In the 1970s, when animal scientist Temple Grandin began her research on livestock behavior in Tempe, Arizona, she noticed that cattle are often spooked by seemingly insignificant visual details, such as a yellow hose on the ground or light reflecting off a piece of metal.Grandin, who was diagnosed with autism in 1950, says that she has always had extraordinary vision, but "never really thought anything of it”. When she sits at a boring meeting, for instance, she says she often studies the tiny pattern variations in the carpet beneath her; when she drives at night, she sees so clearly that she sometimes forgets to turn on the headlights.This 'eagle-eyed' vision, characteristic of many people on the autism spectrum, stems at least in part from abnormal variations in the early stages of visual processing, according to two reports published in the January issue of Biological Psychiatry.Read more at...SFARI, February 2009.