Temple Grandin isn't just an authority on livestock and animal welfare, she also is an expert on dealing with children and adults struggling with autism.

And why not? Grandin, who earned her Ph.D. in Animal Science from University of Illinois in 1989, is arguably the world's most accomplished autistic adult.

On Tuesday, Grandin was the featured speaker at Millersville University's Anna Funk Lockey Educational Lecture, held in Pucillo gymnasium.

For more than an hour, Grandin, 62, shared her own experience with autism with her huge audience. She also gave tips on how autistic people think, function and communicate.

Unlike most people, she said, those with autism engage in "bottom-up thinking." That is, to learn a concept, they must first be given lots of specific examples.

If the child likes to draw race cars, introduce the idea of a race track, the stands in which the spectators sit and then a city in which the track might be located. "Everything you teach must be by specific example," she said.

There are three basic types of autistic people, she said, the visual thinker, the math and music thinker and the verbal thinker.

Grandin is a visual thinker. She said if someone tells a person to imagine a church steeple, most have a general image in mind.

"I picture specific steeples," she said. "And I can tell you in what cities those steeples are located."

Children who are visual thinkers enjoy things like LEGOs® and building blocks. Math skills like adding and subtracting must be taught using items they can touch.

They are slower to speak — she did not talk until she was 3 years old — because each verbal request has to be translated by the brain into picture form.

Autistic children who are math and music thinkers, she said, may be able to play a musical piece by ear after hearing it once. They also can teach themselves to play musical instruments.

Verbal thinkers have excellent memories and love lists and numbers.

Unlike when she was a child and people with autism were thought to be brain-damaged and were put in institutions, today's workforce has a place for them.

But with autism, where she said "fear is the main emotion," young people must be taught the skills that will allow them to enter the job market.

Those who are visual thinkers have been shown to do well in industrial design, graphic arts, auto mechanics and computer repair.

Math thinkers, she said, excel as electronic engineers, music composers and as physicists, while verbal thinkers are best suited for acting, speech therapy, journalism and librarian positions, among other jobs.

However, she acknowledged that autism can be a hindrance in the job market. She "got no respect" from prospective employers "until they looked at my work."

"I had to sell my skills, not myself," she said.

Grandin has written several books and appeared as a guest on ABC's "Primetime Live," "The Today Show," "Larry King Live," "48 Hours" and "20/20." Her life and work have been featured in "Time," "People," "Forbes" and "U.S. News and World Report."

Most recently, she was the focus of a movie produced by Home Box Office and titled "Temple Grandin." In the film, Claire Danes plays Grandin.

Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University.

lalexander@lnpnews.com