AS & Right Brain & Metaphor

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Sedaka
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01 Sep 2008, 11:06 pm

Sora wrote:

I use analogies to explain and think about a lot.

It's a natural form of expression and especially of understanding for me, I think. It's just that so many things are similar to others and I see no boundaries between them that would make cross-references impossible or unlikely.

So far, I almost always found that nobody understands my explanation if I use analogies.

Ion the other hand don't understand how many students can think in one topic at a time and not see how it connects to everything else, how it is similar to something else and how the two though totally different in content would support or explain each other.

I want to say I cannot do what they can do. Seeing just 1 thing and being able to focus on that 1 thing. Apparently though they also have trouble doing what I naturally do, which is interesting.

i identify with this... i get called random and non sequitur a lot.

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Sedaka
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01 Sep 2008, 11:07 pm

sartresue wrote:

Ever met a 4? topic

I tend to be visual and right brained for most mental activities and I think in pictures. I have a thought first and then I describe it. When I hear or see a metaphorical expression for the first time I get a literal picture of it and then i decipher it. So my learning is slower than a NT. when I hear the expression "One swallow does not make a summer" I asked what was meant by the word 'swallow'. When told this was a sort of bird I imagined a sea gull flying by itself. Then I asked why one swallow does not make a summer and was told that just because you see one swallow flying around this does not mean summer is here yet. I then imagined a whole sky full of these birds being needed before the season of summer officially started. The larger meaning I was told was that one should never jump to conclusions. This made sense. More proof is needed before concluding a rule. This is logic. But I still see the swallow(s) when someone mentions this expression. It would seem to indicate that somewhere along the line someone talked about birds and whether seeing one was a harbinger of summer.

I wonder what sort of avian species is associated with autumn? :lol:

i think like this too... which is why i like metaphors

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Sedaka
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01 Sep 2008, 11:11 pm

Electric_Kite wrote:

sartresue wrote:

"One swallow does not make a summer"

It is the 'moral' at the end of one of the fables of Aesop (620-560 BC). In the story, this guy sees a swallow, thinks, "Summer's here and I won't need my coat," and sells his coat. He immediately spends the money he got for it, but shortly after there's a freeze and he's left shivering miserably without a coat.

It seems to me that whoever explained this one to you was a bit of a dip, since I imagine that the entire thing would make perfect sense and you would have needed no questions if he'd just told you the little story. How inefficient to let you flounder over it.

If someone says "One swallow does not make a summer" the entire scenario of the story comes to my mind, as well as the illustration in the book of fables I had as a child, picturing the shivering coatless man standing on a frozen pond looking at the dead swallow lying on the ice at his feet.

I often make up metaphors that are incoherent to others, and then accidentally use them in conversation. Or deliberately, because I think they're good ones and want other people to use them, too. This does not generally go over well.

yay! someone else remembers Aesop's Fables

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Aurore
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01 Sep 2008, 11:16 pm

I use metaphors to a ridiculous degree. I think this is because I think visually more than most people. Also autistic people have been noted to have thought that is largely associational.
Yay metaphor! And right-brainded-ness.

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02 Sep 2008, 12:56 am

Thank you everyone.

I would like to put this question to those on the spectrum who have a right brain dominance.

I do not feel that empathy is a virtue, it is just a sense, however, it is has been due to my highly advanced adaptive skills such as feeling, intuition, emotional expression and empathy(emotional and cognitive) that has all my life contributed to me (and the so called 'professionals') thinking that all my complex expressions of autism were purely to be seen in psychological terms

I would like to put two questions to those who feel they have a right brained dominance.

1 Do you you feel that like me maths, science, computer games, and rational thought are of little or no interest interest to you compared to say things like art, asthetics, philosophy, spirituality and human relationships. In other words, the landscape of the heart is where you dwell?

2 Do you feel that having AS and yet being more right brained you have a greater ability to be able to experience (emotional empathy) more so that the more common left brained dominated aspie? [/b]

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Last edited by criss on 02 Sep 2008, 1:03 am, edited 4 times in total.

Magnus
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02 Sep 2008, 12:56 am

Quote:

I often make up metaphors that are incoherent to others, and then accidentally use them in conversation. Or deliberately, because I think they're good ones and want other people to use them, too. This does not generally go over well.

I do the same thing.

Aesop's Fables were my favorite stories when I was little. I enjoyed coming up with the moral of the story and then hearing it in his own words. Some of the books have a modern translation which I liked better.

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02 Sep 2008, 1:08 am

criss wrote:

Answers (for me at least):

1. Definitely - though some of the more 'scientific' things often pervade my more artistic thought. For example I love numbers and I sometimes just feel these beautiful connections between them, I incorporate them into my art sometimes.

2. Yes. Of course, the empathy problem with me wasn't with being able to put myself in someone else's shoes - I have zero problem with that. It's always been just not being able to read others' emotions based on expressions, social cues etc. Being right brained helps me with sympathy, a kind that people often confuse with empathy.

