Savant Autism HFS Aspergers

[GOD]

Because this whole area fascinates me so much I will have a separate thread in here for it. I think researchers etc are completely misguided, I seriously think most of the problem is with people NOT understanding these conditions. The best people to understand these people are those sailing close to the wind but not enough to change tact.....

Lets see....



At 0.30 Daniel in early childhood has fits.

It appears that these have not carried through to adulthood, Interestingly my brother had one instance of a childhood fit during his sleep and the only reason why we picked it up is where were all in a cramped holiday batch, otherwise we would have never even known. While "fits" could be loosely thought of as having the same potential to reroute the brains connections, quite possibly it is a natural outcome of early childhood development. By this any "fit" does not change the brain, it is just a result of the changes occurring, in effect like other development changes through say puberty etc etc. It’s just a development "wobble" along its growth trajectory.

At 0.45 Daniel intuitively begins to see the patterns within numbers. "Pictures within his mind"

I am sincerely beginning to believe that "patterns" and "pictures" are closely interlinked as a group. I actually believe they are not a variation of the normal type brain but almost a different brain type. Like to have blond hair and to have dark hair. A genetic (Cluster) basis is reasonable if you consider the incidence of early innovations from Britain and British descendents.

I have made no secrete that I believe patterns/pictures are part of the visual senses and that all senses play an important part of the subconscious and older part of the brain (right down to the more autonomic controls). In effect these people have a much heightened ability in senses, in this case visual.

One additional comment to the proceeding paragraph is that in a thinking mode if the subject is so perceptive of the world around him or her then it is necessary where possible to make things routines. So they can be "parked" and pushed out of the equation in conscious thought. However, if the subject has a strong interest in the subject then it serves that person well to also compress "unstructured data" so it can be easily leveraged (Like say gears/cogs). You'll see this manifest very early on with the child lining up the toys in a logical format. In any environment where they have some form of control ask them why they have it the way it is and you will find a logical answer.

With Orlando at 1.00

This is where I do believe in the concept of structural changes to the brain, his brain may have been damaged (blot clot etc) and the connections have been rerouted. Given that memory is believed to be distributed around the mind quite possibly some information is being held in a long term memory area rather than placed in a short term memory area that is purged. Once again it sort of looks more visual memory. I would assume that sense memory relating to sight is easily the largest contributory to total memory.

At 2.50 Prof Simon Baron-Cohen

Obsessive interests v Social relationships - Other than the obvious angle that the subject has simply neglected developing the skills in this area whilst focusing all of their attention in another - The issue arises on how under developed these skills relative to the normal range and also whether its lack of social relationships based on an almost biological deficit of traits such as empathy. Neglecting the development of certain social skills (Nurture) is completely different to being devoid of them (Nature).

At 4.00

I seriously don't buy the repetitive movement concept. Most small kid’s babies are calmed by the same technique. Although tying this back to the statement that as a child cried incessantly up till the age of 2 there is some plausible connection and this ties into a much wider observation.... I would tend to favour the requirement for affection over repetition

However, quite possibly he might have had migraines etc etc during early childhood - due to neurological development etc etc.. Impossible to say on that front.

One plausible basis for repetition is a notion I'll call "necessity for action". In effect there is a need to do something. To gain some stimulus. However there are two types of stimulus in this case, physical and mental. And even on the mental stimulus side it can be further broken down into visual stimulus and processing/consolidation information. It is the imbalance in requirement and feedback that creates the aberrant and observable behaviours.

Take for instance someone who has played the same computer game hundreds of times and knows it absolutely inside out and can play it 10 times in a row knowing the same outcome and same result (as well as any fine permutations) that can be achieved. Repetitive behaviour, why? Well, it’s like the concept of being drained with social interaction. What? It’s like doing something that is visual stimulus but at the same time not bringing even more information into the mind that needs to be assessed standardised and organised and thought about. In essence it’s a rebalancing phase to redress the current over stimulation of the thinking conscious mind and inputs.

One thing to note though is that lack of stimulation could also cause a child to do the same thing over and over to extract some stimulation out of the activity (i.e. bored with little else to do).

At 4.45

This is working out the pattern. For an adult this isn't that complex, but for a kid without any formal instruction of how it works it can be interesting. Obviously most kids just play the rules without thinking... although a few kids might think why? And does this convey something more complex? Something hidden? Why is the order what it is and where it is on the hopscotch pattern?

Some kids that would have all these traits might however veer away from being assessed as autistic if they had other attributes that might pull them in other directions, competitiveness, social ability and straight forward acceptance by others. Its more them being left to their own devices and not having any need or desire to interact outside of the introverted enclosure of their mind which exacerbates the differences. Especially if a child moves down a path of thinking and understanding at an early age this becomes a progressively larger difference relative to other children’s development over time.

