Stupid question

Post Reply New Topic

What does NT mean?

people who are not autistic are referred to as NT or neurotypical.

[Moved from WrongPlanet.net discussion to General Autism Discussion]

Nose tackle, a position in American football

that I want to see tackling somebody with one's nose

NT is pronounced "Entie", and stands for "Neuro-Typical". It means someone who has not been diagnosed with a mental, emotional, or perceptual aberration.

I prefer this description of the word neurotypical, rather than people saying ''a person who is not Autistic'', in which they might aswell put in other words ''99 percent of the population, including people with Mental Retardation, Alzheimer's, Down's Syndrome, and so on''.

It means Neurotypical.

Good point, I'd say less than 50 percent of the population would fit under NT.

It's more of a standard or a benchmark for what can be expected of a person.

Ironically so few people would fall under this category, it's like a functional family, they don't exist, yet everyone is upset about being dysfunctional.

I mean if they are under 50 percent, are they then just aggressive enough to demand everything to go their way?
Maybe we should also start demanding our rights...
Usually that wouldn't be a good idea, because we are quite impulsive. But we have many quite good points that even other very mild spectrum introvert people would support.
And the majority has the right to enforce changes.

I though don't believe that less then 50% are NT. It is maybe less than 80% or so.
And if it is a spectrum, then it is in theory from 0-100%

which could also mean that even NTs could develop spectrum properties during their life.
As a reaction to their internal brain structure. And a brain structure can change.

I still think about brain-overload kind of related causes to autism...
OK now that went a bit off topic

And sorry for that stupid remark. I didn't mean to say by any means that this is a stupid question just liked nose tackle (NT)

Well, NT is practically a person who isn't on the Autism spectrum, but that's not the closed meaning. It's a bit like saying that the meaning of an orange is that it isn't a banana, but it's still not an apple or a pear either.

This is wisdom right here. Budding wisdom, but still. If everyone here would take some time to read this post a couple times over, please.

Well, also aspies could be neurotypical, if just autism spectrum would be more common.
Typical is a characteristics of a common thing.
And there are of course also aspies that are more neurotypical.

I also think that being an aspie isn't a thing that just is an automatic thing, just a process that lasts throughout the childhood and life.
A programming of the brain that is different. The programming of the brain happens in childhood.
So training a more NT type behaviour would be most effective in the very young ages.

Anyway, there is some reason, why we are all in some points similar. And that has to do with coping. But coping for what exactly? (sensory overload?)
I don't have really bad sensory overload, and I don't remember I had it as a child.
Maybe it is just the inability to interpret facial expressions, which seems to use a lot of brain attention.
This is of course bad when you have less processing capacity.

And without that you cannot develop the facial expression recognition properly. Which in turn makes it difficult for you to understand and learn feelings.
Coping would then just be to rationally reason things together and develop your brain into thinking.

Maybe if you'd train children to read faces anyway, whenever there is capacity for that available, they'd be quite neurotypical.
But, no normal NT would be able to explain exactly how you should learn this thing, because it happens nearly automatically.
They'd just process the face expression automatically,
whilst I would be thinking for a while and then decide what it means.

When I'd at the same time look at someone and think and talk, I just go totally crazy, it is so overwhelming/unpleasant.

On the basis of this I would also say that it doesn't help very much if you'd be able to read faces if your feelings are essentially different, whilst for NTs they are quite similar.
I don't know if my feelings are actually same that of whatever other persons. There is much more in feelings than that what you can express in words.
Is it therefore difficult to explain feelings to other people, because they have so different feelings?
I mean like if you'd "normally" talk about feelings that would trigger some recognition with the other person and he/she would know what you are talking about.
If your feelings are really different, now how would you explain them?

For myself there has been in my childhood quite a non awareness/ not understanding of others. And that has of course formed my character.
It is a littlebit like having different priorities. Which would be a result of not focussing on facial expressions that are a mirror of feelings.

Basicly you would have to restart the child's learning process if you want to become closer to neurotypical. And delete all the structures that you have built up.
There's no way to achieve this completely. But learning to understand others feelings I think is possible to a certain extend.

BTW that would be also the same way an NT partner would be ideally going to have a really good relationship. So to say meeting in the middle, or maybe further on the NT side,
because learning NT's feeling is anyway useful for the aspie.

Ok that weren't bananas or oranges, just some mangosteen for example, and still off topic.

the meaning of an orange that isn't a banana, but neither an apple or a pear,
is like you would define a car just by not having 2 tyres but everything else (and a car of course would typically have 4 of them, though that is not explicitly said).
Or a little like defining an off-road vehicle only by that that it has 5 tyres visible and is otherwise a car,
a further going description would not suffice because then you could not generalize

Wha??? Sorry I'm not that intelligent with this sort of thing.

That is true by the way. My brother is autistic and went to a special school when he was younger, and I think he was the only autistic one in his class, but I wouldn't say he was the only non-Nt. The others in his class had social deficits too, along with learning and attention deficits, affecting them in a severe way which was why they didnt be sent to mainstream school .

Phew, glad somebody gets what I mean without feeling stupid.