Is this too litteral thinking to you?

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My son, (12) has problems in school.

This year, he learned his multiplication tables very well. (We had not tried to learn them before, within 6 weeks, he knows *most* of his basic facts).
He has a huge bank of general knowledge that he draws on all the time. Sometimes, the teachers say his contributions to class discussions are well beyond the expectations for his grade.

He learns "facts" almost instantly, especially if he is interested in it. We look over a note he has been given discuss it at home once, and he knows the information forever. (he has problems physically copying so the teachers are now giving him good copies of notes). He makes up acronyms to remember things if he struggles at all. For example, the music notes EGBDF is "Every Girl Buys Dog Food". Or, to remember the 4 main instrument groups in a symphony orchestra, Strings Percussions, Brass and WoodWinds, he made up "some people would want brass". (so he makes his own too all the time).

But, if you ask him to "think" it seems like some breakdown occurs. He is a great anylist dealing with info that is "known" to him, and can impliment any formula or equation in math for example if he "knows it" with great accuracy and percision. But, asking him a question like "which is greater: 5/5 or 10/10" sends him into a melt down. Why? Because he has not been specifically told they could be "equal" too.

So, he looks at the question, his heart rate goes up, he starts making little paniced noises. He says rapidly over and over "which one is greater which one is greater 10/10 or 5/5... 10/10 or 5/5... I suggest he looks at his fraction strips and compares them. He count out 10 /10 pieces and says "that is one whole". he counts out 5 out of 5 pieces and says "that is one whole" (On the table, they are both the same length). So he proclaims "10 /10 is greater because their are more pieces!"

I suggest he look at it and calm down. He reverses his decision, 5/5 because the pieces are bigger.

I stop him and say, "I give you a whole chocolate bar broken up into 10 pieces". I give your sister a chocolate bar broken up into 5 pieces". Who has more chocolate?" Again, "I do" no, "she does". No... He is going into overload!

The thing is, he has been doing fractions for days, even when he started the work, he could reduce fractions with relative ease, he knows what they are and what they represent, that is not the problem! he knows that 2/6 = 1/3. he knows that 8/12 = 3/4. He even knows that 10/10 and 5/5 both equal a whole. What is frying his brain, is he can't help but think "I gotta pick one" He can't stop and think "but they are the same, what do I do mom?" Instead it is "one MUST be bigger because the instructions say one is bigger!".

The funny thing is, the instructions told him the fractions would be greater then, less then or equal! But he has an impossible time reading and applying most instructions!

*sigh*. Since filling him in on the little "secret" that they CAN be the same, he has flown through the rest of the paper!

Actually, that is COMMON! I've seen NTs do it ALSO! You expect it to be a trick question!

Heres one for you!

You are given TWO chocolate candybars that are IDENTICAL!! You use a serrated knife to cut one into 5 pieces, and give those pieces to sam! You take the other, cut it into 10 pieces, and give those to jane! WHO has more chocolate???????

You probably said they have the same, right???? BZZZT! WRONG!

SAM probably has MORE because the pieces are larger, and hence there are fewer cuts! Each cut DOES sacrifice some chocolate shavings!

Maybe THAT is the kind of thing he was worried about. The funny thing is it can get WORSE with simpler questions.

BTW I recently watched painkiller jane. That episode was about a guy that could move memories. He held one persons memories hostage in this group of 7, to get the other 6 to do something. At the end, the doctor came back and said that his memories were back, but there was a problem with his logic. He asked what is 7-1? The person appeared to not understand the question, then struggled, and said ZERO! ... 7-1=0! Everyone else paused, and then jane said 7-1 is NOT zero! And he said 7-1=0! We are 7! I am 1! Without me, you have 6 zeros! 6*0=0! 7-1=0! He went back to his post.

Sometimes EVERYTHING is open to interpretation!

Steve

Here's an interesting topological fact about those two chocolate bars: While breaking up one into five pieces is the same amount of chocolate as one broken up into ten, the bar broken up into more chocolate would taste more chocolately because the surface area of the 10/10 bar is greater than the surface area of the 5/5, and if you were to ask "if you put both chocolate bars in the oven, the 5/5 and the 10/10, which one would melt faster, the 10/10 would because it has less volume to surface area ratio." Try plugging that one into his little brain.

No seriously, tell him about topology. I'm certain he can handle it, that little Einstein!

