Start-Up Challenges: Redefining the Spectrum Labels

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From this i agree!

Not only are there secondary effects from honesty, but also with the inabilty to multi task.

I still view many of our difficulties should be narrowed down to 'start-up' problems, and now i would include singular focucus.

although i personally do not think of them as mere problems, simply a different ability in how things are handled, or processed by the rest of the general public.

Yes, though I think this is on a continuum as well and related to how one has learned to identify feelings. I know when I am angry - I don't need to think about it. I am less sure when I am sad, and the more complicated the emotion or the less I have experienced it, the more likely I will have to think about it to figure out what I am feeling. Identifying others' feelings is even harder because expressions aren't consistent.

I am currently struggling with how the truth can change, that is, how something can be true in one time period and not true in another, or worse, true and not true at the same time. If I can wrap my brain around this then I will be able to believe that someone can have the same expression on their face in the same situation and have it mean two different things.

One of the more difficult things about identifiying traits in the pattern of Aspergers is that as one gains experience one can approximate or even attain behaviors that came more easily to neurotypical folks. Unless one has a good retrospective memory (rare), it's hard to tell who had sufficient traits to fall under the AS pattern. Some folks with milder manifestations of characteristics may look completely NT as an adult; this makes it hard to distinguish the from folks whose odd or unique characteristics make them seem Aspergery. My mom and dad fall into this category. Both acquired social skills, but on closer examination you see that my mom has sensory integration needs (she is in her 70s and has been skiing for about 5 years, likes the acceleration of flying and speeding in a car), tends to isolate when she's overloaded, and has collecting habits similar to mine. Her obsession with tennis exceeds what most folks would call normal. My dad isolates most of the time, also collects, and has relatively poor social skills. My mom had a successful career while my dad did not do as well - well enough to retire on a budget, but not much more.

If my pattern matching template were completed and we applied it to my parents, they would likely not reach the pattern match for Aspergers. I on the other hand would exceed it. If we stopped thinking about pattern matching for diagnostics and used the pattern matching schema to predict where someone would be likely to succeed (the strong interest inventory does this) or identify what they might need to adjust to succeed in a particular environment, it would be far more useful. For example, if I have trouble with sensory overload and need to work in a noisy environment, I could decide not to work there or look at my patterns and see in what other areas sensory input could be reduced. Actually I have already done this: I wear earplugs so that I can have quiet in other places besides my job. The more quiet, the easier it is for me to manage the noisy environment.

I am hoping that by contributing to this thread I can figure out the mechanism for reciprocal emotional interaction. If I can do this then I may have a key to engaging in more effective communication with people who prioritize feeling as a means of communication. I am ambivalent because even though it is faster, reciprocity doesn't seem to be an effective form of communication. People manipulate each other via emotion, and I escape that by not receiving the emotionally loaded messages aimed at me. Still, it might be better to be able to choose....

agree if what you are talking about are characteristics that can be adjusted. Not sure what you mean by singular focus.

yes tho i think not different but different manifestations of the same abilities.

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[/quote]Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 7:18 am Post subject:

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SB2 wrote:
I still view many of our difficulties should be narrowed down to 'start-up' problems, and now i would include singular focucus.

What i mean is that multi-tasking is a non issue for me since i cannot do it. i ahave alsways maintained that, i can do anything at a greater level than the rest of the population, just don't ask me to do more than one thing at a time.


Often social situations require you to multitask do to the assortment of personalities and the different things to to. its much easier at a party, say, to hang out by the chips and dips and eat. then when someone else come over they are easier to identify with since they have the same interrest as you. ie: eating chips and dip. the problem then becomes not talking on and on about chips and dip.

this is an overly simplified definition, but i think its applicapable

Agree absolutely. Conversation is an intense form of multitasking involving things that people with AS have to process by thinking about them. Meanwhile the conversation continues and as for me, I get lost. Some things I multitask like a computer - not actually multitasking, just doing things so fast it seems like I'm doing them at the same time. On the other hand, at the other end of the continuum, people likely to be characterized as NT really are multitasking - processing body language, voice tone, words and emotion projections as a gestalt.

I can multitask two or three things at a time if they are linear. Conversations are not linear.

It's a good example. in my family i got in trouble for bringing books and reading so eventually i adopted my father's strategy of driving in straight from work, pleading exhaustion and sleeping through the social part of events. since my father set the precedent, the family just laughs and they are not offended. they wake me up for the important parts like eating.
And I forgot, in my example, about managing all the various personalities and their moods, and how they are related to and interacting with one another. When you add in all those things, it becomes nearly impossible to avoid making mistakes.

