So if AS people think in pictures, how do NT people think?

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I got into meditation practice mainly to make it shut up. I have had temporary success with meditation but the effect usually wears off in a few hours.



I have this effect too. I find that watching a movie shuts it up almost completely but only if I watch it in a theater. Home rentals just aren't overwhelming enough. Sensory overwhelming also makes the narrative shut up. Roller coasters, swimming in rough water, loud and crowded places- especially parties, frenetic dancing. I seek those overwhelming sensory experiences out in part to shut the narrative chatter up. I've spent a chunk of my life running away from the yapping in my head ("chattering monkey mind" say the Buddhists- Moog understands) but since it is me, I can't get away. "Wherevere you go, there you are" as the saying goes. For now, meditation and overwhelming sensory experience keep it in check. I am sometimes a little jealous of anbuend who reports in posts that sometimes she is "below language" or "outside language" and in a state of pure sensory experience. No chattering monkey mind whatsoever. I practice meditation and overwhelming sensory experience to get to an approximate sense of that place which I am not neurologically wired for.



Yes it does!! ! At 1AM I tell my head to SHUT UP! I stick to a firm "no coffee after 10AM" rule because I have found that coffee makes it infinitely worse. I am in the process of trying to quite coffee in the hopes that this will make it less chattery.



The narrative may be more NT although Moog reports it too- or at least "chattering monkey mind". I think the mere fact that Buddhist's coined a term for this narrative and then invented a practice to help quiet it down means that it must be a fairly common thought process.

Thanks Woodpecker - - about the paper (above); the (now retired) Professor Emeritus Uta Frith (University College, London) was Dr. Tony Attwood's first teacher. Specifically, she was his supervisor when he earned his PhD. BTW, she's wonderful; she actually messaged me when I applied and was tremendously encouraging. And I didn't even apply to her.

If anybody is interested, from that article link I gave above, there are audio files (free) that you may download - The renowned Francesca Happe lectures, along w/ Simon Baron-Cohen, Uta Frith, Temple Grandin, and more. Although these lectures are lengthy, they are worth it.

Last edited by LabPet on 25 Sep 2010, 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Great article, thanks! I sent a DVD of my work to Dr. Darold Treffert who is the first person to acknowledge mine as a clear case of Early Infantile Autism, and also suggested Asperger's Syndrome. I was confused by this because I thought EIA would preclude an AS diagnosis given the early onset but I wasn't able to follow up with asking about it specifically. He's a very nice man. He also referred me to someone who handles Autistic Savant Artists, in particular, who has maintained contact with me ever since. He's an especially wonderful person who also give lectures all over the country on Autism and knows a lot about nutrition as well. I owe him an email, right now.

aha. this explains everything.

they have one less dimension!

I could not imagine not being able to think in "pictures". That would be like being blind, to me. Plus I'd think there was something wrong with the person's memory.

Thinking in pictures is how I can "write" fanfiction so it's like a TV episode!

Well, this is the problem with aspies, everyone thinks that everyone is like them. Just read a couple of threads and you'll see what i mean...

Yes....BUT, Temple Grandin's book is titled Thinking in Pictures, and, by consensus, Autistic thought form is in pictures. Granted, there are variations on the theme and likely some exceptions. Plus repeated and overwhelming anecdotal evidence of this way of thought. That's why. (btw, I do think in pictures).

When you're autistic or have AS, you don't have to read a book to know you're autistic, and follow what it says in a book by the letter. That's all a matter of interpretation. I don't have to go around trying to prove I'm autistic because I know I am without a shadow of a doubt. I don't feel any need to prove that to anyone. The evidence is very clear in my recorded history and in my symptoms and how I live my life today, because I am autistic. I'm as gifted as I am handicapped, thanks to autism.

I also have a visual memory, but i do not think that everyone automatically have it. I can also visualise things easily in my mind, and it does not stop there. It is not a generic diagnostic criteria for Autism or Aspergers. It can be there, but it does not have to be.

Its like that everyone thinks that Aspies cannot socialise which is untrue. I have a diagnosed aspie friend and she is more social than socie-mac-social, the social president of the social society for socialists, her results on the WAIS test is abnormal for an aspie. And i'm on the other end, i hit rock bottom on the WAIS test and i'm glad if i see my friends once a year.

Yeah, there are different types of autistics. This is from a webpage I was looking at the other day (http://www.awares.org/static_docs/about ... cSection=3):

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

3.2.1 The aloof group

This is the most common type of social impairment. Behavior may include:

Behaving as if other people do not exist;
Little or no eye contact made;
No response when spoken to;
Faces empty of expression except with extreme joy, anger or distress;
No response to cuddling;
If something is wanted, carers' hands may be pulled towards the object;
May respond to rough and tumble play well, but when this stops return to aloof pattern;
Seem to 'be in a world of their own'.

3.2.2 The passive group

Least common group, features include:

The child accepts social approaches;
May meet the gaze of others;
May become involved as a passive part of a game.

3.2.3 The active but odd group

Children of this group make active approaches to others but make that contact in strange ways, including:

Paying no attention to the other party;
Poor eye contact although sometimes may stare too long;
May hug or shake hands too hard.

3.2.4 The over-formal, stilted group

Seen in later life, this behavior is common in the most able person with autism. The following characteristics tend to be displayed:

Excessively polite and formal;
Have a good level of language;
Try very hard to stick to the rules of social interaction without really understanding them.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I think I was active but odd as a child and became over-formal stilted as a result of always coming into conflict with others. The "active" part made me seek out socialization and the "odd" part made me get bullied and rejected when I did so now I'm very cautious and careful and that makes me very polite and formal and trying hard to stick to the social rules so that I won't get hurt again.

Maybe your very social friend is an active but odd autist and you are a passive autist.

There seems always to be this space to direct the process, to reject errant reasoning, to refine and redefine heuristics, concepts, and associations. The conscious process is only a form itself; a segregated interface with the larger process. The mind envelopes the subject with words and images as conceptual indices, until some kind of product magically plops out.

That would be my child

If I am on the spectrum ( I know I am ,as Meadow suggested one just knows) but I'll say "if " for the Anti Self Dx League, then I am somewhere between passive and overly formal-stilted.