Do some people find weak central coherence theory to be offe

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Do some people find weak central coherence theory to be offensive?
If so, why?
I personally, don't like when people say that "NTs" look for the bigger picture and "aspies" (or other autistics) don't. In fact many autistics look for the whole picture with all the details. Do "NTs" even look for the bigger picture?
I would say that it depens on the situations but sometimes I see the bigger picture but the "NT" misses a lot of details.
I don't really accept this theory even if there are some truth in it.

I'm sure some people do, but I'm not one of them.

It's a theory, it's still open to debate and hasn't been conclusively proven. But that's ok.

Because the spectrum is so broad it's quite possible it applies to some people a lot more than others.

Again, no real surprises there.

I like the gestalt perception theory.

I feel the same.

I don't really understand what the bigger picture is and what the small details are. I'd like someone here to give a couple of examples of a situation where a person sees the bigger picture vs the details.

I think a lot of people with asd think with patterns so i don't agree with that theory.

But i don't find the theory offensive since i think being detail oriented is not a bad thing. Some people find connections between things that do not have a relation at all and it leads to problems.

What are you refering to?


https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dic ... er-picture

Last edited by Dandansson on 08 Jun 2021, 2:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

Pattern thinkers? Patterns but with a lot of details?

I agree with you. In my case what happens is that I am talking about "things" that are relevant to the big picture. I just don't communicate to others how they are relevant and thats why, to others, they seem like details. And it goes both ways. I also feel like others are too focused on what I regard as just details. But that is also probably because they don't communicate to me why those details are important.

So the issue here is not whether one is focused on details or on big picture, but rather it is whether one is able to communicate well. If one has poor communication skills, they can talk about the most big-picture type of thing in the world, but others would think its just details since they haven't communicated why it is important or interesting.

What I cabnot stand is people who say that if you have ASD then you have weak central coherence. I always tell them it is a theory and that we have other theories.
Even weak theory of mind is a bit of a theory. NTs is also sqid to have problematic theory of mind.

One thing that I find funny is that one of the questions on the AQ test asks to answer true or false with regards to "I tend to focus on the big picture rather than small details". And its like really? Would anyone ever answer "false" to that? When someone focuses on small details it is usually "others" accusing the person of doing that, as opposed to the person blatantly claiming to do it themselves. You wouldn't find anyone saying "hey I know I am focusing on small details rather than the big picture but I will do it anyway".

It almost sounds like whoever made that test lacks theory of mind. Yet they are accusing autistics of that.

Like in the saying "correlation does not imply causation" some people see connection where there is none. Some people find hidden meanings in things, conspiracy theorists and such. Or people who are very into new age astrology stuff, for example they think their İnternet connection is bad because mercury is in retrograde.

Re: your question about pattern thinking i think being both detail oriented and thinking in patterns is possible. Because you perceive the details well you can see connections between them accurately. I think this is why a lot of autistic people are into science too.

I am sorry if my explanation is weird btw, english is not my native language and i am not good at expressing myself even in my native language.

people love stereotypes. This is what "NTs" think helps. Many people with ASD also accept steretypes. "NTs" often want simplistic explanations. If you do not want simplistic explanations then you are said to be disordered. I am by no means saying that ASD is not a problem. I have issues but sometimes we fail to see what our real problems are.
I don't really like Uta Frith. She seems stupid.

Yes, I feel a tad offended by the notion that we're definitely weak on this "central coherence" thing. It usually annoys me when somebody pretends to know something that they don't know, and if that something is about me or my friends, it annoys me even more. There's evidence for and against this "weak CCT" theory.

Looking at my own experiences of this big-picture / detail thing, I think my brain seems wired to focus strongly on the detail, but it's also capable of zooming out. I went through a stage where I began to realise I was habitually ignoring overviews, ignoring them to my detriment. I still have some difficulty in zooming out, and with knowing when, why and in which direction to zoom out, but the difficulty isn't that great. I have to allow that if I'm particularly skilled at focussing on details, logically I'd expect it to be at the expense of context.

As a child, I would always focus exclusively on detail when drawing a picture, completely ignoring the whole, so that if I drew the outline of an object, its position would drift as the outline progressed inch by inch, and it wouldn't meet the starting point. But I learned, or was taught, to keep an eye on where the outline was going, and I did better then.

I suppose every time I get immersed in an activity I'm at risk of forgetting the time and the context, and sometimes that's exactly what happens. But most of the time I'm not completely oblivious to questions such as "what am I trying to do?" "is this the best use of my time?" "shouldn't I be adjourning this soon and tending to other important matters?" There's often a bit of tension between my desire to persevere and get the task done, and the need to "surface," but I don't think it's an inability, more likely it's just that I prefer to stay on task because that's one of my strengths. And is there any intrinsic difference between a big picture and a detail? They're both pictures that I can see well enough if I turn my attention to them.

My 'knee-jerk reaction' is to feel offended, but rationally I know its just an oversimplification favored by people who don't know any better (and many who may not be suited for knowing better) and feel the need to latch onto anything better than confusion.

Aside from just pointing out that it's false and an eggregious, offensive oversimplification, I try not dwell on such things. Ya can't convince everyone, and at some point its just not worth the effort and stress.

I realized in recent years that I have a tendency to get caught up in other people's pace, and getting caught up in objecting to other people's ridiculous ideas is a reoccuring mistake. I now limit myself to just making my opposition known and then walking away from subject, either physically or metaphorically. What I use to guide myself is a sense of pragmatism, of working on something constructive.

I also hate it when people here say that NTs do everything instinctively while Aspies do everything by intellect. I don't think this is true for everyone. All humans have to learn social and emotional skills to some degree until it becomes natural. People on the spectrum just take a bit longer in social and emotional development, but it can still become natural once it's established. Whenever I read about ToM, it seems to describe stuff that I do on a day to day basis without realising at the time.

Not to mention, instinctual behavior doesn't always get good results. If people acted on instinct without thinking of the consequences of their actions all the time, it would be really hard to live in a community i think.

I also don't think every NT around me always knows how to act instinctively in any situation.
If anything, i saw some very rude people who say the most offensive things. In contrast, my father who is an aspie is always very formal and polite and doesn't get involved in fights even when someone provokes him.