Temple Grandin
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Grandin in 2011
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| Born |
Mary Temple Grandin
August 29, 1947
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Alma mater | |
| Known for |
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| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | Colorado State University |
| Website | templegrandin.com |
Mary Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947) is an American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, and autism spokesperson. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience of autism. She invented the "hug box" device to calm those on the autism spectrum. In the 2010 Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, she was named in the "Heroes" category. She was the subject of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning semi-biographical film Temple Grandin.
Early life
Family
Mary Temple Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts,
into a very wealthy family. One of the Irish girls who worked for the
family was also named Mary, so Grandin was referred to by her middle
name, Temple, to avoid confusion.
Her mother is Anna Eustacia Purves (now Cutler), an actress, singer and
granddaughter of the co-inventor for the autopilot aviation system
(John Coleman Purves), with a degree in English from Harvard University. Her father was Richard McCurdy Grandin, a real estate agent and heir to the largest corporate wheat farm business in America at the time, Grandin Farms. Grandin's parents divorced when she was 15, and her mother eventually went on to marry Ben Cutler, a renowned New York saxophonist, in 1965 (when Grandin was 18 years old). Her father Richard died in California
in 1993. Grandin is the eldest of four children and has three younger
siblings: two sisters and a brother. Grandin has described one of her
sisters as being dyslexic. Her younger sister is an artist, her other sister a sculptor, and her brother a banker. John Livingston Grandin (Temple's paternal great-grandfather) and his brother William James Grandin, were French Huguenots who drilled for oil, intending to cut a deal with John D. Rockefeller, but the latter kept him waiting too long so he walked out before Rockefeller arrived. Then they went into banking and when Jay Cooke's firm collapsed they got thousands of acres of undeveloped land in North Dakota as collateral. They set up wheat farming in the Red River Valley with dormitories for the workers; the town of Grandin, North Dakota, is named after John Livingston Grandin. Although raised in the Episcopal
religion, Temple Grandin early on gave up on a belief in a personal
deity or intention in favor of what she considers a more scientific idea
of God.
Diagnosis
Contrary
to widely published reports, Grandin was never formally diagnosed with
autism in childhood or in youth. The only formal diagnosis received by
Grandin was of 'brain damage' at the age of 2, a finding corroborated subsequently when she was 64 years old, by cerebral imaging carried out in 2010 at the University of Utah. When Grandin was in her mid-teens, her mother chanced upon a checklist on autism published by Dr. Bernard Rimland, a renowned American psychologist and founder of the Autism Research Institute. Completing the checklist, Grandin's mother hypothesised that Grandin's symptoms were best explained by autism. A formal diagnosis consistent with being on the autistic spectrum was made only when Grandin was in her 40s. Grandin was later determined to be an autistic savant as well.
Early childhood
Grandin's mother, Eustacia, took her to the world's leading special needs researchers at the Boston Children's Hospital, with the hope of unearthing an alternative to institutionalization. Grandin's mother eventually located a neurologist who suggested a trial of speech therapy. They soon hired a speech therapist, and Grandin received personalized input from the age of 2 and a half. A nanny was also hired when Grandin was aged 3 to play educational games for hours with her.
Grandin's mother actively sought out and paid for private schools
with sympathetic staff who were willing to work with her daughter's
special needs
and thus, she started kindergarten in Dedham Country Day School. Her
teachers and class strove to create an environment to accommodate
Grandin's needs and sensitivities.
Grandin considers herself fortunate to have had supportive mentors from elementary school onward. Even so, Grandin states that junior high and high school were the most unpleasant times of her life.
The medical advice at the time for a diagnosis of autism was to
recommend institutionalization, a measure that caused a bitter rift of
opinion between Grandin's parents.
Her father was keen to follow this advice while her mother was strongly
opposed to the idea as it would have likely would have caused her to
never be able see her daughter again.
Middle and high school
Grandin attended Beaver Country Day School
from 7th to 9th grade. She was expelled at the age of 14 for throwing a
book at a schoolmate who had taunted her. Grandin has described herself
as the "nerdy kid" whom everyone ridiculed. She has described occasions
when she walked down the hallways and her fellow students would taunt
her by saying "tape recorder" because of her habit of repetitive speech.
Grandin states, "I could laugh about it now, but back then it really
hurt."
The year after her expulsion, Grandin's parents divorced.
Grandin's mother remarried three years later to Ben Cutler, a New York
saxophonist. At 15, Grandin spent a summer on the Arizona ranch of Ben Cutler's sister, Ann, and this would be a formative experience towards her subsequent career interest.
Following her expulsion from Beaver Country Day School (reports
vary on the actual name of the school Grandin was expelled from, with
Grandin herself noting it to be Cherry Falls Girls' School in her first
book, Emergence: Labelled Autistic), Grandin's mother placed her in Mountain Country School (now known as Hampshire Country School), a private boarding school in Rindge, New Hampshire, for children with behavioral problems. It was here that Grandin met William Carlock, a science teacher who had worked for NASA, who would become her mentor and help significantly towards building up her self-confidence.
