"more rote than meaning "

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Also, "more rote than meaning" is only one point in the diagnostic criteria that the "experts" use (1 of 3); it's not in the criteria that your run-of-the-mill psychologist/psychiatrist uses either.

This is one of the reasons I think Asperger's is a sketchy concept.
I don't think we can, as it is sometimes implied, add and remove traits to the criteria as we feel like; there has to be some order and logic to this. I think a new approach is needed to understand that which is on the more ambiguous end of the spectrum; for example if there really is a common underlying trait or not.

More rote than meaning is the opposite I ever was.
Even as a child, when I had more stereotypical traits, I was annoyed by rote memory tasks at school and by how those with the best grades seemed to excel at this. I'm told I wasn't that bad at it but I know I didn't like it. I was focussed on understanding and was conscious about being this way; when I was finally given tasks requiring analysis I remember feeling they should had done so years earlier.

I find the full set of Asperger traits very similar to how bullies characterize people on the spectrum. I see a bit of a red flag in that and that's another reason I don't exactly want the label.
When I changed schools around 16 there was this Theory of Knowledge class in which I participated eagerly. A guy that didn't like me back then accused me of studying a lot and not having any creativity or ideas of my own (and that he somehow did because he hanged out at clubs and bars). The same thing happened during primary at a school I went for like a semester and never did the homework; just because my language was a bit convoluted for my age I had people accusing me of doing "extra math" on my free time.

Also, you don't need said "more rote than memory" to satisfy Gillberg's criteria, you just need one of the three:

It is good diagnostic criteria as it's very close to Asperger's original work; I had a psycho tell me yesterday that they use it for that reason, and that all of the "experts" do.

Whisperer,

There is order and logic to the criteria/traits when you speak to the "experts", it's just that you run into problems when people read a lot of personal opinions (here's the order when taken from the diagnostic criteria Professor Attwood uses):

1.Severe impairment in reciprocal social interaction
2.All-absorbing narrow interest
3.Imposition of routines and interests
4.Speech and language problems
5.Non-verbal communication problems
6.Motor clumsiness

No, no, NO, my obsessions are never "more rote than meaning". They are FULL OF MEANING, so much so that they block out anything else that might have otherwise caught my interest, and most of the time they connect in some way with other things that I've been obsessed with and take on EVEN MORE MEANING.

"More rote than meaning" makes sense to me. Take for example a person who isn't formally trained in music. He would know what and how to play certain passages, but he won't be able to you a damn thing about music, chord, harmony theory, etc. He might also not know a damn thing about rhythm.


Now this isn't true in all cases, and many here will excite themselves by exclaiming they know exactly what they are talking about. I, myself, have been accused of repeating what others say but I think to myself "Why not repeat what others have eloquently spoken?" It is much easier, and would be better understood. When I try to explain myself it appears contradicting/confusing, mainly because the person has no foundation on the topic being discussed.

I can't stand rote learning. I also stink at trivia.

To me it seems rote learning is an NT trait. NTs are the ones that tend to collecting trivia and accepting arguments from authority rather than thinking things through for themselves.

That is a ridiculous reason for doing something (..more rote than meaning ). Just because Asperger's said it, that shows lack of common sense. I appreciate the work he did, but if we went by his criteria many people on the spectrum wouldn't be diagnosed because they don’t fit into a narrow stereotype of the age. It is a historic term. You can't say nothing has been learnt since.

As Whisperer said this obsession over the concept of ‘Asperger's’ is a bit flakey. ASD is multidimensional; Asperger's can be a one dimensional almost arbitrary diagnostic requirement, almost at the exclusion of autism as a whole. Who are many 'experts'? Many ‘experts’ are calling for terms like NVLD, Asperger's to be dropped and don't use them officially. I have 'an ASD' in my official letter, but in general conversation he uses Asperger's.

Some people take things at face value, because of so called expertise. I learnt a while ago you just can't do that.

As for being a ret*d/criminal/not existing. Well you can apply those alternately to deal with such comments. We can't have criminal minds if Asperger's doesn't exist. Such assimilation techniques have been used by majorities before to great effect. Unfortunately you can't always hide, many of have traits that set us apart, which we can’t help. There are people who say such sensationalist crap, to support whatever agenda they have, like 70% of Asperger's have spent time in jail. Where the hell did they get 70% from? My response to those people is ‘did you get your thesis in on time?’.

I don’t share Inventor’s paranoia of psychologists. Not all psychologists are bad. In fact some therapies use scientific methods to test their effectiveness, admittedly this about as far away from psychotherapists as you can get. You are always going to need some art and intuition. I have been helped a psychologist. She was the one that first said she thought I had Asperger’s, but admitted she didn’t know for sure. Not all diagnosticians are bad either. I prefer people with curiosity for knowledge. I think it is unfortunate this current trend of separation of diagnosticians from the science. That is mote rote than meaning.

Actually, not much has changed since -- Asperger's is quite a narrow disorder; the DSM-IV-TR is far more open ended, but it's not "Asperger's" as the criteria is far too easy to meet (i.e., you don't need a narrow interest; this is completely counter to what Asperger's is). If you do a search for Gillberg's criteria, you'll find many research papers that compare the two and show why the DSM-IV-TR isn't the best tool.

Asperger's has only been around since the early nineties as an "official" disorder; if the supposed experts use Gillberg's criteria, Professor Attwood for example (who so happens to follow in the woman who brought AS to light), it's kind of telling.

And also, whilst the DSM-IV-TR is easier to meet (i.e., you don't need as many symptoms), Gillberg's criteria includes far more points that are directly related to autism; it is autism without significant language abnormalities.

This all sounds just like me too. I have a genuine interest in my interests, and have a horrible time remembering things through memorization. I'm excellent at recognizing patterns too and that sort of thing and understand things by how they work, not by random memorization.

