Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD): Compendium Thread

Frideswide said:
Finally, they are culturally specific, measure a limited type of "intelligence" and seem all to be designed by people of one particular neurology.
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This is one reason why IQ-by-nationality is so controversial. If your culture doesn't conceptualise something in the same way - or perhaps the question relates to something your culture doesn't even do or use - how are you supposed to answer the question?

IQ covers patterns, logic, spatial rotation and other similar things. But I'd argue creativity and innovation is an enormous aspect of intelligence that kickstarted human development in the first place, and this isn't measured by IQ. Same with common sense (which is necessary for keeping the species alive) emotional intelligence (which is pretty important for social animals) or memory skills (which helps the species retain important information)

In reality our overall intelligence is measured by how our aptitudes in different areas average out.
 
gattino said:
She's just interrupted this message and her interaction demonstrated that eye contact aversion is actually secondary to very wide eyed staring so I'm immediately contradicting myself.
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yeah :( we do avoiding eye contact and also the sort of intense staring that makes you think someone is going to pounce! Really, we just get eye contact wrong. Unless the culture means we don't have to look at people at all!
 
catseye said:
My mum used to work with university professors and she always said that they were very clever but had the common sense of a broomhandle.
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Hello, my name is Saint Frideswide and I have the common sense of a broomhandle.

I believe that there are more different neurologies in universities in the UK than anywhere else. Some diagnosed, especially following on from one of their blood relatives being diagnosed, but generally they are in a mileu which plays to their strengths and supports their weaknesses. So there isn't really a point in diagnosis for them.
 
I find it really difficult to simultaneously maintain eye contact and tell anyone anything very complicated.

Eye contact + simple conversation = fine.
Eye contact + anecdote / something abstract / something that requires me to search my memory or choose my words carefully = one of the two is going to go. Either I um and ah as I look you in the eye, or my eyes go everywhere and I articulate properly.

Job interviews can get in the bin for this reason.
 
LadyDunmail said:
I find it really difficult to simultaneously maintain eye contact and tell anyone anything very complicated.

Eye contact + simple conversation = fine.
Eye contact + anecdote / something abstract / something that requires me to search my memory or choose my words carefully = one of the two is going to go. Either I um and ah as I look you in the eye, or my eyes go everywhere and I articulate properly.

Job interviews can get in the bin for this reason.
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We have a thread discussing eye contact:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/eye-contact.70139/

People do not constantly look at a person while they are talking. They often look away to think and gather thoughts. The more in depth (or emotionally fraught) the topic, the more eye movement away from direct sight. No one maintains constant eye contact.

Other cultures believe that direct eye contact is disrespectful.
 
Saint Frides has been on the fizzy pop again, it appears. Thank goodness that I am the forum's voice of sanity and intelllyjunce, and not Fizzy Frides or Captain Birdseye catseye!
 
Steven said:
One thing I found, after advice sessions and assessment, was that many 'classic autistic' behaviours I previously thought that I don't do...I actually do; before, I'd not realised that these were unusual behaviours. A minor example: I'd thought that behaviours like clicking a light-switch on and off several times - just to check that it really was off - was related to other conditions (OCD, for example) but was assured that this can also be indicative of autism. But there are many other examples too
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As I have mentioned before, I had the light switch thing, accompanied by saying 1234 1234 1234 1234..................

This is how daft it got though;

Say I was putting a book back on the shelf and going to bed. If, when I got into bed, the digital clock radio said 23:13, I would have to wait until it changed (not just to 14 as that wasn't far enough away from 13) and then get back up and touch the book (1234 1234 1234 1234........) then get back into bed.

If the clock then said 23:17, because those numbers add up to 13, I would have to do the same again.

If the next time the clock said 23:51, as those numbers (plus the colon separating the numbers) added up to 13, I would, once more, have to start over again.

This repetitiveness could have been caused by just about anything (not only the number 13)- it may have been a noise inside or out, a thought, a cough, anything.

It was the same with reading. It sometimes took me hours just to turn the page without having to turn back and start again.

Add on the light switch thing and other stuff and it's no wonder I fell asleep a lot at school.
 
brownmane said:
We have a thread discussing eye contact:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/eye-contact.70139/

People do not constantly look at a person while they are talking. They often look away to think and gather thoughts. The more in depth (or emotionally fraught) the topic, the more eye movement away from direct sight. No one maintains constant eye contact.

Other cultures believe that direct eye contact is disrespectful.
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I suppose it would depend on the extent to which other people look away. I'm aware people don't stare at each other's faces all the time, but there's often a frequent return to brief eye contact - an acknowledgement you're still connected to the other person.
I know my grandmother had something to say about my frequent need to search the ceiling for divine inspiration. It did make conversation with her quite mentally draining on my part.
 
Floyd said:
As I have mentioned before, I had the light switch thing, accompanied by saying 1234 1234 1234 1234..................

This is how daft it got though;

Say I was putting a book back on the shelf and going to bed. If, when I got into bed, the digital clock radio said 23:13, I would have to wait until it changed (not just to 14 as that wasn't far enough away from 13) and then get back up and touch the book (1234 1234 1234 1234........) then get back into bed.

If the clock then said 23:17, because those numbers add up to 13, I would have to do the same again.

If the next time the clock said 23:51, as those numbers (plus the colon separating the numbers) added up to 13, I would, once more, have to start over again.

This repetitiveness could have been caused by just about anything (not only the number 13)- it may have been a noise inside or out, a thought, a cough, anything.

It was the same with reading. It sometimes took me hours just to turn the page without having to turn back and start again.

