Autism and Abstract Reasoning

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I posted a video recently in which a researcher talked about how NT brains tend to process language in the left and right hemisphere, while autistic brains tend to process language in the right hemisphere. I wouldn't be surprised if NVLD brains processed primarily in the left hemisphere.

My understanding is that NVLD is more common in females than males, so I suppose that could play a role online as the greater proportionate numbers of females participating in communication online on the spectrum at about a 1 to 1 ratio here, as compared to the 5 to 1 ratio as assessed in the general population.

But, in general females do participate on facebook at somewhere close to 60% of that demographic, so there appears to be a female lean in social networking, although wrong planet is not like facebook for the prevalence of social chit chat. Reddit has about 80% general male participation and there is not a whole lot of small talk going on there either. Maybe less than here given the full scope of the forums. I suspect more than a few males with Asperger's syndrome or those close to a diagnosis are spending their time there.

"Autism and abstract thinking

One of the assumptions commonly made by people who know, or think they know, something about autism is that autistic people tend to be concrete thinkers. Since the high functioning autism population is full of mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists, and linguists, who reason in highly symbolic, abstract ways through highly abstract material, this assumption has baffled me.

When I teach classes on autism, I marvel at how frequently my students continue to make this assumption no matter how frequently I try to disabuse them of it. As I consider the reasons why this happens, several thoughts come to mind:

1. For many people, abstraction is synonymous with fuzziness, flexibility, and open-endedness. Because autistic people tend to be rigid, ritualistic, precise, pendantic, and/or detail-focused, and because many of them don't do well when faced with open-ended questions or open-ended tasks assigned to them by other people, they do not look like abstract thinkers according to this misconception of "abstract." All too often, for example, people forget that the concept of "polygon" is no less abstract than the concept of "love."

2. Many people, especially in education, conflate logical inferencing with the sorts of inferencing that good readers engage in when making sense of a text. As I've discussed in previous posts (here and here), many of today's assigned texts require the sorts of social inferences and and bridging inferences (integration of background knowledge) with which autistic children tend to struggle. These are not the same as inferring the contrapositive or doing a reductio ad absurdum.

3. Many people, as I discussed in a recent post, confuse labels with concepts and assume that a child who doesn't know the label for a given concept also doesn't understand the concept. Many labels for abstract concepts and logical processes are difficult for autistic children to pick up on their own: they often require explicit vocabulary instruction that other children don't need. Unless and until they receive such instruction, many people will assume that they don't understand the underlying abstractions--e.g., that if he doesn't know the word "because," he doesn't understand causality.

Unfortunately, because so many people, in their confusion about what abstraction entails and how abstract concepts differ from linguistic labels, overestimate their own understanding of abstraction, they once again underestimate the capacities of great numbers of autistic children."

This could be true for some people, but not for me. In my case, the core issues were lack of, delayed, reduced social and communication development. I don't have a lot of ef issues, less than the majority of people on wp. As a kid, I had high ef and inhibition with high rrb at the same time, so I don't think that ef problems can be the cause of the autistic rigidity that I had then and have now at less severe levels. I have sensory issues. Besides hyper and hypo sensitive, my sensory processing seems to follow enhanced perceptual functioning model. Perception is my strength, and I don't understand when other people say that the world is chaotic or confusing to them. I find the physical world orderly and makesensical, but I lack a social module. Other people say the same about me, that I am missing the social module. Kanner's descriptions of autistic children are more consistent with social and communication being core issues. Aloof, uncommunicative children with atypical language development. I think that the person is trying to spin autism into something it wasn't from the its identification.

but you seem to be not incredibly rigid, etc.

Ever since I was a kid, people have told me that I look like I'm "limping" on my left side.

I'm not consciously aware of it, but it's not unusual for complete strangers to ask me if I've been injured.

Now I wonder if it's because I have a dent in my right hemisphere.

Some adults diagnosed with autistic disorder whose intelligence cannot adequately be measured with standard measures of intelligence that measure verbal intelligence, actually score higher than individuals without autistic disorder, in the Progressive Raven Matrices measure of non-verbal intelligence that measures abstract reasoning and ability for abstract concept identification through visual images instead of abstract/figurative language through verbal measures of intelligence, per the study linked below.

what l mean is that l do use language primarily and it's pretty much the only way l learn. Not a hands on person either. But l guess l don't rely on it in social situations. Am seemingly "right brained" in a lot of ways as far as personality traits go.

so what l'm asking is if our right brains are damaged, why are we not the more concrete, routine oriented, "classic" AS types?

l was going to say though, l've seen you posting here forever and your posts seem like more of an "abstract" type(whatever the fck that really means in this context) but l'm trying to say that you sound more like me lol >_>

And please forgive me if l am making incorrect assumptions about you -_- but you seem to be not incredibly rigid, etc.

I am too.

For example, I'm a highly "associative thinker," but that's supposedly something that is seen primarily with visual-spatial types.