Avoiding mistakes.

I believe that the quote, "An innocent mistake." is an oxymoron if not moronific.
A mistake in essence is a lie and that is wht i, mysylef, have a big time difficulty accepting mistakes.
'Start-up' challenges involves extra honesty, which includes being honest with yourself. if you try to become something you are not, for the sake of normalcy, then i argue that is when most of the the secondary effects arise, mostly depression.

How is a mistake a lie?
If I tap a key which I did not intend to tap, and the word is not spelled in the commonly accepted way, is this not a mistake? I did not achieve the intended spelling.
Socially, a mistake is something which does not achieve the intended effect. A lie is a falsehood, something intended to deceive and manipulate. There is a connotation of purpose.
When I make a social error, it is not a lie. Usually I don't know until later that I did not achieve the intended effect. So there is neither purpose, nor deceit.
I think of mistakes as a way of learning. I used to think it was bad to make mistakes until I realized one can't avoid them. I suppose I could isolate myself and never encounter new situations, but that would be boring.

freudian slips etc...

sabatoge. i find myself doing things the difficult way in an effort to learn something new. Purposefully doing it the wrong way in an effort to gain more insight into something rather then just accepting what i have been told.

In essence i generally sabatoge on purpose to achieve a larger picture. the puposeness of my actions are what make it a mistake. Anything else which is an accident could fall under carelessness or boredom. your carelessness was then your mistake. and that falls under sabatoge.

i'd be more thourough but i gotta run, kids from school. i lose track of time, and im sure its purposeful in an effort to challenge myself even further.

I think not. My typing errors originate in dyslexia: I aim for the correct key and hit the wrong one. Not carelessness or boredom. The errors I make in social conversation come from my efforts to be more social without the ability to completely understand the various languages being spoken. Again, not carelessness or boredom, and no intent to err.
Since I learn from the mistakes, I do not have too many negative connotations of mistakes. In fact, when I am teaching myself how to do something, I make errors because I have never done it before. Since I am an amateur chef, I appreciate mistakes and accidents because they result in amazing new dishes - this is how I learned to make my own cold-processed pickles.
Trial and error - mistakes - I consider them a form of play. I have played with computers enough to be considered the unofficial IT expert in my family and at work. Just last night a mistake I made in using a word processor yielded an art technique I never considered.

Just got off another thread and realized another relabeling - what others might call sensory integration disorder could better be called sensory exposure or response management. This would be a combination of sensory information and information management techniques. I think that on the NT end of the continuum, baseline sensory reception is both reduced and has socially acceptable means of management. On the neurodiverse end of the continuum, sensory reception has a higher probability of being increased, and the means of management may not be socially acceptable (this I think due to less concern with social acceptability). I wonder if the sensory input is reduced due to some filtering ability that people, say, with ADHD have to a lesser degree. People with PTSD may also reduce their sensory exposure via dissociation. But people with PTSD often are hypervigilant, resulting in increased sensory exposure. This makes me wonder if ND folks have more acute senses (I have more acute hearing). Interestingly, I have poor vision, but notice more things in my environment. I am sensitive enough to changes in light that I can see minute power fluctuations in lamplight. This happens because in my town there are miniscule "brownouts." I finally was able to track this with a digital clock radio that began losing time when the brownouts were more frequent.

So the elements of this formula are Environmental Information (EI, referring to what is in the environment), Sensory Reception (SR) and Sensory Response Management (SRM). Also need to represent filters (F). It occurs that this is more likely represented as a flow diagram vs a formula:

EI -> F : SR -> SRM

Information is filtered and what remains is received, then managed. If we applied numbers high and low to represent anchors on a continuum, it might look like this:

highEI -> highF : lowSR - > lowSRM This would be more representative of people on the NT end.

highEI -> lowF : highSR - > highSRM This is one manifestation of the ND end. Here is another:
highEI -> highF : highSR - > highSRM This is someone who has high filters that are ineffective

