I was shown a picture of lots of different activities at a seaside. I was asked describe what was happening in the picture. So I described the individual activities. The fact that I did that instead of describing the larger picture as ‘vacation’ is evidence that im autistic. But those people could have lived at the coast, it might just be a saturday for them … right?
So the mark of not being autistic, is to draw assumptions based on partial evidence? I joke, but also I dont really joke.
I was at a training course for work and they were talking about the difference between big picture thinking and evidence based thinking - as though those two have no crossover. They show us a picture of stone henge and tell us to say what we notice about it. I get picked first: “it looks like the grass has recently been cut”. Everyone laughs, its probably an odd thing to point out. Next person: “its summer solstice”, very good, well done. But is it?? Why? “The sky is red”. Yeah okay, I saw stonehenge and thought summer too, but nothing in the picture shows that. So I looked for evidence of summer - the grass is yellowed, parched? No its only a patch, the rest is quite dark and the stones appear to be damp, the yellow is probably some dead grass from having been cut - yes, the grass is short around the bottom of the stones and there seems to be some grass blades powdered to them, the grass has been cut, there is no evidence of it being solstice. Red sky and damp, its probably dawn.
Back to the test, the theory is that someone with autism cant assess the outer context, or the big picture, in the first instance of thought (<200ms). But actually maybe that is what is happening to me if im dismissing the context as not proven, its coming later in my processing of what I am looking at 🤔 either way, whether the test works or not, those people could just live at the coast 😤
What exactly is irking you? It seems the test worked really well.
Haha, you might be right. But the ‘correct’ nt answer is vacation, but there was no proof the people were there on holiday
The question wasn’t trying to assess your ability to analyse the picture accurately. It was testing your ability to determine the socially appropriate response. The ‘correct’ answer wasn’t relevant.
You were unable to identify that the questioner only wanted and only required a short simple response. One that only indicated the key concept the image related to. Further more you got fustrated with the question not having the ‘correct’ answer and got obsessed with it.
This type of question isn’t enough to diagnose someone, but it can be one of many indicators that may form a diagnosis.
Yeah, its not enough on its own. My assessment was a lot longer than just this one activity. I gave her a short answer which was people at a beach, as others have commented I think they look for an application of narrative, or absence of, in this particular test
From a lot of what I’ve seen, strong literalism and very little intuition is a pretty common trait with autism. You have a picture with a bunch of people at the beach, we’ll, you have a bunch of people at the beach. The lifeguard isn’t on vacation, some people could be there on a day trip, so why would you say vacation. Take the same picture, add a sign that says “Beachside Resort” and you might be more likely to say vacation.
I think this ties into how people with autism respond to open-ended and closed questions. What’s 2+2? Well, 4, obviously. What’s your favorite color? Shouldn’t be too hard. What’s the best color? Now it gets confusing. If I’m hunting, neon orange is great. If I’m painting the outside of my house, probably not neon orange. I probably want a different color than either of those for my bedroom, my clothes, my car. And now you’ve been staring at the evaluator for 30 seconds like they just asked you the meaning of life and how that is going to direct your goals for the next 20 years, when what a more neurotypical person would say is, “Blue, because it brings out my eyes.”
So if you look at those questions in that context, they may be very helpful for the evaluator to make a diagnosis, simply because there is no obvious answer.
If someone showed me pictures of a tropical beach and said “what picture of?” I would say “vacation”. No question. I don’t care what’s happening in the picture, or how he formulated the question.
I think the difference isn’t big picture thinking or whatever the presenter was saying, it’s whether you rely on internal context when socializing or external. Most people rely on a large amount of shared internal context. A tropical vacation is a prototypical vacation and a picture of a tropical beach is a prototypical signifier of a tropical vacation. That’s all internal context because it’s in my brain not in the picture. If someone is showing me this picture, it’s more like we’re exchanging memes that we both know so we can vibe. He’s not asking me a genuine question or expecting real thought.
Prioritizing external context is a big part of the autistic spectrum. In a technical context, it’s important to prioritize external context so that you’re not blinded by your assumptions. In a social scenario, the focus on shared internal context smoothes over missteps and misunderstandings because no one is analysing what is said, they’re just responding to shared queues and vibing.
Also a work lesson on thinking styles is a primarily social setting. Maybe you were actually trying to learn, but the main purpose is to relax and socialize with your peers. The presentation is just there almost as an ice breaker introducing (hopefully fun) ideas to talk about after, serving as a basis for “memes”. For example, later if someone does something silly because he missed something obvious you could joke about missing the “big picture” to ease the tension and have a laugh about the situation with a reference to the presentation. So again no one is expecting anyone to actually analyse something or find solutions. They’re just vibing and sharing “memes”.
It feels like you were treating this like a technical meeting where you’re invited for your knowledge and skill. The questions asked were something that your considered seriously and tried to give an accurate answer to. You were taken aback because no one else was taking things seriously and they seemed to be somehow “correct”. They were correct, it was a social situation and they were vibing, that’s the average neurotypical behaviour in this situation. Analysing isn’t the average nt behaviour in this situation.
I don’t know if I’ve been helpful. I hope I have. My partner is autistic so I try to find helpful ways to explain how the nts are behaving and why. Sorry if it’s not useful or if I inadvertently said something hurtful.
No, not hurtful. Youre pretty much on the mark. You wrote that like it was in one of my books, very well explained. Im irked that linguistically, I gave the correct answers, as in I wasnt asked what vibe I get from the pictures. And yeah, the non-autistic thing would be to apply the context to fill in the gap.
I stumbled across this link on .world one time, and your comment made me think of it. Hopefully it’s entertaining if nothing else.
Psychology is doing their best, it’s just that their best isn’t great compared to most other modern medicine. At this point, autism is still held by many in the same way it was in the 90s, only the negative traits, as some developmental disorder, etc. Some of the best tests compare the average answers to questions like that from previously diagnosed autistic people and non-autistic people. The way we think is so different, I’d wager studies would find this sort of difference with anything they asked, assuming they asked the question in a certain way and the autistic person gave the first answer that came to mind instead of the answer they’d give when masking. That doesn’t make the test invalid, it just proves how profoundly different the neurotypes are.
Autism wouldn’t be a disorder if everyone had the neurotype. The label is still strongly attached to the diagnosis given to people with this neurotype who also have severe mental disabilities. People still resist giving the diagnosis to high functioning adults, which muddies the field’s ability to study the neurotype and throws off all the statistics.