...and I think BECAUSE of that I supposedly can't have Asperger's, because I did great on this Wisconsin Card Sorting test, which involves recognizing patterns...

So, yeah, that whole "more rote than meaning" thing has always made me wonder if I don't have AS (assuming that's real).

Not necessarily. He may not be able to explain things using the same terms as a trained musician would; he may even understand music theory in a different way than a trained musician, but he might very well have developed his own system for explaining how music works, one that explains it just as well as the theory that is taught in schools and universities, but in a different way.

SO many here speak of how they AREN'T like rainman! Ever watch rainman? It shows someone that seems like some LFA people. SURE, he played what WAS called an "idiot savant". That term is apparently now "autistic savant".

Anyway, HE learned little facts without truly understanding, SUPPOSEDLY. Even HE understood a lot of the impact from the things.

Asperger Syndrome people are supposed to be smarter than that. As for me, I DO have a lot of small lists remembered. I could tell you a lot of differences and some specs between different storage/communication/processing components. But all that was for a REASON! I understand why!

2ukenkerl, I think when it's applied to people with a somewhat normal cognitive pattern, it's more to do with the desire to know the meaning. For example, if one is only interested in a single part of a larger whole, it doesn't mean that they cannot understand the complete whole, it's just that they don't wish to.

"Narrow" interest and all. The effect probably appears to be more rote than meaning for we don't desire to know the complete picture, only the parts we like; we know the meaning of those parts (see: facts).

I think thats a poor example because there are alot of reasons you can be interested in cameras that have nothing to do with the art of photography - like their inner workings. You can learn all about it, and be interested in that, without caring the least about taking a "beautiful" picture.

One of my interests is pre-world war 1 submarines - thinks like the turtle are awesome. However, I don't care the least bit about the submarine at the carnegie science center because its modern. It just doesn't slightly appeal to me. I like history not modern inventions.

I was obsessed with ben Franklin in 4th grade, but he's the only founding father I was interested in. Why do I have to be interested in them all? They had different lives, different interests, different accomplishments. Aside from being a founding father what do they all share?

I love to hear about Andrew Jackson's innaugraul ball, but I'd have trouble being any less bored when hearing about any other presidents welcoming party. Why? Because its not the fact that it was an innaugrual party that appeals to me. its the fact that his party trashed the white house so badly it was uninhabitable for several months afterward. And either no one could stop it from getting that far out of hand or no one dared tried to.

Last edited by Triangular_Trees on 16 Jan 2008, 11:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Triangular_Trees,

That's my point. We fixate on what we want to, not what we're supposed to; people will see that we lack meaning for we neglect the whole picture, we know the internal workings of the camera (for example), but if we don't care for what the camera does--you can see the effect this has on outside observers.

WOW! I guess I am not autistic, and most other people are! So 90% of the world is autistic? WOW! You see, you are right! I didn't want to know how a computer worked! Most people know that RAM memory stores information. I never learned that. NOPE. I never learned THAT....

I DID learn THOUSANDS of things like that most memory used today is "dynamic". It is composed of a matrix of little cells. Each is like a little capacitor that only reliably stores a charge for a little while. The memory has to be reminded often that it knew what it did, and that is known as "refreshing". The address bus is "decoded" to only one value which selects a given cell in the memory. etc.... Such chips are sensitive to current fluctuation, so a device called a "capacitor" is usually placed very close to the circuit, to ride out any minor outages. By minor, I mean on the order of milliseconds.

Memory can be VERY slow! Slow is a relative term, of course. It can vary, and it's speed is known as cycle time. That is generally the number of nanoseconds between stable accesses, so the larger numbers mean slower memory. Of course, that means a computer can't run to fast, or it will crash. Because of that a computer can be instructed to slow down to access memory. That is called a wait state.

Someone FINALLY noticed that most memory is accessed sequentially, and that makes wait states VERY important. They decided to stagger addresses, so sequential accesses became random, and hit different chips. That means the effective wait state can be a half, quarter, eighth. That method is called interleaving.

Older computers often used memory called "static". It DOESN'T have to be reminded, etc... It works like most people believe memory works. When told to remember a certain thing, it remembers for as long as power is applied. It tends to be lower density and slower though, and can be a lot more expensive.

There is more, but I won't bore you more than I have. I know how databases work to the same level, and even computers themselves. I saw my first computer schematic when I was about 8, and understood EVERYTHING.

How many NT people will READILY admit that the just know they plug it in, turn it on, and run a given program? I am not saying all autistics know this at this level, but DON'T claim that all NTs do, because THEY DON'T!

BTW RAM is a misnomer that is SUPPOSED to mean "Random Access Memory". It is probably used because it was the first solidstate memory to be truly random access was RAM. They used to have memory comprised of tiny ferrite cores, and it was called core memory. Today, RAM, ROM,EPROM,EEPROM,PROM,DRAM,QSRAM,SRAM,FLASH etc... ALL refer to memory that can be accessed randomly. HECK, even disks can be accessed in a somewhat random way, even though it is really read in chunks that can be known as blocks or sectors, etc....

BTW core memory is just history. Even the company(WANG), that the guy that created it started, is basically GONE! His college tried to sue him because THEY wanted the revenue because he did it for his doctoral thesis, etc...

Oh well, I guess I should stop with the CORE DUMP(computer term used to this day to describe dumping all information).

BTW I guess I did only look at the parts that I like. The problem is that it keeps changing. GEE, I started with trying to figure out how a switch works. A little one for like the lights in a house! HEY, I was just a toddler!

That went to basic electricity, transformers, etc... NOW, I can almost tell you the path of an electron all the way to posting a charge to an account on a database. The more I think about it, the more I marvel at what the human memory can remember!