Imagination and Asperger's

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Tiffofdoom, we are in the process of currently getting our son, he's 4.5 y/o, assistance with AS. We are dealing with Dr's who don't want to admit there is a problem, luckily our school district is helping us, after 2 initial meetings, they agreed that he needed help, more for his speech delay than anything else, but it's a start.

As for your questions, I'm alot like how you described yourself. While doing the research for my son I realized that I too fall into alot of the chatagories for AS also. For me also it all finally made alot of sense, instead of just being 'anti-social' which bothered me alot because I crave friendship I just cann't keep friends, which isn't "anti-social' at all. As a kid I had huge imagination and acted on it all the time. I wanted to become a writer at a young age, to give it an escape, but found that I have problems putting thoughts to paper. I had/have vivid dreams, so vivid that when I wake up sometimes I'm confused as to what's going on. I still spend alot of time in my head lol, I'm also the type to think of odd things, like random alternate realities, for example, if I have a near miss on the freeway driving, I will think "wow, myself on the other side didn't miss" (I'm strange in that regard lol) I will also hold elaberate practice conversations in my head, practicing how I will talk about a subject to a specific person before I actually do, if I ever in fact do it, to be sure I won't screw it up in some way, I accept that I'm socially inept about alot of things.

As for thinking in 3D or pictures, are you telling me that people out there in "Normal-Land" don't do this???? For reals?? I do, even when I read, I can visualize what I'm reading as I'm reading it. I actually have a hard time talking to people over phones when they are trying to describe something, if I cann't see it, I tune it all out until I can see it, not just a physical picture but in my head too. I recently had a conversation with my mom over my ability to look at clothing and disect it in my head and create my own patterns, she kept telling me that this isn't normal, that most people cann't do that, even experienced seamstresses. I kept telling her "What do you mean people cann't do that? It's not that hard, it's pretty simple." She kept having to tell me that No it wasn't normal and that it wasn't that simple, most people just cann't do that, which just made me feel even more freakish.

Yes, so-called "visual thinking" is unusual, when it's the predominant style of thinking. Most people are able to "picture something," and many, many people use visual thinking to some degree or another, so this has been presumed to be more common than it actually is.
The catch is, few people actually use visual thinking MORE than all other forms of thought, and even fewer will think solely in pictures.

Where the autism spectrum is concerned, visual thinking is more common than in the neurotypical population. At the same time, not every primarily visual thinker is autistic, and not every autistic person thinks in pictures.

Do a Google search for "visual thinking" and you'll quickly pull up a few links that can give you a much more detailed explanation - or a nice, simple one, in the case of the Wikipedia article on the subject.

As for myself: I suppose I'm one of those odd solely/primarily visual thinkers. Sometimes I see words in my head, but only as a tiny detail added to the flood of still and moving images I normally see. I also hear, touch, smell and taste, in my head. None of that has to be imagined or "called up," though; it's just what naturally happens as I experience thought. No idea how common/weird that may be, lol.

My husband has many traits of Asperger's, and had more as a child, but I'm not sure if he actually fits the profile, as he often seems to have a dramatically different perspective than the kids and I, and finds ours near-impossible to understand. Then again...maybe that's his own theory of mind deficit talking, heh. But, even though he has these significant traits, he does not think in a visual manner more than about half the time, and his "mental pictures" are nowhere near as elaborate and detailed as mine.

The youngest kids are a bit too young to judge, but my 7-year old daughter has begun to describe what sounds like near pure visual thinking. Her father (my ex-husband) has almost no imagination, whatsoever, and can rarely "picture something" if you ask him to. However, weirdly enough, if he sees a building once, he can memorize it and create a 3-D model of it, in his mind. That's his only odd trait; otherwise, he's as "normal" as they come.


Oh, and unrelatedly: I, too, have long, detailed "practice" conversations, lol. If I am alone, I can pick apart social situations and usually predict exactly what will happen, and why; I understand people very, very well, so long as I can examine them in that fashion. However, in actual face-to-face social situations, it all falls apart and I become almost unable to communicate. I'm notorious for saying just the right things, in writing, and then sounding near-retarded, in person - I can't even respond to a simple "Hi, how are you doing?" without stumbling all over myself, making jokes no one understands, and just generally coming off as a complete weirdo. ;D

Amusingly enough, I also lecture myself. No one else wants to hear it, so when I'm consumed by ideas on a particular subject, I just talk to myself about it, lol. The advantage of this, is that I can give fantastic "presentations" to small groups of people, socially. So long as I'm not having to make eye contact, and get distracted by either small talk or that one-on-one "connection," I sound brilliant and very well put-together. All that lecturing of myself is apparently good practice, lmao.

I think the whole "lack of imagination" thing is meant to say "Has difficulty imagining things outside of their special interests". My solution is to have as many special interest as possible.

I just can't imagine actually enjoying fishing. There you go. I'm a really imaginative person, I just can't imagine certain things.

Lack of imagination is a discredited and antiquated concept, which came about as an uninformed interpretation of repetitive behavior which is a manifestation of anxiety primarily form the lack of innate social skills.