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gray_imagination
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02 Sep 2008, 1:29 am

1 Do you you feel that like me maths, science, computer games, and rational thought are of little or no interest interest to you compared to say things like art, asthetics, philosophy, spirituality and human relationships. In other words, the landscape of the heart is where you dwell?

er, not exactly. I'm on the fence here. I do find math boggling, so science based on it is harder but I love biology. I think rational thought is very important. BUT, I think being rational is a subjective thing and that we always have to strive for balance between "rational" and emotional or whatever. I love computer games, but not like shoot 'em up that's either boring or heat attack inducing. I like city building games and some rpgs and stuff. calm, thinking games...but nothing too strategic or problem solving based (like...chess say). But otherwise....uh, yeah. It was one of the first things I was like "I can't be autistic, I'm a humanities loving poet!" turns out I can be both.

2 Do you feel that having AS and yet being more right brained you have a greater ability to be able to experience (emotional empathy) more so that the more common left brained dominated aspie?

I am not sure, being unable to experience what these other brained aspies are (or aren't) feeling. I would guess that I do seem to better adapted to it though. Or maybe its my obsessive drive to figure people out. I dunno but I do not have any noticeable issues with empathy, its not one of the things that anyone ever goes "...you're not normal are you?" or "....anyone ever mention aspergers to you?" Its always when I voice my utter incomprehension of common human social practices, exhibit weird behavior like complex fidgeting routines, or remain staring blankly at everything in site EXPECT the person's face that those things come up. No one ever notices any empathic abnormalities in me unless its in the other direction. Sypmathize straight through into empathy with fictional characters or strangers in malls and things. Then I just get weirder and freak out on behalf of waitresses that make mistakes even no one is mad at them and they laugh it off naturally. I go past empathy into feeling what other people COULD be feeling but aren't and suffering for them. Its mental.

I am glad that there are other aspies out there that are, as you put it more "right brained'. I resent the term because I have an irrational affectionate for the direction left. It has to do with boots, I think, but that's not important. Most of what I say isn't. I'll stop babbling now....

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02 Sep 2008, 1:50 am

gray_imagination wrote:

No one ever notices any empathic abnormalities in me unless its in the other direction. Sypmathize straight through into empathy with fictional characters or strangers in malls and things. Then I just get weirder and freak out on behalf of waitresses that make mistakes even no one is mad at them and they laugh it off naturally. I go past empathy into feeling what other people COULD be feeling but aren't and suffering for them. Its mental.

This is exactly my problem!

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gray_imagination
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02 Sep 2008, 2:08 am

Aurore wrote:

This is exactly my problem!

yay for not being alone....but sorry you have that problem too. My psychologist says the only thing I can do is to watch the bits of movies and things that cause me to freak over and over til I am desensitized....

:-/

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02 Sep 2008, 4:11 am

The writers of this letter - http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6001636 - state that:

Quote:

As regards the concept of left brain - right brain, the truth is far more complicated than the simple story about the left brain being analytic and the right brain creative. While it is true that one hemisphere dominates the other, both sides of the brain work together in most situations."

It is purely metaphorical to call logical and analytic thinking left-brain, and creative and emotional thinking right-brain.

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02 Sep 2008, 4:51 am

Leo Kanner wrote an article Irrelevant and Metaphorical Language in Early Infantile Autism which was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, September 1946, pp. 242-246.

An abstract of the article is here: http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=PAQ.017.0132A .

Kanner ascertained that seemingly irrelevant remarks by autistic children "were meaningful in terms of earlier experience and were of metaphorical significance in the later situation."

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03 Sep 2008, 1:41 am

1. Definitely - though some of the more 'scientific' things often pervade my more artistic thought. For example I love numbers and I sometimes just feel these beautiful connections between them, I incorporate them into my art sometimes.

Quote:

I like numbers when I see a connection between them and the world. But, I really don't get a thrill out of solving mathematical equations. The theories are what excites me most. I like Pythagoras and how he taught math but I hated math in school, it was so boring to me.
I love the book "The Divine Proportion" and that sums up what I like about numbers.

[

Quote:

i]2. Yes. Of course, the empathy problem with me wasn't with being able to put myself in someone else's shoes - I have zero problem with that. It's always been just not being able to read others' emotions based on expressions, social cues etc. Being right brained helps me with sympathy, a kind that people often confuse with empathy.[/i]

I can actually feel what other people feel, I believe. The people that I know who are more of left brainers seem cold to me. I never remember having a problem understanding body language and non-verbal communication. After all, most of how we communicate is non-verbal. I can be analytical but I go by feeling more.

Also, you didn't answer my question. How old were you when you began to talk. I was less than a year old. It seems like most kids go to the psychologist for not being verbal and that may be why they get an early diagnosis.

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03 Sep 2008, 2:46 am

Hi Magnus. I don't know how old I was when I first began to talk, and as my parents are in such denial about stuff I would never get a clear answer anyway.

Thanks for your response.

Chris.

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03 Sep 2008, 3:32 am

I am a right-brained (whatever I am)..and I struggle with empathy.

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03 Sep 2008, 7:26 am

dunno what side i reside in... think i did some online tests for it once and kept coming up in the middle.

i do science and art and am very visual.... and a spacecase.

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