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 😤
This reminds me of High School Art class. We were tasked with using water colour paints to colour a (photocopied) scene of a farm house with a long fence following a path, a few tufts of grass here and there.
Vague, just like I described. Everyone else painted lush rolling green fields with a red farm house.
I painted a beautiful winter scene, using the tufts of grass as a sprinkling of colour along the scene.
I loved the painting. I didn’t cheap out, but thought the scene was winter due to the lack of other defining characteristics to imply no snow. I sure felt stupid when I realized I was the only one who thought that. :(
These kinds of activities are meant to encourage creativity, but when that creativity shows how NON conforming your thoughts are compared to others, you can’t help but feel dumb, especially when others observe your thoughts.
Man, you’re so right about that. I had a similar experience.
I had an art class in middle school and was enjoying the hands on craft part of it, and getting to see the final output of the unique things everyone created. For one assignment, we had potted plants on our shared tables and were given paints and canvas and told to paint what we saw. I painted the plant like I saw it, trying to get all the leaves looking like the one leaf I saw that didn’t have any blemishes on it, and I got an F. I only understood after getting the F, that the instructor wanted was us to paint were the exact colors and lines and light our eyes saw, unprocessed, not whatever processing and perspective our minds gave it. I got a D in the class, the first time I never got an A for any class on a report card. Before that, I loved doing all kinds of art just for the sake of creating, without thinking about how other people would perceive it, and after that, I have never enjoyed making any art except music.
It was a pivotal moment besides that, because getting the D after trying my hardest and enjoying the process ultimately shifted my locus of control from mostly internal to almost completely external, and I no longer cared about doing well in school.