For context I have audhd. I’ve always been confused about the association between stacking toys and autism. I don’t particularly remember stacking toys as a kid other than of course I did because I was a kid. Don’t lots of kids try to stack stuff as high as possible occasionally? Why is this seen as an autistic trait? Is it a stereotype due to the historical bias towards autistic boys with a particular presentation or something else? If it really is associated with autism and not a bias, why do autistic kids do it more?
Autistic person here:
Yep, you got it.
Its complex consistent pattern creation, its fixation on details/components.
And you’re right to point out how its much more complicated than ‘oh they do this thing so they must be autistic’.
But I will push back slightly against the ‘ground up’ thinking framework.
Its not so much that it needs to be details -> small concepts -> big concepts… its that the framework needs to be consistent and well defined, without exceptions or vaugeries.
Autistic people can totally understand something, starting from a big picture perspective, if you actually explain all the mechanistic concepts, from the top down to the bottom.
What neurotypicals often do is just forget to explain edges cases, ignore contradictions that they don’t even realize are present, because they don’t evaluate the concepts for potential contradictions that thoroughly.
That’s the strength of the neurotypical thinking mode: its faster, less mentally taxing, less stressful. Less rigorous and accurate, but its faster, and works in most common cases. A ‘good enough’ heuristic.
Thats why autistic people often struggle with socializing: They’re getting a whole bunch of different feedback from different people with different personalities who have different uses and meanings for the same words, who have different opinions about what is or is not appropriate in what kind of situation/context, who have different kinds of facial expressions, body language, tone shifts, etc.
This is very hard to consolidate into a consistent, stable, detailed, non-contradicting framework for how to socialize, because everyone is actually ‘playing’ by slightly different rules… but neurotypicals do not realize the extent to which that is true.
What is much easier to do, for an autist, is to model a single person’s ‘social rules’, or a small group of similar people’s ‘social rules’.
We call that ‘masking’.
Then you just switch masks, switch social etiquette rules, when you are around a different group.
Its easier to have a few, smaller, consistent models of socializing, than it is to try and … consolidate them into a sort of grand, unified, totally consistent socializing framework.
… Because when you try to do that, you realize more and more contradictions.
Wow I might have to save your comment because I’ve been trying to explain why I think the way I do and why things annoy me my entire life without having the vocabulary for it and you just summed it up so well. Thank you!
Happy to help!
I’m… getting to be closer to 40, than 30.
I’ve just been doing this ‘being alive while autistic’ thing for a fair amount of time now.
Yeah I’m def on the 40 side of my 30s too. Crazy how time gets away from you.
Thanks for the additional detail here! I knew I was making a broad generalization with “ground up” and don’t mean to imply that if you start with details (ground) you never make it to the big picture. As you said, more data and examples are necessary and while the overarching structure can eventually be seen, autistics are less like to wave away outliers as quickly as neurotypicals.
Still, I think it’s been well documented that in general autistics much more likely to utilize inductive reasoning whereas neurotypicals rely more on deductive reasoning. Both have strengths and downsides and work best in combination.
It’s almost as if we need each other and should cherish the differences that make us better together! In my experience, that means NTs need to adjust more to autistics because autistic people are constantly adjusting to a society that overvalues NTs.
No prob!
As with the other reply, yeah I don’t mean to be hostile or accusatory, and I’m aware that … well, not everyone wants or has time to write a small essay, lol.
And yes, I would agree that generally, autists do tend more toward inductive than deductive reasoning.
More data, more understanding of the concepts at play, how they interact, basically equals you can build a better model, which then means you can make better deductions.
And yes, I agree that NTs and NDs should work together… this is I guess my own oversimplification, but I see it as like an rpg game with different player classes: A differentiated but well working team can leverage each other’s strengths, compensate for each other’s weaknesses.
There are certainly many, many situations where I find myself having to… basically override what my brain is trying to do, and make a snap decision based on my ‘gut’, which I fundamentally do not like doing, but sometimes, timing is more important than precision.
The major downside to the autistic… brainmode or whatever, as I see it, is decision paralysis, overanalysis or fixation that can be unproductive or detrimental.
So… it is kinda like different fundamental ‘brainmodes’ just are specced differently, optimized for different things, so to speak.
Anyway… yes it would be nice if NTs more broadly were… basically just a bit more patient, open-minded… and actually just listened.
Probably the most harmful general stereotype about autists is that they can:t control their emotions, or, they just don’t have them at all.
No, that’s not it at all.
Its that we routinely have emotions that result from chains of thoughts that… basically just don’t often occur in NTs, unless they’re really focusing.
That, and so much ‘normal’ NT emotional expression… is basically what we tend to view as a performance. So, when we are tired, or just really don’t care that much, honestly, or are focused on something other than doing the dance that accompanies a particular social mask… we’re flat.