Understanding the model NTs operate on

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Cogs
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05 Apr 2012, 8:16 pm

Does anyone know of any resources (books, websites, journal articles etc) to help understand what model NTs operate on?
Essentially I want to understand the difference between myself and NTs, what NTs want, how they perceive things etc.
A key focus for me is communication. I want to understand NTs communication models - how and why they communicate, what methods they use, how they achieve disired aims, why they use non-literal communication etc. Essentially anything along these lines that will help me understand NTs different perspective better. I am already looking though past WP threads, so am particularly interested in things from outside of WP. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!


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kBillingsley
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05 Apr 2012, 9:01 pm

Well, I can tell you a few things about neurotypicals (or at least how to fake being one); simply ask the correct questions. If you really want to understand the neurotypical dynamic, just check out Facebook.



Cogs
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05 Apr 2012, 11:23 pm

kBillingsley wrote:
Well, I can tell you a few things about neurotypicals (or at least how to fake being one); simply ask the correct questions. If you really want to understand the neurotypical dynamic, just check out Facebook.

This does not bode well for me. I am constantly asking the difficult, odd or unusual questions, though I don't realise until I get the response from the other person, and as for FB, its a mystery what NTs see in it. Do you know of any explanations, someone who gets NT behaviour and can explain the what/how/why/who etc?


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fraac
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05 Apr 2012, 11:58 pm

"Through a Window" by Jane Goodall.



kBillingsley
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06 Apr 2012, 12:11 am

Cogs wrote:
kBillingsley wrote:
Well, I can tell you a few things about neurotypicals (or at least how to fake being one); simply ask the correct questions. If you really want to understand the neurotypical dynamic, just check out Facebook.

This does not bode well for me. I am constantly asking the difficult, odd or unusual questions, though I don't realise until I get the response from the other person, and as for FB, its a mystery what NTs see in it. Do you know of any explanations, someone who gets NT behaviour and can explain the what/how/why/who etc?


I wish I could help you more, but I know of no such books. My offer of contextual insight still stands, if you can come up with a question.



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06 Apr 2012, 12:15 am

Cogs wrote:
kBillingsley wrote:
Well, I can tell you a few things about neurotypicals (or at least how to fake being one); simply ask the correct questions. If you really want to understand the neurotypical dynamic, just check out Facebook.

This does not bode well for me. I am constantly asking the difficult, odd or unusual questions, though I don't realise until I get the response from the other person, and as for FB, its a mystery what NTs see in it. Do you know of any explanations, someone who gets NT behaviour and can explain the what/how/why/who etc?


[ Disclaimer Might not be true lol, my point of view ]. Sure you probably got some of my links already.

1) Well it's kinda like a "live" online diary. Well large percentage is about garbage, about what you eat & stuff like that. A lot of them are addicted, planted into they phones, even when someone who is a friend on face book, is sat opposite you in a waiting room. But does not notice you because they face is planted into they phone.

2) It is like celebrity fallowing. Except your fallowing other peoples life’s, keeping up to date. posting garbage like "I am currently sat on the toilet taking a dump LmAo". It's a free way to act like a celebrity. So you start dumping even more junk & even more insane photos to keep people interested.

3) & then you got the ones who just use it to keep in contact with they friends.

4) Like minded people that have the same interests, so you can talk about that.

5) Then they is the people who just use it for games.

I missed anything, like news? or something.


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Blindspot149
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06 Apr 2012, 1:07 am

This book really explained it very well for me.

http://www.afieldguidetoearthlings.com/


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Australien
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06 Apr 2012, 2:37 am

Me and all my AS friends are on facebook. It's a useful way of keeping track of people that you don't want to lose contact with, without having to maintain too high a level of social engagement. You can start discussions and ask questions about things you think are interesting.

But of course, you will get lots of NTs (should you choose to friend them) posting about how totally drunk they got last night, with terrible spelling.



izzeme
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06 Apr 2012, 4:11 am

something that helped myself finding NT models is looking the other way around, reading many resources aimed at NTs that try to explain how people with AS are different and how to deal with that, and then reversing the point of vieuw to deduce what would be considered 'normal'(ex. "someone with AS might prefer to eat breakfast in silence"; *aha, so NT's like to talk when they eat*)



nessa238
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06 Apr 2012, 5:39 am

From my own experience, if you think about all the things you hate in terms of communication style and topics of conversation - that's what NT's like! This is the very reason I have no wish to emulate them - I can't stand most of them! Their conversation is mainly very competitive, aggressive and context-specific ie what is right in front of their noses - they don't generally like to think about anything in any depth or anyalse anything; their main focus is on strategising to try and give themselves advantages - at any one time they will be thinking 'Is this person getting something I'm not and if so can they help me to gain access to it too?

They have their 'eye on the main chance' all the time. It's all about bettering themselves and they use socialising to do this, as the more people you know and talk to, the more advantages/opportunities you get. They basically have a pretty ruthless mindset and this helps them survive. People on the spectrum in my experience lack this ruthless 'killer instinct' and the average NT will pick this up instantly and not see us as being of any standard 'use' to them in terms of giving them access to advantages or advantageous situations as they will feel we are socially/mentally weak and therefore will be lacking in useful social contacts. Therefore we will often only be of use to them as someone to exploit.

They will generally not respect anyone just for being intelligent or nice as their main aim is what they can get out of a person or situation ie how they can improve their own social position in order to get more 'benefits'.

This might seem cyncial but I'm afraid it's true to a greater or lesser extent.