At 5.05

Walking around the playground looking up at the trees. Looking at the leaves and bark and the complexity of the shapes that reminds him of numbers.

This looks to be the point of divergence from other relatively similar types (Autistic and say Introverted thinking types). Quite possibly this tree analogy is a very useful comparison device for showing the perceptive differences.

The exceptionally introverted thinking child would have looked at the tree and looked at all the detail; however they would see the trunk, the branches and the leaves and see patterns such as relative balance and ratios. They would look for small caterpillars on the leaves and see worlds within worlds. They might look at the tree and see how it is different to other trees. So, in effect they are looking at "meta" type patterns and looking at "micro" patterns. The actually connection between trees and numbers would not be central to their thoughts because their thoughts do not revolve a specific orientation. The actually bigger patterns that might connect back to numbers or anything else would be a jump in intuition. In effect I am saying they are gathering lots and lots of information and putting it into clusters, how it all joins up is something that happens at another point...

The Savant appears to be so preoccupied with numbers that it becomes the basis and almost a language to understand everything. Perhaps that’s the difference, introverted thinkers look at information from different sources as different languages, colours, shapes, sounds etc... And how they connect is more "fuzzy logic".

At 7.00

Because he has managed to blend in with social skills he lacks the required final attribute to be classified as Autistic...

To be honest I don't believe the statement he has learned to adapt to our world. I believe more he has gone down a self directed path in early childhood and has brought himself back towards the mainstream. Quite possibly if he'd had other high level stimulus he would have excelled in many attributes, in essence rather than a huge vertical knowledge path he could have become more horizontal/distributive in knowledge. (Although in hindsight, a kid thinks basically on natural instinct, the basis for logic slowly becomes orientated towards the required mainstream through schooling. Although that in itself depends on the Childs ability to change as required - which is probably the key to successfully integrating).

[GOD]

Actually I was thinking about repetitive behaviour and I've seen some new angles, using my self as the experimental observation .

I have already mentioned that repetitive behaviour could be a process whereby the person does something repetitive to reduce informational inflows (Unique visual/Hearing or other sensory information) yet there is the need to still do something (Physically). Sort of like the energising and denergising aspects to extroversion. I have already mentioned that process orientated minds are more likely to engage in repetitive behaviour that involve systems as they develop their own understanding of those systems. (Nb: A child that engages in feeling repetition such as talking with people over and over again would not be labelled the same as the child doing process repetition).

However there are some further aspects I have realised.

One is where you so locked up in some internal analysis that you are not really that cognisant of what your physical manifestations are (doing)... because you have pushed them into an almost like auto routine while you concentrate on whatever you are deeply thinking about.

Then there is the repetition that is actually the centre of focus. Just as like a Savant looks very closely at all the detail on the tree, a highly intuitive thinking child/adult may analyse and revisit the same information repetitively to full analyse every permutation (like in a computer game) or understand every cycle and pattern within say a piece of music. Anything that conflicts or has additional complexity will be of special interest because it may violate or add to their logic framework - esp kids.

Hopefully you can see that this repetition can be both consciously and unconsciously depending on the situation at hand. In some cases it’s like an amplitude volume control to increase and decrease stimulus (all the toys lined up in a logical order to decrease noise associated with unstructured patterns).

One last angle is that whether people subject to repetition actually enjoy it more than others that tend to grow out of it. Like when children enjoy doing the same joke or amusement for the billionth time and they seem to get exactly the same pleasure out the same activity. An enlarged part of the brain that doesn't succumb to satiation at the same marginal rate? does this part of the brain have any connection with other traits associated with Thinking sensing/intuitive kids?

One thing though with kids, smart introverted kids get really bored easily, if there is not enough stimulus then they may well spend more time on something and analyse it in great detail simply because they have nothing better to focus their minds on... being bored might increase their creativity and imagination but its not much fun for the child..

In the final analysis everything is a continuum, a greater proneness to being obviously repetitive is most likely to be a number of the above factors all coming into play.

Nb: Next thing to think about is why these austistic kids (like us INTJs) can be fascinated with detail. I think its definitely to do with complexity and ordering. Interestingly its standardised items that offer the most interest as they are very similar and harder to order.... but order they can be... Psych tests for kids around this would be very revealing I would say.

[GOD]

Surprised or perhaps not so surprised that Google states that parents of children higher on the Autism scale were coming back to them reporting that their children really liked their Sketch up programme. Google SketchUp

Stating in their video promo about this that these children


"Tend to be visually and spatially gifted, they tend to think in pictures".


This is a surprisingly important piece in the jigsaw, will be good to write up about all this when I have time...

Nb: Really interesting to see the guy design a house on a table inside a house. Thats the world within worlds I explained only on a post on this thread beforehand.