The Big picture

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When it is said that Autistics don't see the Big Picture, what exactly is meant by this term? Is it refering to the visual abilities of autistics or is the Big Picture a scenario of some sort of which autistics cannot/ find hard to grasp?

I can think of 2 origins for that statement. One is that it is frequently theorised that the autistic processing is more like a single channel than the multidimensional processing style non-autistic people have who can not only pay attention to several things at once, but also effectively sort through a wide range of stimuli,. They're generally able to multi-task too.

The other one, is that autistic people are said to have a detail-orientated perception style. This means instead of seeing the big picture first and then seeing details, their world starts with details. A non-autistic person would first see a street, then details in that street such a houses, lanterns. An autistic person might start out seeing 1 lantern and a rows of 7 lanterns. The perception of visual, logical (and so on) rows, patterns, rules is a part of that.

To have routines and restrictive patterns of interest and motor mannerisms can be a fix for that. Not very effective obviously, but they can offer the opportunity for creating order and rules in a chaotic environment.

But it's not as if autistic people are unable to perceive the big picture. No matter if they have this perception style or not.

It's just not what they - or at least some autistic people - see/hear/so on first, perceive best, perceive fastest.

There isn't that much research into this. But there's some... something about gestalt, I think. You could try to look that up.

At least some autistic people who have this detail-orientated perception style are probably not aware of it because they automatically form the big picture fast, while some others are strikingly aware of it because they have problems perceiving their environment fully, have problems with orientation or they miss out things.

I have this and I am aware of it because the process that's happening in my brain that results in the big picture is usually smooth and unnoticeable, but sometimes slower. The more stressed I am, the more rows and patterns and single details I see that are not bound into a complete 'picture'.

I think it was originally the "weak central coherence" hypothesis of U. Frith. Now it's described as "local processing bias", because they can take account of the big picture.

thanks sora. could not have said it better.
i really enjoy the info you impart.
just so great to read and absorb

My classic experience of this was as follows.

I got home from work one day and opened the living room door. My post (mail) was on the sofa.

I live alone. Why is my mail on the sofa and not on the doormat as it usually is? My mum has a key, but it was not her day to visit. I walk over to the sofa and strangely, I can now see a photograph and ornament I keep on top of my stereo are also on the sofa. What is going on? My stereo is on a little table, diagonally opposite the door I walked in through. I look up into that corner and see...

A brand new stereo, set on top of a new piece of furniture (a unit which holds the stereo and has room for CD storage). It was surrounded balloons and had a metallic happy birthday banner stuck on it.

My mum and sister had brought me my birthday present a few days early, but all I saw was the post on the sofa, not the large silver sound system, not the beechwood unit, not the balloons, not the banner, even though they were right in my eye-line when I walked into the room.

i vote for sora to write the next DSM . i believe our lables would more acuratly describe our charactor

the big picture is made of lots of little pixels