I first joined the “Got Perfect Pitch?” FaceBook group because I wanted to be in a supportive environment where I wasn’t the only wacky and misunderstood person in the world. Soon enough, I was able to share anecdotes and relish in the stories others shared too. One day I posted about my delight as I was driving on the freeway—I was able to adjust my cruise control so the lines on the road were pulsing in the exact rhythm as the symphony on the radio. Everyone in the group understood me. The other day I shared how tickled I was to be driving in between two mountainous regions which made me hear two neighboring radio stations simultaneously. Imagine, one was a chorus in Latin and the other was a trumpet concerto and both were in the same key—what were the odds? More importantly, what are the odds that anyone outside of this group would care or even understand why this was delightful to me?

The group started out for people to first find out what pitch abilities they shared with other members: “Can you do also do that?” Along the way, we discovered that some leading researchers were lurking in the group, especially the ones responsible for secretly editing the Wikipedia definitions in the dark of night. At some point, synesthetes began arguing about what color C was, leading to endless battles comparing harmonic hues and textures.

When savant Matt Savage graduated from Berklee and joined the group, he sometimes ‘liked’ posts while traveling to perform around the world. Then, the movie Pitch Perfect 2 came out, and membership surged. New members were highly disappointed that the group had nothing to do with the movie. Remarkably, the existing members responded with a cohesiveness to the imposters trolling the group. Puns were not spared, “name this note” tests were posted, and all kinds of antagonizing tests were initiated to provoke and scare off the posers.

And then, Carol joined. Judging by her profile photo, Carol seemed like a polite retiree who enjoys a glass of red wine with her dinner every night. According to her about-page, she is from Green Bay, Wisconsin and went to Green Bay East High School, and she currently lives in Durham, North Carolina. She also studied to be a Prevention Specialist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked at Eno River Unitarian as a Universalist Fellow.

Oy, oy, oy!

Carol never participated in any group discussion, but on January 11, 2016, she posted, “Please delete this group.” The brazen discussion-starter yielded 34 likes in response to the first WTF comment within the first few hours. One very polite member tried to ask, “Carol, are you trying to leave this group? Or do you first want to hear the lamentations of its members?” Next came this comment, “Between this and the weirdo who thought the group was about the Pitch Perfect series, I’d say we really need a screening process for future comments” and finally, someone polished off the thread with the grumpy cat “No” meme.

After fifty-nine comments with varying degrees of not-so-niceties like “Y’all, she’s like 800 years old, she doesn’t understand the e-net and inter-mails,” it was determined that Carol may have been tipsy, was jealous of those with perfect pitch, or this accusation, “Your ‘g-string’ must be a bit tight because you’re not really ‘in tune’ with what’s going on.” Yes, perfect pitchers do have an addiction to puns. In the end, the moderator wrote “I just deleted her as per her request (I think) but this thread is too epic to delete.”

For screening new members, people proposed a captcha code of pitch identification. Members argued it would be cruel and the moderators opposed it, reiterating that this group is free and open to anyone who identifies with having perfect pitch. The territorial nature of this reaction is what taught the group members so much about each other. What started as a group for people to find commonalities with others who possess the same gift, turned into a safe space for sharing their vast weirdness, comorbid with perfect pitch.

Turns out, the epic thread engaged so many people that previously-silent members got to make friends and reunite with people from a previous life: “We were in band together, remember?” The love was alive and kicking from all corners of the world: “Sheesh, I leave this thread for a few hours to go to orchestra rehearsal and I come back to more of this! You people are crazy.” And to polish off Carol’s epic thread, was this last comment: “GET OUTTA HERE!!! IN G# DIMINISHED OR MINOR CHORD!!! BYE!!!”, with an immediate response: “Wait, you mean you want to leave things unresolved?” finished off with, “But this is such a sharp group and life would just be flat if it were deleted!”

Today, most posts include the Carol treatment, which is an insider joke that newbies learn to quickly study or die trying to adapt. People will either be sent to their room if they create dissonance or get Carol’d and be threatened with deletion, please. As a trigger warning, people are known to add “and stay out of this, Carol,” or “Carol was here.” When the average person posts a cat meme with the tagline “please delete this group,” it can be expected to earn at least one comment of “OMFG WE NEED T- SHIRTS.” My favorite posts are the ones by members who already anticipate an avalanche when they share a video of a fart concerto, fully notated. Thus they self-flagellate by adding the tagline “Carol, I already went to my room, please.”

Today, January 15, 2018, is the second Caroliversary. It’s good to see her drinking in solidarity. L’chaim!

I am very excited about the U.S. Patent which was issued for the Perfect Perch device. It is U.S. Patent Patent No. 9,775,734 B1, named “A Hand Support Method And Device For Somatosensory Input To The Palm”.