We spend all our time trying to gain these 'precious' social skills or trying emulate them but I think we often fail to understand the whole pretext behind them - they are just a tool to make useful connections with others in order to gain advantages, both emotional and financial - that is the essence of social communication. I just don't want to be like them full stop and in many ways I'm glad my lack of social skills keeps me out of the whole gladiatorial arena of NT interactions as it's just not nice at all - it's nasty, selfish, brutish and no place for a person with half an ounce of sensitivity and integrity!

So think of all the things you loathe in others and that will be a template for what the average NT respects and seeks in a person!

Also, you're going to get varying advice on here as some people will be acting more to an NT model of behaviour than others as they can see the advantages it holds or they just happen to be more NT anyway. Many people with Aspergers have a foot in both camps in my opinion and also you can't help but absorb some aspects of the dominant 'host' culture ie the NT one.
We all get brainwashed with NT concepts in my opinion and it's very hard to shake off the programming.



nessa238
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06 Apr 2012, 6:06 am

I just remembered this book that I have:-

'Socially Curious, Curiously Social: A Social Thinking Guidebook for Bright Teens & Young Adults' by Michelle Garcia Winner

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Socially-Curiou ... 211&sr=8-2

It gives a good explanation of 'Social Thinking' - something NT's are doing all the time concerning the people in their vicinity, whether they know them or not. They are continually adjusting their behaviour to try and ensure they don't give others what the author calls 'weird thoughts' about them, as people remember these weird thoughts about a person and it will affect how they interact with them/whether they want to interact with them again.

In my opinion it's near-on impossible for an aspie not to trigger these 'weird thoughts' just by being alive, with many NTs lol. I instinctively worked out for myself that this 'weird thoughts' thing was happening. You can generally see it in their expression ie they often frown or have a 'Huh?! WTF are you going on about??' type look on their faces and I just see these types as people it's not worth making any real effort with as it means they just don't relate to my comunication style/the content of my communication/my image - the posibilities are endless with this type! I look for the more tolerant/open-minded people.



Cogs
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07 Apr 2012, 4:42 am

@kBillingsley - Thanks, I failed to notice the offer in your first post.

Thanks fraac, Blindspot and nessa for the book recommendations, I will get them.
Thanks TechnoDog, Australien, izzeme and nessa for the explanations, they are helpful.

A communication book presents the following model as fact: People hear/see things->They tell themselves a story about it (a sort of explanation, conclusion, judgement)->They feel an emotion-> Behaviour
I dont get the middle two parts of this.
Is the story part a reference to internal dialogue? I have read about internal dialogue on past posts. How does this story/explanation/thought part apply to thought processes that do not use internal dialogue? I am also wondering if this links into people reading between the lines of what other people say, Im not sure how or on what basis they do this.
I also need help understanding what to do with emotions and how to understand/react to others emotions.


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kBillingsley
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07 Apr 2012, 9:25 am

Cogs wrote:
@kBillingsley - Thanks, I failed to notice the offer in your first post.

Thanks fraac, Blindspot and nessa for the book recommendations, I will get them.
Thanks TechnoDog, Australien, izzeme and nessa for the explanations, they are helpful.

A communication book presents the following model as fact: People hear/see things->They tell themselves a story about it (a sort of explanation, conclusion, judgement)->They feel an emotion-> Behaviour
I dont get the middle two parts of this.
Is the story part a reference to internal dialogue? I have read about internal dialogue on past posts. How does this story/explanation/thought part apply to thought processes that do not use internal dialogue? I am also wondering if this links into people reading between the lines of what other people say, Im not sure how or on what basis they do this.
I also need help understanding what to do with emotions and how to understand/react to others emotions.


The middle two parts should be in reference to internal dialogue and rationalization. Taking a complicated situation and consolidating it into a simplified story not only assists the individual in understanding, but also in being able to communicate the story to someone else later. The emotion/opinion stage, I imagine, is just a passive response to having the rationalized story. The middle two stages are kind of a natural analog to MP3 format, in which a larger audio file has the inaudible parts taken out of it to lessen the file size, but keep the same music. Continuing with the MP3 analogy, "reading between the lines" is like making a guess at what the previous mind removed during file compression, based on one's own experience in file compression. As for emotions, you are on your own. Personally, I discard them whenever possible, as they have only ever inhibited me from my goals. Sometimes you can use emotions of others to make a guess at how they compress their files. For example: if you meet someone who is always overbearingly optimistic and happy, you can infer that this person discards all of the sad or unfavorable parts of a situation, and only consciously recognizes the happy parts. Using this information, you can regress what likely was the actual situation that this person experienced from their story, an assumption that all situations are naturally neutral, and your own experience with what you can guess are similar situations. Communication is pretty simple once you have learned to work the system. Also, people have a sort of 'auto-sync' feature when they get around one another. This is what conversation is: the exchange of information and attached sentiments until all parties involved believe that sufficient t information has been exchanged and equilibrium has been achieved.



JonAZ
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07 Apr 2012, 9:37 am

Sometimes social people demonstrate a herd mentality.

http://manyperceptions.org/love-logic-e ... mentality/


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07 Apr 2012, 11:07 am

I can't think of any particular examples right now, but the best books I've found to help me understand how NTs think is books that are written to help them understand themselves. Such books don't come with a "neurotypical" label though. They are books written for a general audience (which, of course, means mostly NTs) to help people understand how the mind works.


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07 Apr 2012, 11:59 am

If, for 1% of the population, there is the saying "if you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism", probably also will be true (or even more true) for a group that (depending of the definitions) could comprise 99% of the population.