It was Carlock who gave Grandin the idea to build herself a hug box
(referred to as a "squeeze machine" by Grandin) when she returned from
her aunt's farm in Arizona in her senior year of high school. With Carlock's assistance, Grandin built her hug box at the age of 18 when she was still attending Mountain Country School.
Carlock's supportive role in Grandin's life continued even after she
left Mountain Country School. For example, when Grandin was facing
criticism for her hug box at Franklin Pierce College, it was Carlock who suggested that Grandin undertake scientific experiments to evaluate the efficacy of the device.
It was his constant guidance to Grandin to refocus her rigid obsessions
with the hug box into a productive assignment that allowed this study
undertaken by Grandin to be subsequently widely cited as evidence of
Grandin's resourcefulness.
Higher education
After she graduated in 1966 from Mountain Country School, Grandin went on to earn her bachelor's degree in human psychology from Franklin Pierce College in 1970, a master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and a doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1989.
Career
Grandin
is a prominent and widely cited proponent for the humane treatment of
livestock for slaughter. She is also internationally famous as a
spokesperson on autism.
Autism spectrum
Steve Silberman in his book NeuroTribes
wrote that Temple 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 a son with autism and author of the book Infantile Autism, wrote the foreword to Grandin's first book Emergence: Labeled Autistic.
The book was published in 1986. Dr. 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 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 made the mistake of presenting
herself as a recovered autistic and in his foreword, Bernard Rimland
used the term recovered autistic individual. In her later writings, this
has been removed. 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."
When her book Thinking in Pictures was written in 1995,
Grandin thought that all individuals with autism thought in photographic
specific images the way she did. When the expanded edition was
published in 2006, she now realized that it had been wrong to assume
that every person with autism processed information the same way she
did. In this edition, she wrote that there were three types of
specialized thinking. They were: 1. Visual Thinkers like her who think
in photographically specific images. 2. Music and Math Thinkers – these
people think in patterns and may be good at mathematics, chess, and
programming computers. 3. Verbal Logic Thinkers – These people think in
word details and 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 in autism is further
developed. This book was published in 2013. An influential book which
helped her develop her concept of pattern thinking was Clara Claiborne Park's book titled 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), for which he won a Polk Award; the title is derived from Grandin's description of how she feels around neurotypical people. She first spoke in public about autism in the mid-1980s, 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 slideshow of mental images
that can 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.
As a partial proponent of neurodiversity,
Grandin does not support eliminating autism genes or treating mildly
autistic individuals. However, she believes that autistic children who
are severely handicapped need therapy with applied behavioral analysis. Additionally, she has claimed that she only will attend talks given by autistics that can hold down a career. By contrast, Jonathan Mitchell
describes Grandin as making generalizations about autistic people,
saying that many autistics aren't visual thinkers and that her
generalizations trivialize the difficulties associated with autism. The autism rights activist Amy Sequenzia
has criticized Temple Grandin for only focusing on and listening to
high-functioning autistics, as opposed to low-functioning and
non-speaking autistics. She has said that Grandin doesn't view those
autistics as worthy of her attention.
Handling livestock
In
1980 she published her first two scientific articles on beef cattle
behavior during handling: "Livestock Behavior as Related to Handling
Facilities Design" in the International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems, Vol. 1, pp. 33-52 and "Observations of Cattle Behavior Applied to the Design of Cattle Handling Facilities", Applied Animal Ethology, Vol. 6, pp. 19-31.
She was one of the first scientists to report that animals are
sensitive to visual distractions in handling facilities such as shadows,
dangling chains, and other environmental details most people do not
notice. When she got her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, she
studied the effects of environmental enrichment on pigs. The title of
her dissertation
was "Effect of Rearing Environment and Environmental Enrichment on the
Behavior and Neural Development in Young Pigs". Grandin expanded on
these theories in her book Animals Make Us Human.
In 1993, she edited the first edition of Livestock Handling and Transport.
She wrote three chapters and had chapters from contributors from around
the world. Subsequent editions of the book were published in 2000,
2007, and 2014. In her academic work as a professor at Colorado State
University, her graduate student Bridgett Voisinet conducted one of the
early studies that showed that cattle that remained calm during handling
had higher weight gains. In 1997, when the paper was published, this
was a new concept. The paper is titled "Feedlot Cattle with Calm
Temperaments Have Higher Average Daily Gains Than Cattle with Excitable
Temperaments", published in The Journal of Animal Science, Vol. 75, pp. 892-896.
Another important paper published by Grandin was "Assessment of Stress During Handling and Transport", Journal of Animal Science, 1997, Vol. 75, pp. 249-257.
