Preferring Objects over People: The Autism Mystery
"Why is it that children on the autism spectrum seem to prefer objects (e.g., toys, games, digital devices, machines, etc.) rather than relationships with people?" To answer this question, we must first look at the concept of "weak predictive ability"... If one has the ability to predict, he or she can come up with an educated guess about what may happen in the near or distant future (i.e., some outcome is expected), but this ability is not necessarily based on experience or knowledge. Prediction is a skill that allows us to “generalize” (i.e., since the occurrence of “situation A” resulted in “outcome B,” then a situation similar to “A” will likely result in an outcome similar to “B”). For example, after observing enough moving objects, a child can understand momentum and, through generalizing, predict the position of a moving target in the near future. Likewise, after seeing enough human faces, a child can generalize (or predict) that human faces