Aspies For Freedom

"A PICTURE is worth a thousand words" may sum up how people with autism see the world.

Brains scans of people with the condition show that they place excessive reliance on the parietal cortex, which analyses images, even when interpreting sentences free of any imagery. In other people, the image centre appears to be active only when the sentences contain imagery.

The results agree with anecdotal reports that people with autism are fixated on imagery but struggle to interpret words and language. They frequently excel at recording visual detail, but overlook the bigger picture and the context that comes with it.

Researchers led by Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, scanned volunteers' brains while they were deciding if certain statements were true or false. Some of the statements relied on analysis of language alone, while others could only be understood by considering the imagery they conjured up. "The number 8, when rotated 90 degrees, looks like a pair of spectacles", for instance, needs both arithmetic interpretation and visualisation of the rotated number.

Just says that the observed over-reliance on the parietal cortex might have arisen to compensate for poor brain connections to the prefrontal cortex, which interprets language (Brain, DOI: 10.1093/brain/awll64). "That makes it difficult to understand complex language and to understand the intentions of other people," he says.

rant: my magazine: how people without autism miss the details.  without details, you can't get the big picture.  it takes lots of planning to get the big picture, and you need the spefics and detials to help make that big picture, and without enough of them, you can make assumpitons...end of rant.

i tend to see everything in pictures, like i have to see it in order to understand it.  when i read something, i picture the whole scene in my mind, where i presume nt people see words.  words without pictures seem incomplete.  i have to see something to get it...otherwise it's just yuck.

hmm...i think that's true in a sense.  that's why i have to sometimes read things over and over again to get the whole picture of it.  but saying that language is the big picture is lame.  language is just an outlet of communcation, not the outlet.  if we all communcated with pictures, this wouldn't be the thing, but language is just symbols.  partial igorance here.

i think we should see that visual interpation is important as well as understanding language.

The researcher quoted appears to be assuming or suggesting that autistics can't interpret complex language. This idea is hugely incompatible with the fact that some of the world's greatest writers, scientists and philosophers have been identified by suitably qualified autism experts as having been autistic. Philosphers identified as autistic include A.J. Ayer, Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell (winner of Nobel Prize in literature), Socrates, Spinoza, Simone Weil, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. If you want to name some people who excel at interpreting and writing ridiculously complex language, this is a pretty good list. These guys (and a gal) were able to write and read epistemology, logical principles and double and triple bull&*#$. Who says autistics can't understand complex language!

i think its becuase we use imagry to interpet complex language instead of using words to understand complex language.  i know using words to understand it, i would'nt understand.

but i think this is another "autistics are inferior" article.  we're not inferior beings.

Yeah and a anti-Autie scientist claiming that we are unable to see the big picture. Maybe he should take a look at himself, I'm sure that statement would apply to him.

Interesting.  At first I felt insulted by the article because language is my "thang".  But on thinking a little bit further about it, I realise that it's *written* language that I excel at.  Spoken language does nothing for me; indeed, if it's a fast-flowing conversation, I often get irritated because I have to translate everything into an image of the word from spoken to written in my mind, and have trouble keeping up, which tends to agree with the article's premise.
Alison

Neurotypicals, including neurotypical autism research scientists, display their radical ignorance of autism by failing to make clear distinctions between written and spoken language, which is a crucial difference to some aspies (myself included) who are much, much more capable at taking in and understanding and responding to written language than spoken language. I couldn't figure out from reading that article if the language used in the study was presented verbally or in text, but the difference could have been crucial to the outcome of the study.

Our appreciation of the details often leads to a fuller picture, and a more objective one.
  Here is an excerpt from my blog:
   I have spent some time thinking about the different types of 'thinking,' and have recognized at least four interrelated categories:  1)  Visual thought--for primarily visual thinkers.  2)  Auditory thought--an internal narration.  3)  Combination visual-auditory--both are manifest, neither has dominance, but also evince a visual narration whereby one sees the words rather than hears them.  4)  Amorphous thought--understanding or 'knowing' that comes from a subconscious pool of information rather than visualization or narration and is not accompanied by either.  Individuals have different ratios of each of these.  I use all four, but some people I have spoken to only use one or two of these types.  Additionally, I have noticed that with CAPD sounds tend to clump like mathematical sums instead of spread out pieces in a coherent sequence, like a deck of cards or how a high-heel focuses weight on a single point, thus making some sounds louder yet incomprehensible.  
  
  Sometimes it just takes longer to translate between modes and to process those translations.  We tend to construct our working models of the world through collecting evidence than by listening to what we are told or relying on a caricature, stereotype, or 'rule of thumb.'  These details, garnered as actual evidence are used to construct a bigger picture according to a bottom-up type of processing.  As our paradigms are fact-based, complex, and cognitive, they evolve with the evidence rather than stagnate as inappropriate yet popular, simple, and general representations of our world.

Well, I am sure a lot of my "thought" can best be described as spatial type (putting things into different categories, constructing ideas, ordering thoughts in chronological order, feeling what actions I plan to do spatially). I don't think I do much internal narration unless I am planning something to say or to write, and I don't feel that I plan most of what I write (can you tell?).

I'm not sure about this.  If the brainscans are saying something, you can't argue that they're saying something, only precisely what they're saying.

I'm good with form.  I know if written or spoken dialogue is beautiful, but I can't myself do fluidity with either (except by imitation or borrowing), and I've never seen an aspie who could.  We're better with incoming information.

ONE THING of note: this is the first scientific study to suggest that autism has genuine benefits in the form of neural compensations, rather than psychological ones.  Heartening.

Interesting.  I was never able to understand this when I read about it, because the idea you have just presented was never mentioned and I always assumed it was either/or.
I would say I use 3 and sometimes 4.  I can't imagine what it would be like to read and not visualize something.   :shock:   I would never understand what I was reading!  But I do tend to think in an 'internal narration' sort of way, occasionally accompanied by pictures.

Welcome to this forum, Jgoler. I am sure you will find it interesting.

Radiology is one of those jobs that I once thought might be suitable for a person such as myself, along with laboratory work and other ideas, but I'm a housewife and Mum currently.

The difference between written language and spoken language.  I am aware that certain languages have different forms for written and spoken language to some degree:  French, German.  - or is the difference just due to dialects.

My thinking is more Combination visual-auditory.  I like flow chart models to describe processes.

Most literate societies gradually develop a difference in the spoken and written word.  That is because the written word is set in a more easily recalled record.  There is also the distinction between slang and more formal speech.  There's an entire class of words in every society that are not to be uttered in "polite" company, with the taboo on some greater than on others.  There are also grammatical forms that are considered "incorrect" and while they persist very strongly in the spoken word, they simply are not written down.

Moreover, written language (both writing and reading) is processed in different areas of the brain from spoken language (both speaking and listening).