And this is me having a meltdown:
highEI -> lowF : highSR - > lowSRM

If we put numbers instead of anchors we can explain why some ND folks can withstand a lot of "noise" in their environment while others cannot. We can also explain why for some people it gets better, and why some people only think it gets better. Example: here is me with a remedy for the above situation which caused a meltdown:

lowEI -> lowF : lowSR - > lowSRM The sensory information in the environment was reduced by the addition of noise cancelling headphones and classical music, thus reducing the sensory reception without the use of internal filters. And suggesting there needs to be some representation for external means of information control. Or that I need to include the external information control as an aspect of the filters

OK: revised diagram:

EI -> iF+eF : SR -> SRM This works just fine and provides a solution for someone who does not know how to reduce the EI and can't do it via internal means. If we understand iF to be variable (we assume that eF is) then this model also accounts for why folks on the NT end of the continuum are capable of sensory overload. But since their filters are portable and easily accessible it should happen less often. And ND folks can have a choice about whether to develop those filter (speculative).

Note that this model is only part of what would identify someone as having an aspergers pattern. It is entirely possible that someone who did not fit the pattern in any other way could have insufficient filters and be subject to overload.

Sensory response management is something done by everyone - again normalizing something seen as a disability.

Comments?

Sensory overload issues are subjective, and in turn only applicable to the individual, based entirely upon their indivdual biases and prejudices (or neuro-wiring).

The 'normal' person would get sensory overload reading this thred in its entirety, so would some AS classified people.
On the other hand some 'normal' might enjoy this and fully read it and perhaps even grasp some of the concepts.

Myself, i find them exhilerarating. For me it boils down to my level of competition and my search for truth. My competitiveness will not allow me to let a theory elude me, especially when it may lead me to a universal truth, not yet stated. I will stare for hours and hours, take every sentence and break it down to its intent. Break these up re-organize and understand.

exhausting work and a defined overload for the vast majority, iassume. But the ability is, as i see it, do in large portion to two unique traits
1. Single minded focus
2.) Passion for the truth.

Whereas, i, and i suspect many other AS type people would not get sensory overload in these posts. I argue that sensory overload breaks down to ability or interrest.

I cannot deal with some-one going on adinfinitum about the weahter. that causes me some real nervous anger issues (they are wasting my time) but i can deal with information about others (not gossip), concrete absolutes about a persons mental make-up. This i feel is a window into the truths about what makes a person unique.
Usable information, is the only thing that makes me feel safe, The other person needs patience with the comfortable silence (when i deep thought, into logic, the information)
this is generally the point where i make THEM angry, nervous.

this whole post, looking back was The Sound and the Fury.
signifying _______!! !

sensory overload refers to biological functioning. Not sure how biases and prejudices are relevant.

how so? i am very interested in watching cartoons, but cannot tolerate the light and noise of the television. If i have a hyperfocus on a program and watch too long, i will get a "headache" or some other message of sensory overload. a very loose definition of ability as tolerance for stimuli could relate to sesory overload, not sure how else.

I am more comfortable with facts than gossip.
i am never sure why people feel like the silence needs to be filled with some kind of noise. this is why i don't like to spend time with my family. they put on the tv, the stereo and then talk over both. they even claim they are listening to both when i object to the noise or try to turn something off.

oops. maybe shouldn't have replied.

i am tryimg to keep up. feeble attempts at best. i feel like i have met my superior. on issues of logic i have rarely found someone who can argue with me.

i have always felt that i could turn a priest into an athiest.

maybe i am out of my topic, this is new subject matter for me. perhaps i should try harder, otherwise i may make you yawn.

DO NOT TAKE THIS A A WHITE FLAG. MY MAJOR SHORTCOMING IS NOT KNOWING WHEN TO ACCEPT DEFEAT.

If i can lose the white noise and focus.

white noise= during the December months my wife and children, through their giddy anticipation tug annd pull me in many directions, leaving little time for quiet contemplation and focus.

there is white noise all the time but this time of year seems to be the loudest of all.


i will recoup, get my second wind and challenge you. make no mistake.

I believe people with Autism are more prone to SENSORY overload. Anyone is open to overload of any kind, but because our sensory system goes a wee more crazy than most humans, we get overloaded from the stress of it.

Overload occurs from stress. Many times we get stressed out from our abnormal (in terms of non-average) sensory processing systems.

Stress --> overload. But since Autism is so frequently associated with anxiety disorders, we're probably prone to all KINDS of overload, not just sensory.

That's my 4 cents.

same here

LOL, you are the one who does not make mistakes. But I make no mistake in accepting your challenge. As I said before, it is great to find someone else conversant on this level. Sophist gives me a good challenge too.

I look forward to the challenge.