• Learn more at DoogriIntsitute.com.
• Read the complete patent claims and drawings here.

If you have a piano student who has a documented diagnosis of dyspraxia, please contact me for clinical trial recruitment. Please make sure to read all the information at DoogriIntsitute.com first.

Perfect Perch hand support device for piano students with dyspraxia  

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The stereotypes of autistic people perpetuate a myth that they are socially inept. Yet non-autistics, also known as neurotypicals, portray ineptitudes on the basis of their susceptibility to body language, communication, and perceptual manipulations. How we learn these signals opens the debate for nature versus nurture, and the acquisition of social skill aptitude. Who is more socially equipped? The one who is capable of surrounding himself with pretentious body language, or the one who is mindful of her full spectrum of awareness? A neurotypical who communicates with learned body gestures is currently considered evolved, while the acquisition of those skills are a direct result of the inability to survive otherwise. The autistic who remains authentic in order to adapt to the current environment is potentially most equipped to function in society.

The cycle of life requires attracting a mate, reproduction, and adaptations for exploitation to those who threaten survival. In a typical preparation for a possible sexual encounter, high muscle tone became evident, the stomach is automatically pulled in, the chest protrudes, the body assumes an erect posture, bagging around the face and eyes decreases, and the person appears to become more youthful overall (Scheflen, 1972). While some courtship signals are studied and deliberate, others are emitted entirely unconsciously. An atypical sexual encounter will lack all of these elements, but might still yield a reproduction component.

The social behaviors of the neurotypical population do not distract the laser focus of the autistic person’s communication. On a primal level, an autistic person’s empathy is unfiltered and unmarred by the layers of social manipulation to attract a mate with nonverbal gestures. Autistic people tend to be practical fixers and not huggers. In a crisis, the autistic person will approach with a novel corrective system for creating balance in the environment, while the neurotypical will approach with tears, and offer warm hugs. Neurotypicals who nurture their social skills ultimately attract a mate, and their survival is guaranteed by laws of evolution. In contrast, autistic individuals are born with high social aptitude, but are otherwise perceived as disabled and socially inept. Evolutionary adaptation is contingent on multiple realms of survival, and the ability to attract a mate in a conventional manner is not the only way to advance a species.

Some might argue that mindful social behavior may decrease reproduction of the autistic subgroup. Without any social reciprocity that is congruent with their communication style, there are few social distractions. As a result, innumerable hours are available to devote to inanimate subjects which do not demand communicative reciprocity. The expert-level skillsets achieved meet the 10,000-hour mark with each area of interest explored in isolation. Autistics who spend less time pursuing a mate have more time to devote to their special interests and nurture their innovative streak. Thus the autistic subgroup may be recognized as the evolved species adapted for a post hunter-gatherer society and more technology-oriented world where novel skillsets are highly desired for survival. In essence, we see autism on the rise not by way of autistics reproducing. Rather, the procreation of mates with high-empath and high-analytic traits result in more autistic offspring. Inevitably, autistics are in every community and in every family we know. Since autism is a conglomerate of high-empath/high-analytic traits, the attraction of like-minded mates for ad hoc reproduction circumvent any social requisites.

An encounter between unlike partners such as a neurotypical and an autistic person may turn into a highly volatile situation when communication differences abound. The neurotypical will approach with a handshake, firm eye contact, and rudimentary chit chat. Those are learned social skills to gauge the frequencies emitted by the other person, otherwise known as reading the person on the other side of the encounter. The autistic person will avoid the handshake, make no eye contact, and will read the frequencies directly from the sound spectrums. Without applying any superficial filters to measure the situation, the autistic person will already be aware of the other person’s intention to evaluate them, which will both annoy and frustrate them because of the delay in the heart of the conversation. The autistic person will try to correct the situation with a novel approach, and offer a direct observation, such as, “You seem to be in a hurry today because you put your hair in a ponytail. Am I bothering you?” A classic reaction from a neurotypical is to respond with, “Do you realize that you are being very rude? Look at me when you’re talking. You didn’t even shake my hand. Wow—what is wrong with you?!” The neurotypical, aghast at being found out, will project their humiliation onto the autistic person, and blame them for lacking social skills. These predatory practices persist when autistics are forced into social skills trainings and therapies designed to teach them how to conform into social norms which are based purely on nurtured fallacies.

Animal adaptations for exploitation “go back deep in evolutionary time. Capuchin meat thieves do not choose their victims randomly. Capuchin monkeys selectively target muggable victims—those whom they can menace, by virtue of their higher rank” (Buss et al., 2008). The higher order of predatory practices is dependent on who sees themselves as more higher ranking. Neurotypicals who are susceptible to perceptual and gestural manipulations consider themselves as the higher ranking order of the species, and target the ones who are immune to these manipulations.