You guys are hurting my head! This is grade 5 math! We are not worried about "shavings" coming off during the breaking process!

I really think you can't see the foreset for the trees!

Interestingly enough, I was thinking that he would probably grasp the whole thing my adding in the decimal equivalents! That at least gives a way to break any fraction down to an apple to apple level...

I will share with him the topology, I think you are right, he would be interested in it!

I can relate I'm rubbish with instructions. I never answer correctly. I prefer teaching myself stuff it make more sense.

Lobber: My son loves your Avatar!

Black Cat: My son felt rather triumphant seeing your post, his response "exactly! That is what happened to me!"

Just give him a rule to learn such as evalute the fractions before answering the question. Rules, rules and more rules.

Hi EarthCalling,

I recognize your son's problem. I'm going to school too, though it's college, and I'm 40 and not 12, doing sciences and calculus and not fractions, but when I've run into a problem it was essentially the same as your son's: understanding the stuff itself perfectly fine but often having trouble with the way the stuff is thought about and presented by others (specifically teacher & textbook).
The solution for this is to become conscious of the nature of the problem, i.e. learning to locate the stuff itself in the swamp of others' interpretations and wordings of it. For instance, in the question "what is greater, 5/5 or 10/10?" the numbers are the stuff to think about, while the words are confusing rubbish that should be ignored at first. If your son would just visualize what "5/5 and 10/10" represent, and nothing else, he would understand anything about these numbers that there is to understand. Understanding and communicating can't be done at the same time, because communicating requires words and understanding requires visualization and absence of words. So, when asked a question, (1) strip it of all communicative interpretations and representations, then (2) think about the actual issue, and then (3) communicate about it. Once your son gets this down, it'll become routine and he'll be able to do this very fast, needing much less time than most people in order to do well in school.
It is further helpful to ask a lot of questions to the teacher about anything that is unclear, because this actively engages the mind with the stuff itself, so it will be remembered. For the same reason (active engagement) doing his homework is also important. But he should use textbooks only for reference (i.e. to find answers to specific questions), and otherwise ignore them, because they're full of narrative that is helpful only to NT's (people who think in words).

Its too bad the question uses 5/5 and 10/10. I would present it as this:

You have sam with 6/6 pieces, and jane with 10/10. Jane gives sam five of her pieces and sam gives jane 3 of his. Who has more? He'll either add up the number of pieces each has( 8 ), or consider that each has the same distribution of piece sizes. He should say "neither" at this point. If he doesnt, you know that he is considering elements like shavings and randomness.

I'll give an example of how I can think, even at 34.

Mom came over to my house(I rent a room from my brother), happened to go into a spare room, and brought out a jacket. she presented it to me and said "whos jacket is this?", to which I replied "I dont know". I did know that it wasnt mine, and that I had never seen my brother wear that jacket. I recognised it as having laid on the spare bed for some months. So with all available facts, I came to the conclusion "I dont know."

Was my answer valid? No. It did not return useful data to her. I should have said "Its not mine." But my mind doesnt work that way. The answer would have been incomplete. A perfect answer would have been "I dont know if its [my brothers]".

To come to a point, I think your son knows that 5/5 and 10/10 are equal. He is simply unable to articulate that he understands that there are other factors that render differences between 5/5 and 10/10, such as the previously stated surface area. Or he is stuggling with verbal semantics. Or that 1/10 of a chocolate is a whole chocolate in its own right.

I'll illustrate the point using my sister( who is NT).

As a kids, we were camping, and she was holding a burning stick, which I used to start my own stick on fire. she protested that I was stealing her fire. Though she had lit her stick with the camp fire, she was of a mind that the fire could not be divided without loss.

If I have two candles and I divde one into 5 pieces and the other into 10, and light the ends of each piece, which has more fire? There are more equal sized flames in the 10/10 group, so the later has more fire.

You can refactor the question to deal with weight, size, volume, area... and if he is visual/tactile and literal, he will deal with it better in that way.

People have pretty much already said this a few times.. but to put it briefly and cause I wanna post something:

The question misleads him. He knows they're equal, but you did not ask him "are these equal or is one greater?" You asked "Which one is greater?" Literally taken, as any young person with AS will take it, that question states in itself that one IS in fact greater than the other, and he has to figure out which one and how that can be possible. Of course he's gonna freak out trying to make sense of that.

But like someone else also said, perhaps now that he's experienced this, he'll be able to handle misleading questions in the future.