Lack of Imagination

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1. What's that supposed to mean? I mean, how would that be any different than anyone else?
2. Yeah right. Everything I've seen suggests aspies are some of the most divergent thinkers around.
3. Um...ok... I think I disagree with this, if I understand what it's saying.
4. Well don't most of us agree that the so called early experts had no idea what they were talking about?


Damn I hate this so much. If all this lack of imagination BS is true than well, I'm not autistic and I'll have no desire to be so.

People constantly tell me that they want to see what it's like inside my head, because I come up with so many ideas.

It's certainly one of the perks of AS - the ability to have so much imagination [assuming that it is that and not just me individually]

I can be quite creative, but I definitely lack some forms of imagination.

One of the problems I've had learning foreign languages (and welsh for that matter), is the inability to create all that made up faked / creative conversation nessassary to learn to speak a language.

I also believe that it is this same lack of creativity that creates the bottom up rather than top down thinking. I can easily take established facts or a foundation and build it up into something new, but not a blank slate.

Give me a formula, recipe, melody or a colour and I can produce good work. On the other hand a blank slate is a blank head.

It's interesting too how aspies struggle to initiate a new conversation, but will commonly interrupt. Is this the same lack of creativity?

This is exactly the stuff they are talking about when they talk about unimaginative play or pretending in the DSM when referring to kids.

Jason

Can someone give some eggsamples of what kinds of thoughts are considered imaginative and qualify a person as having an imagination? I am very confused about the definition of having an imagination. It seems to me that what NTs consider having an imagination and what autistics consider having an imagination may be different, depending on what is important to NTs vs. autistics. Are we talking about making up stories from pictures? I never did any of the pretend play stuff when I was little. Pretend play doesn't seem very imaginative to me. It just seems like eberryone is doing the same kind of pretending along social lines, like pretending that a banana is a telephone and talking into it or having tea parties with dolls as real live hooomans. Is that really imaginative? It seems pretty boring to me. I am good at making up stories about serial killers, their bizarro motivations and M.O.s, and the codes that crime fighters have to crack to catch the serial killers. Also dystopian societies. But I am not good at telling a regular story from pictures, unless I come up with one about serial killers. I read in a paper that autistic children gave more bizarro explanations for events that occurred in stories, if they were able to come up with explanations that they could verbalize at all.

hmmm, keep the imagination a secret. Then use it as 'proof' we aren't aspies

Technically imagination IS the mind's eye, the ability to synthesis images within one's mind, but people rarely use that definition, and I'm pretty sure the definition we are using here is a blend between mind's eye and creativity. Anyway, I agree that I don't find pretend play to be particulary imaginative and I find autistic play to be a lot more inwardly imaginative.

I always thought that Asperger's guarantees a higher than average imagination.

Because the problem a lot of AS people have are referring to metaphors and other forms of figurative speech, which are highly unimaginitive or rather uncreative. Because they all are based on convention rather than imagination. They are acquired rather than created.

Having extreme forms of synaesthesia, which quite a lot of people on the spectrum have, means having a greater imagination.

Being able to calculate huge numbers in your head means your imagination is not restricted, but that it is unusually vast.

If you can visualize things very well in your head, your imagination is vast. It is not a lack of imagination.



It's a severe misinterpretation that people on the autistic spectrum have no imagination. The irony is that they have greater imagination than "normal" people, which is why normal people find it hard to follow an autistic person's line of thought.

Association is a gift of the imagination. Autistic thought, to some extent, relies on association rather than logic. And if you talk a lot about one topic that you are really interested in, even if you list many facts, this can only happen through association.

I think there are several definitions of "having imagination". I will try to reflect on the conventional definition first, i.e. that which people refer to who say autistic people have "no imagination".

- Having imagination means you can imagine what another person is referring to. If the other person is using a metaphor like... "having one in the oven" (and I will forever remember this one because the amount of shame that I felt when it was revealed to me that it is a metaphor and what it was referring to will be burnt in my mind forever!) you have to understand that it is a metaphor and you will have to know what area of life the metaphor is referring to. I have pondered this for the longest time and have come to the conclusion that in many cases you will have to know the metaphor beforehand.
- ok, conventional definition 2: Having imagination means you can imagine what another person feels like in any given situation. This means that you will have to be able to understand the workings of a person's emotional core in the context of society. You will have to be able to read a person's face to interpret what they feel. You have to have that knowledge before you can apply it. Normal people acquire this knowledge intuitively.

I like your definitions because I totally agree that this is what usually is seen as having imagination. Imagining the world "the way you are expected to do it". Ironically, this is an adapted form of imagination. It is adapting norms.

What would be my universal definition of imagination?

Imagination is the ability of forming independent thought and creating a different world inside your mind. Imagination is the process of taking representations in the real world and synthesizing them with your own thoughts and creating something new.