The autistic person who sees right through these layers of perception is potentially existing on the planes of actuality. Autistic people are not susceptible to optical illusions (Chouinard et al., 2016) and are less likely to catch a contagious yawn from a peer (Senju et al., 2007). Both of these may be understood as markers of a specific disorder, or analyzed as higher order traits. Optical illusions tap into the manipulability of the typically-wired brain of the individual who is accustomed to nurturing their behavior and perceptions around an imagined norm. Catching a yawn from a friend is an imitation of a social gesture when you take a clue that fatigue is a behavior that should be practiced at the given moment. Psychologists pathologize this behavior as a disability, while autistics recognize their altered state as a strong ability to coexist in both friendly and hostile environments. In the worst case, an autistic person who expresses their ability to “see the energies” or “hear the frequencies” of others, may find themselves institutionalized or drugged into submission. Neurotypicals remain equipped to survive only when they nurture their social behaviors, while autistics can survive in both worlds using multiple skillsets.

A preference for gestures as a sign of higher ranking in social aptitude prevails. Early Cartesian influences are seen in emerging psychological perspectives which disregard the role of human gestures in physical, social and evolutionary mechanisms of human behavior (Hevern, 2008, p. 217). Body language is generally observed in the meeting of a potential mate, and is evidenced in specific gestures accompanying “I,” “me,” “we” and “us” pronouns matched by small movements of the head, eyes, hands, fingers or even the shoulders (Davis May, 1970). An excited mate would gather her hands inward to demonstrate “we” and display her wrists as a sign of submissiveness for the word “us.” Neurotypicals have relied on these gestures for so long, that the lines between what they have nurtured for reproduction and what they have been equipped with by nature has blurred. The nurtured skillsets may rob them of the ability to see more clearly what is available to them in the unmanipulated planes.

Autistics who alter their habitual performance find that their ability to read people with their innate tools are dulled. Without these skillsets, they are vulnerable and blind in a world that is full of manically gesturing people who seem to know what they are doing. The chaos is unbearable and the amount of time spent recovering from faking for a single encounter makes the attempt not worth the effort. Therefore autistics are not vulnerable to nurturing their social skills to manipulative levels. Neurotypicals are entrained from infancy to return their mother’s loving gaze, to coo in delight from their mother’s nonsensical babble, and to clap their hands to imitate adults. Autistic infants have been found to fixate on geometric shapes instead of facial features (Pierce et al., 2011), look away from extended parental gaze, have hyperlexia and communicate in full sentences without the expected babbling (Rapin et al., 1983). These early signs of inability to groom for social ineptness makes the autistic person prepared for a high-tech/low-manipulation world that seeks out their novel abilities.

The lack of acknowledgement that autistics are performing at a higher level stems from an initial dichotomy in perception of the other. The social condition is such that the majority creates the norm, and the hierarchy of control begins with those who put themselves there first. To elevate oneself onto the pedestal of that social order requires a significant amount of manipulation of others, a skill which autistics neither have the interest nor the desire to get involved with. Autistics will achieve civil rights when they go against the expectations of gathering in large numbers to advocate for their cause. By staying true to their neurology, the advancement of their acceptance will be promulgated by the cave-dwelling, keyboard-pecking, and truth-telling traits of this meta-species.

*Identity-First over person-first language—read disclaimer here.

References

1. Buss, D. M., & Duntley, J. D. (2008). Adaptations for exploitation. Group dynamics: Theory, research, and practice, 12(1), 53.
2. Chouinard, P. A., Unwin, K. L., Landry, O., & Sperandio, I. (2016). Susceptibility to optical illusions varies as a function of the autism-spectrum quotient but not in ways predicted by local–global biases. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 46(6), 2224-2239.
3. Davis May, F. (1970) The Way We Speak ‘Body Language’ New York Times. May 31, 1970
4. Hevern, V. W. (2008). Why narrative psychology can’t afford to ignore the body. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 2(4), 217.
5. Pierce, K., Conant, D., Hazin, R., Stoner, R., & Desmond, J. (2011). Preference for geometric patterns early in life as a risk factor for autism. Archives of general psychiatry, 68(1), 101-109.
6. Rapin, I., Allen, D., & Kirk, U. (1983). Developmental language disorders: Nosologic considerations. Neuropsychology of language, reading, and spelling, 155-184.
7. Senju, A., Maeda, M., Kikuchi, Y., Hasegawa, T., Tojo, Y., & Osanai, H. (2007). Absence of contagious yawning in children with autism spectrum disorder. Biology letters, 3(6), 706-708.