Most of the world greatest inventors and many artist and philosophers have autism genetic characteristic so if Aspergeres really = lack of imagination we would probably still be living in caves.

Be sure and check the publishing date on any information you are reading, if it is before 2005 do not bother since the state of the science is advancing so quickly.

If you have not read it yet get a copy of Tony Attwood’s “ the complete guide to aspergers” C2007 available on Amazon for about $25, he is a preeminent clinician in aspergers and the book is very informative and readable.



bookwormde

Dear tiffofdoom,

It was validating to read your replies; we share many of the same behaviors, several of which I previously considered to belong solely to me and a few others at the local mental institution. In other words, I am just glad that I am not the only one who has in-depth conversations with mental specters of real people.

Children that possess a learning disability or developmental delay, while still scoring as gifted on psychometric measurements, are known, albeit a bit colloquially, as "twice-exceptional" in educational psychology. An often-encountered problem of twice-exceptionality is the reluctance of school administration to provide therapy and accommodation to those classifying as described on the very basis that they denied your son assistance—"If he's gifted, he doesn't need any help! The rest of his brain just needs to keep up!" One of the sources I have found that intelligently addresses the issue is, of course, Hoagies' Gifted Education Page, the perennial gifted help database. Although, I have found that, at times, the more pragmatic nature of discussion boards can provide better solutions to problems, especially those whose premises vary greatly, such as appropriate learning programs. My favorite board that concerns these types of issues is the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum. I am confident that they will able to help you there.

With Love,
G.L.A.Y.

P.S. Unfortunately, I was not able to post links to the mentioned websites due to the restriction on less-senior members from including links in posts. That definitely calls for a sad face emoticon: . To access the websites, you can just google their names.

Neurotypical people say that I have an imagination but I tell them that my imagination is dead and it turns into a power struggle. I know that autistic people have a lack of imagination, but NT people don't seem to understand or care about that. Why do they have to criticize us?

I see beings in my mind known as Niggies. I see images of them very clearly and I also believe in them. It may sound awfully weird at my age to be believing in things that may be imaginary to everyone else. But to me, they are very real. I am trying to find others who experience a similar thing, or perceive a whole world like I do. I was featured on this website by a very lovely person and want to talk to others on this site.

upside down avatar shows some imagination, why didn't anybody else think of that ...

Frankly, my daughter has very very low imagination. She can struggle with even the simplest choices. For example, today we stood on line at an ice cream shop. The person behind us peeked ahead and said the choices today were chocolate strawberry and vanilla. That was too complicated for my daughter and she asked: what are you having and she tried to formulate a rule, if daddy has chocolate then I'll have vanilla, and vice versa. Unfortunately, as we reached the front of the line we saw that the more options were available like chocolate hazelnut, chocolate sorbet, and "wicked" chocolate. At that point it was absolutely impossible for her to decide.

Rather than imagining what would make her happy, she tries to find a logical basis for this kind of choice. Which one is cheapest? Which one does daddy think is best? And so on...

Personally, I think I have AS and I think I have imagination. But I rarely read fiction. My imagination may just be an instinctive defiance. I never wanted to be normal. I imagine being the opposite of whatever people expect me to be.

Well my daughter just got a PDD-NOS diagnosis and she has a great imagination. She likes to make up stories about her toys or herself. For a while she would pretend she had her own TV show and she created a theme song and had a different toy on as a guest each time she played the TV game. And she climbs up on the couch and pretends she's a cat stuck in a tree etc... that type of thing. She just doesn't do it with other kids ;-/ I have to be the playmate all the time.

I don't think everyone fits into a box with these things ( thats what I'm starting to think anyway). A person could show just a few traits but still be pretty typical in other areas.

My doctor mostly focused on my lack of social interaction and obsession with dogs and psychology, but my imagination was wild. I write stories, and I have a paralell world in which I make up different languages, and I also find ways to create imaginative poems. When I was little, I also had a vivid imagination. I wouldn't play with dolls because I wanted to play with my sister even more. Once, when people forced me to play as a dog in first grade, in my head, I made up that I turned human in the rain and people abandoned me. I also renamed myself, as well as my sister (who I renamed Anna).

Instead of "lack of imagination", a vivid imagination could be a sign.

My son has a fantastic imagination. Just this morning, after he knocked one of our dog's food everywhere he was insistent that the "bad crazy duck" had done it, not him. The "bad crazy duck" is a glass lamp work bead. He is three.

I think the lack of imagination idea came out of a mis interpretation at some point of the 'lateral vs critical thinking" identifier associated with executive function. Spider put it well when saying that most imagination (as far as I know) has a base which is built upon.

As for myself, I'm bad at coming up with 'spontaneous ideas' like "oh hey lets go do this fun thing!" when spending time with others: It usually follows my interests, not theirs'. Or I wind up with a completely 'blank' miind.

But I do write stories, and as far as I've been told (even by professional writers) I come up with (and convey) incredibly intricate worlds (in writing) that are apparent even in my short works (and It's true - I establish alot more data about my worlds than I impart in the text).