I know I had trouble in my art classes in year 12 and 13 because I could not imagine things in a restricted frame. My imagination is arbitrary and I find it hard to adapt to patterns to fit my imagination in. I would not be able to control my imagination, thus I had to submit work that was in no way substantial, which is a very dissatisfactory situation to be in.

In school, I often could not answer questions directly. This earned me an E twice for Biology on my year reports of year 9. From what I could perceive, the teacher considered me to be a waste of his time and that I had no reason to be in his lessons. He could not comprehend why anyone would be as useless as me at answering his questions.

Usually, a teacher can perceive of his students having different views of the world and that it is his or her job to make a compromise rather than only accepting his or her own view of the world as the only true view.

I felt I had to accomodate him rather than learn anything substantial from Biology.

What you referred to as the convention definition of imagination is called social imagination, and the only time it's the conventional definition of imagination is when people are trying to convince eachother that Autists lack imagination. Usually when people refer to imagination in everyday conversation they are referring to something closer to your definition for universal imagination, or at least that's what I think they are.

I think so, too. It really depends on the situation. You know, the whole "genius" debate about people who are considered to have a big imagination... I believe those people would actually be on the autistic spectrum because people cannot conceive how anyone could produce such exceptional thoughts. It's funny, really. Maybe it is the reason why "geniuses" were never accepted during their time, but later. Because their behaviour is seen as odd and only an "outsider" can think about what they actually did besides acting in a strange manner.

I've often been asked "What do you smoke?" in terms of smoking drugs when people see my drawings, pictures and such. And I don't understand it. Why would you have to be crazy (as used in casual speech) or using mind altering substances to create something visually different or interesting? Based on my pictures I also get told that I've got a very great imagination so why can't I make jokes, make up stories, lie better...etc.? (which is another question I get, too).
Like many people already stated, there may be different types of imaginations. Which types of imagination play a role here?

My daughter isn't diagnosed, but is more than likely on the spectrum. I suspect she has PDA, which isn't widely known about. It's similar to AS, although people with PDA have more problematic behaviour issues, less obvious social issues and there are some other differences. This might be relevant when you read what I say about her imagination. There's a thread in the parents' forum, for anyone who is interested in reading about.

Anyway, back to the point of the thread. My daughter has an incredible imagination. She's only 6 and has already drawn attention to herself, due to the fact that she has artisitic talent (visual art and writing skills) and won a school-wide prize for her imaginative artwork. She wants to be a book illustrator when she grows up. Some of this ties in with the PDA (she doesn't do what she's asked to do). If she has an art project, she creates her own twist on it. One time, she had to create a pirate ship, using pre-cut pieces of paper. There was a sample of how they had to put the pieces together. She decided that wasn't good enough. So, she cut a chunk out of the bottom of the ship, using pinking sheers, placed the ship at a jaunty angle (sinking) and drew a shark in the corner (which had just bitten the chunk out of the boat). She was only 4 when she did this. There have been a few other occasions, giving adults cause to go 'Wow!'

We just met with an educational psychologist for the first time, a couple of weeks ago. She asked a lot of questions and spoke about imagination. The depute head said that my daughter's imagination was extremely advanced. The ed psych then said, 'I see, that's something that doesn't really fit with AS'. But, I'm not sure if the psychs haven't really understood the criteria properly (i.e. imagination not social imagination). Or maybe they will start to see that PDA fits better than AS as PDA kids tend to have an over-active imagination.

Oh, forgot to say, my psychiatric evaluation, which said I had Residual Schizophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder, said I had 'turbulent, worrying imagination'.

Still doesn't account for why I have a writer's block most of the time.

Social imagination is very important in this world. If your imagination means you'll be liked by many people, ect etc. Artistic imagination is seen as something... I often have the feeling that this is seen as something minor because it does not really fit into this world. Because this world is not about art or culture, but about "what sells". Telling jokes is all about selling yourself to other people. You don't do it because you can enjoy them on your own. I used to make up jokes when I was a child that no one thought were funny.


I wouldn't say that AS means your imagination cannot be advanced, but PDA seems to describe an even more advanced imagination.

Your daughter really sounds exceptional. I like the idea that she decided the task was not good enough. This is one of the things I hated at school. You have to fit your mind into a certain scheme. Which restricts imagination.


Well, writing is not just about imagination, but also about plot. Plot is what I usually find difficult. It's what causes writer's block for me most of the time.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that either. I actually had a bit of a discussion with the ed psych and told her about the WP members who claim this is way off mark. I do believe she may have gone off to do some homework on that.

Well, that's a good thing. Some doctors would never do that because they, I guess, believe it attacks their "authority", while life is all about learning not about doing everything right.