In my case, I suspect my brain is just "wired" in a funky way. I have a choice selection of several really strong "left-brain" attributes, and a few strong visual-spatial abilities, and this neurological schematic diverges enough from the baseline that it causes impairments.

"Aspergers" is just the closest label they have for my particular set of issues.



I'm only "rigid" about things when I'm highly stressed-out.

If anything, I'm too "floppy" and easily overwhelmed by multitudes of possibilities hitting me at once.

Researchers directed by Dr. Laurent Mottron at the University of Montreal's Centre for Excellence in Pervasive Development Disorders (CETEDUM) have determined that people with autism concentrate more brain resources in the areas associated with visual detection and identification, and conversely, have less activity in the areas used to plan and control thoughts and actions. This might explain their outstanding capacities in visual tasks. The team published their findings in Human Brain Mapping on April 4, 2011.

Aiming to understand why autistic individuals have strong abilities in terms of processing visual information, the researchers collated 15 years of data that covered the ways autistic brain works when interpreting faces, objects and written words. The data came from 26 independent brain imaging studies that looked at a total of 357 autistic and 370 non-autistic individuals. "Through this meta-analysis, we were able to observe that autistics exhibit more activity in the temporal and occipital regions and less activity in frontal cortex than non-autistics. The identified temporal and occipital regions are typically involved in perceiving and recognizing patterns and objects. The reported frontal areas subserve higher cognitive functions such as decision making, cognitive control, planning and execution,'' explained first author Fabienne Samson, who is also affiliated with the CETEDUM.

"This stronger engagement of the visual processing brain areas in autism is consistent with the well documented enhanced visuo-spatial abilities in this population," Samson said. The current findings suggest a general functional reorganization of the brain in favor of perception processes – the processes by which information is recorded the brain. This allows autistic individuals to successfully perform, albeit in their own way, higher-level cognitive tasks that would usually require a strong involvement of frontal areas in typical individuals. These are tasks that require reasoning – for example, a research participant would be asked if a statement is true or false, or to categorize a range of objects into groups.

"We synthesized the results of neuroimaging studies using visual stimuli from across the world. The results are strong enough to remain true despite the variability between the research designs, samples and tasks, making the perceptual account of autistic cognition currently the most validated model," Mottron said. "The stronger engagement of the visual system, whatever the task, represents the first physiological confirmation that enhanced perceptual processing is a core feature of neural organization in this population. We now have a very strong statement about autism functioning which may be ground for cognitive accounts of autistic perception, learning, memory and reasoning." This finding shows that the autistic brain successfully adapt by reallocating brain areas to visual perception, and offers many new lines of enquiry with regards to developmental brain plasticity and visual expertise in autistics.

Researchers directed by Dr. Laurent Mottron at the University of Montreal's Centre for Excellence in Pervasive Development Disorders (CETEDUM) have determined that people with autism concentrate more brain resources in the areas associated with visual detection and identification, and conversely, have less activity in the areas used to plan and control thoughts and actions. This might explain their outstanding capacities in visual tasks. The team published their findings in Human Brain Mapping on April 4, 2011.

Aiming to understand why autistic individuals have strong abilities in terms of processing visual information, the researchers collated 15 years of data that covered the ways autistic brain works when interpreting faces, objects and written words. The data came from 26 independent brain imaging studies that looked at a total of 357 autistic and 370 non-autistic individuals. "Through this meta-analysis, we were able to observe that autistics exhibit more activity in the temporal and occipital regions and less activity in frontal cortex than non-autistics. The identified temporal and occipital regions are typically involved in perceiving and recognizing patterns and objects. The reported frontal areas subserve higher cognitive functions such as decision making, cognitive control, planning and execution,'' explained first author Fabienne Samson, who is also affiliated with the CETEDUM.


"This stronger engagement of the visual processing brain areas in autism is consistent with the well documented enhanced visuo-spatial abilities in this population," Samson said. The current findings suggest a general functional reorganization of the brain in favor of perception processes – the processes by which information is recorded the brain. This allows autistic individuals to successfully perform, albeit in their own way, higher-level cognitive tasks that would usually require a strong involvement of frontal areas in typical individuals. These are tasks that require reasoning – for example, a research participant would be asked if a statement is true or false, or to categorize a range of objects into groups.

"We synthesized the results of neuroimaging studies using visual stimuli from across the world. The results are strong enough to remain true despite the variability between the research designs, samples and tasks, making the perceptual account of autistic cognition currently the most validated model," Mottron said. "The stronger engagement of the visual system, whatever the task, represents the first physiological confirmation that enhanced perceptual processing is a core feature of neural organization in this population. We now have a very strong statement about autism functioning which may be ground for cognitive accounts of autistic perception, learning, memory and reasoning." This finding shows that the autistic brain successfully adapt by reallocating brain areas to visual perception, and offers many new lines of enquiry with regards to developmental brain plasticity and visual expertise in autistics.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-04/uom-nre032811.php

Were you going to add anything to that, aghogday?

Thanks for pointing that out. I accidentally responded in the middle of the quote from Eloa, instead of after it.. I edited the post, accordingly.