote "Temple's ability to convey to the reader her innermost feelings and fears, coupled with her capacity for explaining mental processes will give the reader an insight into autism that very few have been able to achieve."
In Developing Talents, 2nd Edition, Grandin explores many unnoticed aspects of vocational rehabilitation programs that provide job training and placement for people with disabilities, as well as Social Security Administration programs that offer vocational assistance.
In her later book, Thinking in Pictures, published in 1995, the neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote at the end of the foreword that the book provided "a bridge between our world and hers, and allows us to glimpse into a quite other sort of mind."
In her early writings, Grandin characterized herself as a recovered autistic and, in his foreword, Bernard Rimland used the term recovered autistic individual. In her later writings, she has abandoned this characterization. Steve Silberman wrote, "It became obvious to her, however, that she was not recovered but had learned with great effort to adapt to the social norms of the people around her."
Grandin has said that when her book Thinking in Pictures was published in 1995, she believed that all individuals with autism thought in photographic-specific images the way she did. By the time the expanded edition was published in 2006, she had realized that it had been wrong to presume that every person with autism processed information in the same way she did. In the 2006 edition, she wrote that there were three types of specialized thinking: 1. Visual Thinkers like she is, who think in photographically specific images. 2. Music and Math Thinkers – who think in patterns and may be good at mathematics, chess, and programming computers. 3. Verbal Logic Thinkers – who think in word details, and she noted that their favorite subject may be history.
In one of her later books, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, the concept of three different types of thinking by autistic individuals is expanded. This book was published in 2013. An influential book that helped her to develop her concept of pattern thinking was Clara Claiborne Park's book entitled Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism. It was published in 2001. The Autistic Brain also contains an extensive review of scientific studies that provide evidence that object-visual thinking is different from spatial-visualization abilities.
Grandin became well-known beyond the American autistic community, after being described by Oliver Sacks in the title narrative of his book An Anthropologist on Mars (1995). The title is derived from Grandin's characterization of how she feels around neurotypical people. In the mid-1980s Grandin first spoke in public about autism at the request of Ruth C. Sullivan, one of the founders of the Autism Society of America (ASA). Sullivan writes:
I first met Temple in the mid-1980s [at the] annual [ASA] conference. Standing on the periphery of the group was a tall young woman who was obviously interested in the discussions. She seemed shy and pleasant, but mostly she just listened. I learned her name was Temple Grandin. It wasn't until later in the week that I realized she was someone with autism. I approached her and asked if she'd be willing to speak at the next year's [ASA] conference. She agreed. The next year Temple first addressed an [ASA] audience. People were standing at least three deep. The audience couldn't get enough of her. Here, for the first time, was someone who could tell us from her own experience, what it was like to be extremely sound sensitive ("like being tied to the rail and the train's coming"). She was asked many questions: "Why does my son do so much spinning?" "Why does he hold his hands to his ears?" "Why doesn't he look at me?" She spoke from her own experience, and her insight was impressive. There were tears in more than one set of eyes that day. Temple quickly became a much sought-after speaker in the autism community.
Based on personal experience, Grandin advocates early intervention to address autism and supportive teachers, who can direct fixations of the child with autism in fruitful directions. She has described her hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli. She says words are her second language and that she thinks "totally in pictures", using her vast visual memory to translate information into a mental slideshow of images that may be manipulated or correlated. Grandin attributes her success as a humane livestock facility designer to her ability to recall detail, which is a characteristic of her visual memory. Grandin compares her memory to full-length movies in her head, that may be replayed at will, allowing her to notice small details. She also is able to view her memories using slightly different contexts by changing the positions of the lighting and shadows.
Grandin does not support eliminating autism genes entirely or treating those she labels "mildly" autistic. However, she believes that autistic children who are severely disabled and nonverbal need therapies "like [applied behavioral analysis] [...] to function", and stated in her book, Thinking in Pictures, "In an ideal world the scientist should find a method to prevent the most severe forms of autism but allow the milder forms to survive." In a March 2022 update to the frequently asked questions section of her official website, Grandin rejected critics' characterization of her position as eugenic.
Grandin has criticized autism-related diagnostic updates originally implemented in 2013 in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. When asked about the updates in a 2022 interview, Grandin stated the following:
The spectrum is so broad it doesn’t make much sense. Are we really going to put people with severe autism who cannot dress themselves in the same category as people with mild autism who work in Silicon Valley? It has also made this problem of not learning life skills worse – because even just slightly geeky kids are getting labelled as “on the spectrum”. Where this labelling can be useful is with relationships – it can help with misunderstandings.
For roughly 15 years following the release of Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 study that falsely linked autism to the MMR vaccine, Grandin publicly speculated that there might be a causal link between vaccines and autism, especially in cases involving children who became non-speaking after the administration of vaccines. Grandin refused to revisit the topic during a January 2022 interview with The New York Times, despite the interviewer repeatedly prompting her to do so.
In March of every year, Grandin hosts a public event at Boston University.
