"Preoccupation with details"

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"Preoccupation with details" - what does this mean??

can someone explain it to me in simple words? for example I remember some cases in which I look at my desk and it is very messy all stuff around and I am looking for something in particular for exaple the keys and I just try and it takes me time to find them and they end up being right at the desk does that count as me paying too much attention to details while missing the larger picture?

I don't think the messy desk is indicative of preoccupation with details or parts of objects.

I think preoccupation with parts is more like if you pick up your toothbrush with the intention of brushing your teeth, then spend a long time staring at the bristles on the toothbrush and the little plastic dots and the little grooves down the handle instead of brushing your teeth. This length of time can vary from a few minutes, which is already excessive compared to people who never examine the parts of their toothbrushes, to indefinitely until someone comes to stop you. This toothbrush inspection activity would have to take up all your attention, and it may be extremely pleasurable to stare at the bristles. You may not even know what you are staring at, that the bristles are bristles belonging to a toothbrush, which is to be used for brushing your teeth instead of ogling.

I think there are two things you're talking about here: preoccupation with parts and objets and preoccupation with details. I believe they're two different things and they have nothing to do with neatness. If I understand it correctly, I display both behaviors and yet, my desk and room is a mess by any normal standards. Also, the inability to find something you have just put down is likely related to problems with short term memory and sensitivity to distractions. I have that too.

Preoccupation with objects is what btbnnyr described: you like to handle items and look at them. I do that all the time to pens, mice, tools, keys,remote controls, computer and bicycle parts. I often pickup random objects and play with them. It's like yeah, looking at something for far too long, beyond any reason that would add to the usefulness of the object or your understanding of the object.

Preoccupation with details, I think is when you spend excessive amounts of effort and time on doing a part of something larger, even though it's not really necessary, because you become obsessed with doing that one little part perfectly. Like, I'd install a hard drive and it works fine but I'm bothered by the way the the cable runs even though my buddies would see nothing wrong with that: "it works, leave it". But it would bother me. I'd come back to it later, remove the hard drive and put extra time and effort to run that cable the way I find satisfying. Also, the cables need to be the right length and the same color and I have to use the correct screws and they need to be the same, I can't stand mixed, unmatched components, incorrect lengths and sizes, etc. A hard drive needs four screws. Many people would use two or three and be done with, and it's actually enough, but unthinkable for me. Or, say all the SATA cables inside are blue but I only had an orange SATA cable for this drive. It works fine, but I'd look for another blue cable and come back later and replace the orange one, even after the computer was fixed. It has no effect on the functionality of the computer (the big picture) but I won't be satisfied.

That's why zip ties and Velcro are my friends. I spend more time and effort on doing little things "right" than my buddies. It's kind of like OCD but only applied to small parts of larger tasks, not everything you do.

Another example of preoccupation with details might be at the conceptual level. Like if you are studying a topic, and you must know all the details about one aspect of the topic. If you are interested in gemstones, you might start studying the crystal structures and impurities that cause the colors of ruby, sapphire, emerald, etc. You might have to know all the length and angle measurements for all the different crystal structures and the different percentages of different impurities that create the different colors in different crystal structures. This becomes a special interest if you think about this topic a lot. Or you might only think about it occasionally, but always in a lot of detail on this facet of the topic of gemstones.

The preoccupation with parts of anything, whether toothbrushes or gemstones, whether sensory or conceptual, might arise from the same high resolution detail-oriented perception of the world that many autistics experience.

For me, I'm a visual/spatial/pattern person, so my attention to details means making sure things are symmetrical and pleasing to my sense of space. For example, I have wooden floors, and tables and chairs need to line up with the way the floor runs. I even measure the placement of things so they are evenly spaced. The same for my desk or projects I'm working on. I' also a perfectionist. But I've been able to ease off on that over the years.

Yeah I agree with the previous posts, and I don't know exactly if the "symptome" listed is about sensory attention to details (the way the light bounces off dust in a ray of light), attention to detail in the knowledge department ( having to know everything about a subject before one can feel they "know" anything about it), or attention to details that is preventing one to see the big picture ( temple grandin illustrated this with , I think, letters: like the letter P made of a lot of little "s" and the letter S made of a lot of little "p", and for the first an aspie will answer the letter is "s" when NTs will see the P first.
I don't know if the people who write the DSM are being vague on purpose, or if our trying to determine what exactly they mean with it is part of our abnormal "attention to detail"

Its an intense focus on parts of objects, or minutiae, at the expense of the"bigger picture". For me, I can concentrate on critical details of what I am focussed on, and remain literally oblivious as to what is happening around me.