I had legos and "construx" as a kid, and I would spend half my day having battles between the great construx giants and the little lego vehicles I'd built. Of course both sides would suffer serious damages - sometimes complete deconstruction - and then i would go into 'repair' mode, where the 'lego base' would reassemble the vehicles (usually exactly as they had been).. and it would all begin again... I even had a "me" lego who, of course, was the commander of lego world.

Incidently, I don't have the picture-oriented mind. I was actually shocked when I came across the idea of photo-perfect thinking, and sort off feel I'm missing out on alot. I can image images, but they aren't especially vibrant, or even especially stable. I could recreate a building I'd seen if I wanted to, but each detail would have to be surveyed with my eyes closed (or at least unfocused) and my mind 'repainting' it with some effort (there would be little or no background in the image - I suppose it would be like the difference between braile and cursive reading).

Maybe that's why I always started most of my imaginary play from physical objects and worked from there.

Long post short: Lack of imagination isn't an appropriate criteria.

I like to think my son has a great imagination, he can make a racetrack out anything
He's always playing his little scenarios: AGGHH, we're gonna crash!!
"don't worry, I'll save you" or
"haha, you crashed, I win the race.
and so on and so forth. It really tickles me to hear him play. I get a kick out of it. He's as obsessed about cars (hotwheels, not the movie) as I was about SheRa at his age. Anyone remember SheRa?

Imagination and Asperger's

Imagination is a big term. It takes imagination to turn a word on a book page into a mental image in the head. It takes imagination to see a fence which needs repair and then figure out how much of the fence to fix, boards to replace and so on.

About Constructional Apraxia

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/apraxia/apraxia.htm

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Subtle perceptual difficulties

Visual perception difficulties
Some children with hemiplegia may have visual perception difficulties.

http://www.hemihelp.org.uk/hemiplegia/c ... perception

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Recall reading a How To (understand) book about ADHD Inattentive (1981) by C. Thomas Wild who directly addressed this idea of imagination/the human imagination. A FDA approved medicine, an alertness aid, called Tirend (contains caffeine - 100 mg/plus 14 other ingredients) temporarily activated his imagination (not a cure) and allowed him to draw pictures in black and white and in color with much greater detail and accuracy. Wild had noticeable difficulty concentrating easily enough to play games such as Clue and Monopoly (due to a lack of sustained attention and ordinary imagination). It takes imagination to use Lincoln Logs or a A.C. Gilbert Erector Set. It takes imagination to use a hand puppet in a short puppet theater act one minute long. It takes imagination to do basic math.

My ODS' imagination is one of the reasons that it has taken us so long to pursue a diagnosis. We've known since he was a baby that he was different than other babies, but some things never made sense. I remember searching Autism on the internet just after his first birthday, but none of the red flags seemed to fit him. For one, he was speaking in 3-4 word sentences at only 16 months. He didn't have a speech delay like all the check lists seemed to note back in 2006. Another red flag was a fascination for 'parts of objects,' such as spinning wheels on a car endlessly. Our ODS didn't do that either. He wasn't obsessed with the hose of the vacuum, he was obsessed with the entire machine! There was no way our child could be on the spectrum, or so we thought. Well, his obsession with vacuums never disappeared. While he does not obsess over them endlessly like he did as a one, two, and three-year-old, he is still fascinated by them and will randomly ask to vacuum the rug at our home or someone else's home. [I'm not complaining, honestly!] Anyways, back to my thoughts on imagination. Another red flag for Autism that I noted back then was a lack of imagination. At this time, I had never heard of Asperger's and would not stumble across it until May 2010. All I kept reading was that children on the ASD did not have imaginations, and our son did. He would pretend to vacuum for HOURS and HOURS. He would pretend to ride a motorcycle like daddy for HOURS and HOURS. I thought there was no way he could be autistic. Come to think of it, I never disclosed my worries to my DH. I didn't bring up my suspicians until I was close to consulting with him about paying nearly 2k to get him a private evaluation. While our ODS does have an awesome imagination, his imagination is purely imitative. He sees something, he imitates it in his own play. Now that he is older, he is lessed obsessed with vacuum cleaners and more obsessed with fireman and 'lawn mower men.' He spends hours upon hours imitating them. Up until school started last month, he would sit in his window sill all Monday morning watching the lawn service mow the lawn in our rental community and the moment they finished, he jumped down from his bed and pretended to do the same throughout our entire house. This is HIS imaginary world.

I'm not sure what will come of his evaluation, but it should be complete by October. He has had the ADOS, we've done the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale, and he has had two of three observations so far (school, home, and grandfather's house). Hopefully they will be able to write the report after his last observation on Wednesday, although I feel like they won't be ready for some reason as he is so mind boggling. He's very social in some settings, but not in others. He was great at the school observation, very normal, but he was absolutely HORRIBLE at the home observation. The one hour observation turned into just shy of two hours because he was tantruming so bad (he's over 5 btw).