Add on the light switch thing and other stuff and it's no wonder I fell asleep a lot at school.
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That sounds like OCD. A lot of people think that OCD is a compulsion to clean, but it is very very far from that. My friend's son, who has moderately severe autism has to check that taps are off and that things are packed in bags, but not like most people, once or twice. Ten, fifteen times before leaving the house he has to check the taps, check his bag, check that the door is locked. I think it's a form of asserting control over a world that seems to be beyond your control.
 
Frideswide said:
Yes, sometimes we have to learn to fake things. But for important things I can't do eye contact /and/ understand what is being said.
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A lot of things are faked, in life.;)

Seriously, at least to my way of thought, there are a lot of "social niceties" that are faked in the sense that you have to make the motions just to put someone else at ease. That can be tiring. I like more straightforward interaction.
 
Going back to the noise issue and how that can be associated with autism, I found it quite refreshing that a guy in France received a fine for making a call on his phone using the speaker, thus broadcasting the whole two way conversation to everyone within hearing distance.
It is a pet peeve of mine and I wish we had similar regulations to the French to lower the unnecessary noise that people make.

Man fined for loudspeaker call at French station https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g949m4g41o
 
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Tempest63 said:
Going back to the noise issue and how that can be associated with autism, I found it quite refreshing that a guy in France received a fine for making a call on his phone using the speaker, thus broadcasting the whole two way conversation to everyone within hearing distance.
It is a pet peeve of mine and I wish we had similar regulations to the French to lower the unnecessary noise that people make.

Man fined for loudspeaker call at French station https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g949m4g41o
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I hate people using speaker phone. I really really am NOT interested in you trying to prove you have a life, friends etc:rolleyes:
 
Two Things That Got On My Bits This Week: part 92300000 ~

* A newspaper's film critic casually mooting that a movie's protagonist (a fictional character, after all) might have Autism and ADHD...while totally ignoring the creator's personal background; her film's clear and obvious themes of silence and stillness; her method of paying homage to everything from 'silent and still' paintings like Millet's The Gleaners; various seemingly-eventless episodes in Jean-Luc Godard's & Ingmar Bergman's movies (and more); the classic 19th-century French Novel; the nature of Cinema itself etc etc. If I can spot those themes, then surely one of the UK's leading film critics could too, instead of airily theorising and making throwaway, worthless 'diagnoses'? Just as bad is the fact that the protagonist lives her life in a manner which would offend bourgeois morals - would the amateur diagnosis have been made if she was mind-numbingly conventional in her behaviour? I doubt it...

* Talking of irresponsibility: 'We’ve become a nation of pencil-chewers' ~

The same newspaper today features an NHS therapist and writer claiming that 'we have become addicted to feeling anxious'. If he genuinely feels that that is the truth, fair enough - but in our current political climate, such remarks will doubtlessly be used against those who suffer - often greatly - from anxiety. This surely includes autists too. Comments like 'We’ve become a nation of pencil-chewers' deliberately or unwittingly minimises anxiety's often-crushing effects on lives. Anxiety is not a habit similar to a schoolchild's pondering over how to write an essay. These comments only fuel unthinking cynicism and lead, almost inevitably, to 'public sentiment' giving license to politicians for cutbacks of funding for treatment of anxiety. Also, the therapist's/writer's evidence is anecdotal and limited - based on conversations with a small number of people in an 'NHS anxiety group'. Apparently, one member's claim that giving up anxiety was harder than giving up drugs was, as he states, his 'aha moment'. With yawn-provoking inevitability, the feature closes with a 'discreet' advert for the therapist's book; colour me shocked.
 
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Steven said:
Two Things That Got On My Bits This Week: part 92300000 ~

* A newspaper's film critic casually mooting that a movie's protagonist (a fictional character, after all) might have Autism and ADHD...while totally ignoring the creator's personal background; her film's clear and obvious themes of silence and stillness; her method of paying homage to everything from 'silent and still' paintings like Millet's The Gleaners; various seemingly-eventless episodes in Jean-Luc Godard's & Ingmar Bergman's movies (and more); the classic 19th-century French Novel; the nature of Cinema itself etc etc. If I can spot those themes, then surely one of the UK's leading film critics could too, instead of airily theorising and making throwaway, worthless 'diagnoses'? Just as bad is the fact that the protagonist lives her life in a manner which would offend bourgeois morals - would the amateur diagnosis have been made if she was mind-numbingly conventional in her behaviour? I doubt it...
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It is lazy writing. Instead of using descriptive writing to explain themes and people, it seems that MSM now defaults to using ADHD and autism as tropes.
 
Steven said:
What is vanishing, please?
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really? I don't know if this is real, sorry. Vanishing is when you stay very quiet and very still, being generally in the backgrouns and not impinging on other people - it's what nature does with camouflage etc.

edit to add: not vaRnishing. Which is dying your self with self tan so that you aren't recognised.
 
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I was like that in infants and junior schools, but I was very lucky to have friendly classmates who brought me out of my shell a little; however, I don't think we ever really shake off that essential shyness (and, perhaps, stillness).
 
Steven said:
I was like that in infants and junior schools, but I was very lucky to have friendly classmates who brought me out of my shell a little; however, I don't think we ever really shake off that essential shyness (and, perhaps, stillness).
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it is much much easier when you find your tribe.
 
Steven said:
Today I was going to post about associative thought, but am too burned out by having associative thoughts.
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In one of my lectures/talks I liken it to one of the old rollodex thingies (technical term)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex#:~:text=A Rolodex is a rotating,to store a contact list.

where you start off flipping gently through cards and it spins faster and faster until there is just a blur and rattle...

And then you have to sit down suddenly and sob in a corner. Or is that last just me? :glum:
 
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