The example I can give you would be I will be in the middle of an intense conversation with my husband and I will look past him at the bookshelf and the books are not perfectly lined up (according to me). So the conversation stops while I get up, walk over to the bookshelf and straighten the books. And by straighten I mean they have to be sorted according first by topic, then by size, and then all sat perfectly with their spines lines up - if one pokes out further then the others I have to push it back in before the conversation can continue. It just really really bugs me until I fix it.

It has a lot to do with how you experience the world, from sensory data to abstract information and everything in between.

Detail-oriented people tend to look at a tree and see leaves-bark-twigs-branches, and then think for a fraction of a second to put all those things together and think "tree". They tend to see first all the little parts that make up an object, and then use more cognitive energy to put all those parts together. That's why you see kids with autism playing with small parts of toys rather than the whole toy; the kid sees the wheel of the toy car, sees that it looks interesting when it's spinning, and is more attracted to that than the whole object. It's very difficult for a detail-oriented person to keep lots of things in their minds at once--they naturally focus narrowly on one thing, whether that's an object or an idea.

Noticing details also makes you better at spotting small things than putting together a big idea. For example, when writing an essay, a detail-oriented person will find it easy to notice spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, but more difficult to think about the main idea of the entire essay. When attempting to summarize it, he may write a summary nearly as long as the essay itself, because he finds it hard to figure out which details to exclude.

Detail-oriented people are often "cognitive perfectionists". I say this as opposed to the anxious perfectionist, who wants to do things perfectly because he is afraid of failure; a cognitive perfectionist is someone who simply cannot figure out where "good enough" is on the scale of quality, and as a result simply aims for perfection. Because he notices every detail, he is usually a much slower worker than average; and he's likely to do unnecessarily good work--such as insisting on perfect penmanship on a math test; or cleaning every inch of a floor with a cloth rather than just mopping it. This person literally can't do less than his best, because it takes him just as much mental effort to do something sub-par as it does to do it perfectly; he'd probably have to calculate the exact number and sort of defects to include in his work. Rather, the biggest danger is that he'll work so slowly that there won't be enough time for everything, and the task will be left half-done. It's not uncommon for people with this problem to turn in a test with 100% on the first half, but lose all the points on the second half because they ran out of time.

Someone who is detail-oriented will probably also have a need to organize his environment. A flood of details can be quite overwhelming; keeping them categorized and patterned helps. This is one of the reasons a child might want to line up his toys. It's also the reason someone might keep an elaborate filing system for paperwork, build a computerized database of information on a subject, or have a predetermined location for every one of his possessions. When you are very detail-oriented, it can be hard to find your way to the particular item you are looking for; organization is a natural coping strategy. To a detail-oriented person, organization can also be quite a satisfying activity--another reason to line up toys, categorize rock samples, or edit a wiki about your favorite book series. Organization is something quite a lot of detail-oriented people find very useful, because they both have a need to focus on details, and a difficulty with thinking of many things at once. Putting the details into a logical framework gives you a structure that is easy to keep in mind when looking for any particular detail. That can be visual organization, such as organizing books by height; it can be logical organization, such as taking color-coded notes in class; it can be organization of time, such as what we do with schedules, reminders, and alarms.

The DSM description of the "focus on details" trait of autistic people is in terms of what a clinician or parent would see upon observing an autistic child. It does look a bit different from the inside, and from the perspective of an adult autistic. But it's necessary to put concrete, observable traits in the symptom list; otherwise the definitions just won't be usable. It's no good talking about a child thinking in terms of details when the child's too young to reliably tell you what he thinks about, or how he thinks about it. Behavioral criteria are just easier to use when making a diagnosis. But we mustn't forget that behind the behaviors there are cognitive traits that are quite fundamental to the person, and that the behavior is there for a reason that's more than just "because he's autistic".

I was offered a chance to play in a hybrid electronic-analog band. Because I was skeptical about how they planned to pull this off live, I asked several questions before committing to the project. In the end they decided not to use me because I asked too many questions. I wanted to know the details of the project, but then their answers seemed vague, I pressed them further. They later blamed me for ruining the project. I apologized and said it's an autistic trait and I can't help it. I don't know if they believed that but I feel like it's the truth.

For me, this means focusing in on parts of objects (as a kid I was very interested in the chain on my bike... as an adult I fidget with pen caps and carabiner clips).
Even more prominent for me is focusing on parts of conversations and drifting off into my own little world. This annoys my fiance because she has to end up telling me the same story several time, but my friends find it amusing (this one time they were talking about a classmate who was "Brainless." They caught me drifting off and made me tell them where I went. So I told them, "Well, if she's brainless, she needs a brain. Then this other girl is a really good therapist, but she's kinda timid, so she needs courage. Then that other girl is kind of a b**ch, so she needs a heart... Now I'm trying to figure out if anyone in our class is homeless..." That got a laugh, but it's honestly where I went.).