my latest and greatest idea about autism

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Here is my latest and greatest idea about autism. I really do not care if I am wrong. I would just like your opinions.

When I watch my autistic son, I notice that he has three strong characteristics. First, he has the ability to concentrate for long periods of time. Second, he is very sensitive to sounds that keep him form thinking such as anouncements, fire alarms and talk radio. Third, he is unaware of the little social customs that NTs use to make socialization easier.

I believe that these three characteristics should have some sort of underlying reason. Here is my latest and greatest speculation about my son.

His hyper consentration reduces his ability to change his thought process from one area to the next. Thus, I guess that he becomes so absorbed in his own thoughts that he frequently will not aknowledge people when they say "hi" and engage in a conversation. This same tendancy to hyper-concentrate could make distracting sounds extremely annoying. Likewise, his hyper-concentration prevents him from observing the social customs of NTs.

If we examine the below processes of information creation and idea synthesis, we might obtain a better understanding of autism.

Process of Information creation.

1. An activating event stimulates the senses.
2. This results in a state of arousal in the brain.
3. The mind compares the event with previously remembered events.
4. The event is categorized based on the comparison with previous remembered events.
5. The categorization results in perception of the event.
6. The event has meaning now that it has been perceived.
7. The mind calculates a reaction to the event.

Process of idea synthesis

1. An idea is encoded into language with math, words, music notation, etc.
2. The code is manipulated to improve and refine the idea.
3. The story may be decoded for the transfer of information to others.

Both NTs and persons with strong autistic perception follow the same processes. However, I speculate that the person with autism are not able to remember sequences of events as well as NTs. I am not talking about over long periods of time such as a day. I am thinking about very small intervals such as five minutes or less. Instead, persons with autism perceives a single event much more deeply at the expense of knowing the sequence of events as well as NT person. An international expert on autism, who is also autistic, recently told me that sequencing is very difficult for persons with autism.

The focus on the single event allows the person with autism to hyper-concentrate. However, the constant focus on following the sequence of events prevents the NT person from concentrating deeply. He or she needs to constantly pay attention to the sequence of events. As a result, the person with autism would tend to spend more time encoding/decoding information and synthesizing new ideas.

We could say that a person with autism has reduced socialization for three reasons.
1. Hyper-concentration prevents him from observing the social customs of NTs. Many of these social customs are sequential in nature.
2. NTs and persons with autism perceive the world differently. This alternate perception sometimes interferes with communication between NTs and persons with autism.
3. The person with autism is so absorbed in his own thoughts that he frequently will not aknowledge people when they say "hi" and engage in a conversation.

In the end, the underlying cause for autism might be a reduced ability to sequence and an increased ability to perceive a single event more deeply.

Please tell me what you think about the above ideas.

Ummm.... Executive funtion and sensory processing (hyper-processing) is really about the wiring of the brain and the fontal cortex specifically. Good central coherence deficit. IOW I think you are extrapolating too much.

I actually... cant follow that at all. I can't figure out whether it's something I normally couldn't make sense of or whether dizziness/nausea is interfering with my comprehension. The only part I can follow about being absorbed in one's own thoughts, I think it may be the opposite for me (absorbed in perception of the world more than in my ideas about it). But right now my body is busy convincing me that I'm moving when I'm not. (My nausea meds are in prior authorization with insurance and I ran out.) So I may be too distracted for this.

I am extrapolating too much. This fact has bothered me in the back of my mind while coming up with the idea. If several people tell me that they have no difficulty with sequencing, then my whole idea goes down the toilet.

I read the a research paper the other day that said that persons with autism do not necessarily have central coherence difficulties. Unfortunately, I can not find the paper. I would like to read the paper more carefully to determine the quality of the research methodology. Still, I am not certain if I could understand it well enough to evaluate it.

In any event, thank you for the response kfisherx.

I am sorry that you are not feeling well, anbuend.

Best Wishes

I don't agree with this idea. I think it's interesting, but I don't think it explains autism completely.

Honestly, I don't think it's about sequences... I mean, there is the theory that all the details are more precise, but the connections are less easily made... but I don't know. I mean, I think... I don't think that quite explains everything.

I think... well, it's possible. I honestly can't tell if what you're saying describes me.

But I really think this idea of one event vs. sequence of events doesn't completely hold up if you look at what we concentrate on. Like, reading up on all aspects of a special interest...

Or, like, I have some songs I like to listen to, and... I dunno, they have connections. Like, randomly, or sometimes based on the order I heard them in. But I can be almost fanatical about that order, even if I go in any direction and bounce back and forth and stuff... I know where I am.

Like, there's a long chain of Sailor Moon songs that starts with Kaze ni Naritai (I want to become wind) and continues to Yakusoku (promise). But backwards from Kaze ni Naritai is Vetrom Stat (become a wind), and I can also go forward from Vetrom Stat to Flowers in December.

And there's also Sakura Fubuki (cherry-blossom snowstorm) and Unmei wa Utsukushiku (fate is beautiful), which are definitely two sides of the same coin, which I guess doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense because I'm not sure they actually sound all that similar or anything.

(You can find them at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHGdc2cnp8M and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92v_O4ym ... re=related if you want to compare how they actually sound. You can find them on animelyrics.com if you want the lyrics and translation.)

But there's a definite sequence, but not precisely a temporal one. I don't know. I do have some trouble remembering when someone tells me a whole bunch of instructions at once, but I think that's normal, isn't it?