This paper presented the idea that an animal's previous experiences
with handling could have an effect on how it will react to being handled
in the future, which was then a new concept in the animal-handling
industry.
A major piece of equipment that Grandin developed was a center
track (double rail) conveyor restrainer system for holding cattle during
stunning in large beef plants. The first system was installed in the
mid-eighties for calves and a system for large beef cattle was developed
in 1990. This equipment is now being used by many large meat companies.
It is described in "Double Rail Restrainer Conveyor for Livestock
Handling", first published in the Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research, Vol. 4, pp. 327-338
in 1988, and "Transferring results of behavioral research to industry
to improve animal welfare on the farm, ranch, and slaughter plant", Applied Animal Behavior Science, Vol. 8, pp. 215-228, published in 2003.
Grandin also developed an objective numerical scoring system for assessing animal welfare at slaughter plants.
The use of this scoring system resulted in significant improvements in
animal stunning and handling during slaughter. This work is described in
"Objective scoring of animal handling and stunning practices in
slaughter plants", Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Vol. 212, pp. 36-39, "The feasibility of using vocalization scoring as an indicator of poor welfare during slaughter", Applied Animal Behavior Science, Vol. 56, pp. 121–128,
and "Effect of animal welfare audits of slaughter plants by a major
fast food company on cattle handling and stunning practices", Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Vol. 216, pp. 848–851.
Other scientific contributions
Grandin
is the author or co-author of over 60 peer reviewed scientific papers
on a variety of other animal behavior subjects. Some of the other
subjects are: the effect of hair whorl position on cattle behavior,
pre-slaughter stress and meat quality, religious slaughter, mothering
behavior of beef cows, cattle temperament, and causes of bruising.
Animal welfare
She
has lectured widely about her first-hand experiences of the anxiety of
feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being
dismissed and feared, which motivates her work in humane livestock
handling processes. She studied the behavior of cattle, how they react
to ranchers, movements, objects, and light. Grandin then designed
adapted curved corrals, intended to reduce stress, panic and injury in
animals being led to slaughter.
This has proved to be a further point of criticism and controversy
among animal activists who have questioned the congruence of a career
built on animal slaughter alongside Grandin's claims of compassion and
respect for animals. While her designs are widely used throughout the
slaughterhouse industry, her claim of compassion for the animals is that
because of her autism she can see the animals' reality from their
viewpoint, that when she holds an animal's head in her hands as it is
being slaughtered, she feels a deep, godlike connection to them.
Her business website promotes improvement of standards for slaughterhouses and livestock farms. The 'squeeze machine' itself remains on sale at US$4525 each from Therafin Corporation.
In 2004, she won a "Proggy" award in the "Visionary" category, from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
One of her notable essays about animal welfare is "Animals Are Not Things",
in which she posits that technically, animals are property in society,
but the law ultimately gives them ethical protections or rights. She
compares the properties and rights of owning cows, versus owning
screwdrivers, enumerating how both may be used to serve human purposes
in many ways, but when it comes to inflicting pain, there is a vital
distinction between such "properties"; legally a person can smash or
grind up a screwdriver, but cannot torture an animal.
Her insight into the minds of cattle has taught her to value the
changes in details to which animals are particularly sensitive and to
use her visualization skills to design thoughtful and humane
animal-handling equipment. She was named a fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in 2009.
In 2012, when the American beef industry was struggling with public perception of its use and sale of pink slime,
Grandin spoke out in support of the food product. She said, "It should
be on the market. It should be labeled. We should not be throwing away
that much beef."
Personal life
| “ | I
think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to
do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life, and we've
got to give them a painless death. We owe the animals respect. —Temple Grandin |
” |
Temple Grandin at TED 2010
Grandin says that "the part of other people that has emotional
relationships is not part of me", and she has neither married nor had
children. She later stated, for example, that she preferred the science fiction, documentary, and thriller
genre of films and television shows to more dramatic or romantic ones.
Beyond her work in animal science and welfare and autism rights, her
interests include horse riding, science fiction, movies, and biochemistry.
She has noted in her autobiographical works that autism affects
every aspect of her life. She has to wear comfortable clothes to
counteract her sensory processing disorder and has structured her lifestyle to avoid sensory overload. She regularly takes antidepressants, but no longer uses a squeeze-box (hug machine), a device which she invented at the age of 18 as a form of stress relief therapy, stating in February 2010 that: "It broke two years ago, and I never got around to fixing it. I'm into hugging people now."
Honors
In 2010, Grandin was named in the Time 100 list of the one hundred most influential people in the world in the "Heroes" category. In 2011, she received a Double Helix Medal. She has received honorary degrees from many universities including McGill University in Canada (1999), and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (2009), Carnegie Mellon University in the United States (2012), and Emory University (2016). In 2015, she was named an Honorary Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication.
In 2012, Grandin was inducted into the Texas Trail of Fame.
Grandin received a Meritorious Achievement Award from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in 2015.
In 2016, Grandin was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2017, Grandin was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
In popular culture
Grandin has been featured on major media programs, such as Lisa Davis' It's Your Health, ABC's Primetime Live, the Today Show, Larry King Live, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She has been written up in TIME magazine, People magazine, Discover magazine, Forbes, and The New York Times. In 2012, Grandin was interviewed on Thriving Canine Radio to discuss "A Different Perspective on Animal Behavior".
She was the subject of the Horizon documentary, "The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow", first broadcast by the BBC on June 8, 2006, and Nick News with Linda Ellerbee in the spring of 2006. She also has been the subject of the first episode in the series First Person by Errol Morris.
Grandin is the focus of a semi-biographical HBO film, titled Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes as Grandin. The film was broadcast on February 6, 2010. The movie was nominated for 15 Primetime Emmy Awards and won seven awards, including Outstanding Television Movie and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Claire Danes. Grandin was on stage as the award was accepted, and she spoke briefly to the audience. Coincidentally, the 62nd Primetime Emmy Awards happened on Grandin's birthday – August 29. On January 16, 2011, at the 68th Golden Globe Awards, Claire Danes won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film.
Grandin was featured in Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into the Brain,
a documentary produced in 2006 by colourFIELD tell-a-vision, a German
company. She was named one of 2010's one hundred most influential people
in the world by Time magazine. In 2011, she was featured in an episode of the Science documentary series Ingenious Minds and in 2018, Dr. Grandin will be featured in the upcoming documentary This Business of Autism exploring Autism Employment and the success story of Autism Employers such as Spectrum Designs Foundation produced by Mesh Omnimedia.
She also was interviewed by Michael Pollan in his best-selling book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which she discussed the livestock industry.
Folk-punk band AJJ, formerly known as Andrew Jackson Jihad, included two songs called "Temple Grandin" and "Temple Grandin Too" on their LP Christmas Island.
In 2018, Grandin was noted/profiled in the book, Rescuing Ladybugs by author and animal advocate Jennifer Skiff
as a “global hero” for “standing her ground and fighting for change
after witnessing the extreme mistreatment of animals” used in farming.
Publications
- Emergence: Labeled Autistic (with Margaret Scariano, 1986, updated 1991), ISBN 0-446-67182-7
- The Learning Style of People with Autism: An Autobiography (1995). In Teaching Children with Autism : Strategies to Enhance Communication and Socialization, Kathleen Ann Quill, ISBN 0-8273-6269-2
- Thinking in Pictures: Other Reports from My Life with Autism (1996) ISBN 0-679-77289-8
- Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism (2004). ISBN 1-931282-56-0
- Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (with Catherine Johnson, 2005), ISBN 0-7432-4769-8
- The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships: Decoding Social Mysteries Through the Unique Perspectives of Autism (with Sean Barron, 2005), ISBN 1-932565-06-X
- The Way I See It: A Personal Look At Autism And Asperger's (2008), ISBN 9781932565720
- Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best life for Animals (with Catherine Johnson, 2009), ISBN 978-0-15-101489-7
- The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum (with Richard Panek, 2013), ISBN 978-0-547-63645-0
- The Loving Push: How Parents and Professionals Can Help Spectrum Kids Become Successful Adults (with Debra Moore Ph.D., 2016), ISBN 978-1941765203
- Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals, Second Edition (with Mark Deesing, 2013), ISBN 978-0-12-394586-0
- Improving animal welfare: a practical approach (2010). ISBN 978-1-84593-541-2, CABI, UK
- Livestock handling and transport (2007). ISBN 978-1-84593-219-0. CABI, UK.
- Grandin, T. 2013. Making slaughterhouses more humane for cattle, pigs, and sheep. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences. 1:491-512.
- Grandin, T. 2001. Cattle vocalizations are associated with handling and equipment problems at beef slaughter plants. Applied Animal Behavior Science. Volume 71, 2001, Pg. 191-201.
- Grandin, T. 1996. Factors That Impede Animal Movement at Slaughter Plants. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. 209 No.4:757-759.
- Grandin, T. 1995. Restraint of Livestock. Proceedings: Animal Behavior Design of Livestock and Poultry Systems International Conference (pages 208-223). Published by: Northeast Regional Agriculture Engineering Service. Cooperative Extension. 152 Riley – Robb Hall, Ithaca, New York, 14853 USA.
- Grandin, T. 1994. Euthanasia and Slaughter of Livestock. Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association. Volume 204:1354-1360.
- Grandin, T. 1989 (Updated 1999). Behavioral Principles of Livestock Handling. Professional Scientist. December 1989 (pages 1–11).
- Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create Like an Inventor (2018) ISBN 1524738204
