Persistent preoccupation with parts of objects?

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This is one of the criteria for AS according to the DSM-IV. It's one of the optional criteria ("two or more of the following"). I think it's the only DSM-IV AS trait that I've never seen mentioned on this site. Actually, I'm not sure I even understand what it means.

Has anyone here experienced this "preoccupation with parts of objects"? What did this involve, specifically? Just studying the part of the object? Or taking something apart?

I used to get in trouble for taking things apart when I was younger, and I still take things apart on a regular basis, but it's not the kind of thing I would think to mention to anyone.

For me, the object in question can be taken apart, measured, weighed, quantified and the function determined by reading appropriate references and/or examination of structure/form relative to the desired function. Being an electrician, I have lots of experience working on and around motor operated valves, pumps etc.. That as well as working on aircraft and manufacturing support equipment for the semi conductor industry in my past employment has given me plenty of opportunity to check out a lot of mechanical applications.

I do like taking apart things I've found in dumpsters(gets some great art "bits" and cooper wire buy I wouldn't consider myself preoccupied with them.

However...I am preoccupied with ever part of the human body,psychology and books and how the partt work together. I also collected rocks and want to know what each is made of...but I am not obsessed with those parts???

Whatever causes this, I'm convinced it's directly responsible for my love of technology.

From a very young age, people remarked that I wasn't an observant kid -- I was downright oblivious to my surroundings a lot of the time -- but I'd notice and have near-perfect recall of the tiniest details of every button, switch, key, lock, connector, LED, or LCD I encountered.

See also Weak central coherence.

Yup Sure did and do to a lesser extent.
I took everything apart when it was younger now it's not as often.

Of note, whilst that criterion is listed in both autism and Asperger's, the manifestation of the two is different.

In Asperger's, instead of being obsessed over academia as a whole, one is only interested in one subject (palaeontology for example).

In autism, it's in relation to liking and being obsessed over parts of things that really "shouldn't" be put to parts; as a child, liking how the door on a toy car opens and closes rather than playing with the toy in a proper manner. As an adult, liking the same several seconds of a movie, and watching that same several seconds over and over again for example.

Personally, I think that's one badly stated bit of criteria.

Excessive attention to detail bordering on the irrational might be more appropriate.

I, for example, don't give a flying (well, anything) about the parts of a car engine but I carefully consider the parts of words in sentences and the parts of various classification schemes.

In computing, I'm not so concerned about the hardware but I'm very into the software and code behind it.

That - I think - is the same as a preoccupation with the parts of objects but you wouldn't know it from the way the description is worded.

I think that part of the problem is that the definitions of aspergers and DSM IV were developed before our technology became particularly abstract.

I'll post the relevant expanded information from the DSM-IV-TR:

autism and Asperger's differences:

If persistent preoccupation with parts of objects means taking things apart, then I don't have it. I always thought it meant messing with objects in your hands (stimming).

Again, it's all semantics and how it is manifested differently in each of us. My son has always been extremely fascinated with small parts, he's taken things apart his entire life. Alarm clocks, toys, flashlights, everything, just to see how it worked and I think because he was just fascinated with all the little pieces.

I am more fascinated by how the parts make the whole and what makes each part's function essential to the functioning of the whole. For instance, I can pinpoint a small detail on a puzzle piece and figure out how that works with the whole. When sewing, each stitch is essential, because without each little stitch, the entirety is nothing. I like the finished result, but it means nothing without the essential connections of the little pieces.

Does that make sense? We each manifest that part of the criteria differently. It also holds up to what our obsessions are. I'm obsessed with several things, and the thing that obsesses me is how these individual parts fit to make a whole picture.

Some people start on specific parts of a puzzle and work their way out. I work on the borders and then work my way out. It's much easier that way.

I've taken things apart all my life. I still do. It drives my partner crazy. If a DVD player is malfunctioning I take the whole thing apart on the pretext of trying to fix it.

I need to know how things fit together and work. I'm always working out in my mind how things work mechanically together...

I was, however, involved in imaginative play as a child. Granted it was trying to work out social situations and why this personwould do that...and then replaying my favourite books into play...

Interesting.

my brother was the one who took every thing apart & put it back together again
workaholically, he managed to become quite the accomplished saab-mechanic

myself, i could not apply this one trait when i came across it -
until i came to realize it's "what happened to me" (when at around 27
the feeling-intuition arose within me, a knowing that somehow
"my language" had "fallen apart"),

quite literally
- i add with some heartache as literally so obviously impaired
a choice of word is to express quite it's exact-opposite -

i'd had that feeling ever since i wrote my last finished poem -
which was only one a while after the one i finished with the same
depth of feeling-awareness that "this was my last poem, this was it"

ever since then i have only made notes and fragments which i cannot
seem to piece together - on the contrary - i have lost my sense of
'quality' - that sense of authenticity, resonance within as regards myself

i am now also applying it in my spelling (in fact, it's already right there - in my older poems), but presently i am moor&moor doing it grasshoppering
from dutch to english and mix, and i believe i am in the process of gaining control of my own new bilingual language

in that sense, wp functions not just as my long-awaited relief from
alwayshavingfeltquitealone-ness, but as a first true attempt at
practicing my art - &
i just lllluuurrrvvv playing hide&seek rhyme&reason with letters&words

never forget the devil is in the detail is in the small lettering

This is how my dad kept me quiet when I was little.

2 sheets of old newspaper (to cover the table with) 1 screw driver, and 1 broken clock...equaled about 4 hours of total silence.

I love taking stuff apart, I used to love gears or watching gears in clocks or machinery, or just spinning the wheels on toy car over and over again. I would think that's what they mean. I think most kids pick up a toy car or truck for example... and play with the whole toy, I could sit there and just watch the wheels spin for an hour.

yes!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !
roofs,and the top facades of buildings. i have seveal hundred photos filled with pictures of ariels, and roofs from weird angles etc. and telegraph lines.
i was interested in the sensation of literally looking up- one looks up for hope, and churches were origionally built to point to heaven, dominate the town, inspire people to look up to god, feel awed etc; i was intersted in the way that noone notices much more than head height architecture (really vernacular stuff- im not talking the front of museums etc) and how there was a wealth of hidden weirdness going on- i have- honestly some REALLY cool pictures. and then i started transferring some of the angles etc into the basic structure for a type face. i as obsessed with roof tops.
i was at an art school at the time which kind of specialised in weird thinking, so this was really de rigueur. unless im just over rationalizing things, and it was jst a mad obsession.
its kind of de-familiarisation- things look different from unexpcted angles, or if nyou think of them differently. like gulliver.
and noone stops to look; so you can find all these secret worlds. its cool. roofs rock.

I'm not sure that I have that in the traditional sense, but like a lot of people, I have to know how things work. I don't necessarily take things apart and obsess over single parts or anything though.

My newphew who is also an aspie was obsessed with the vacuum cleaner hose for a few months. He would carry it with him everywhere. Maybe that's what they mean?

What they're trying to capture with that one, is noticing and relating to parts of objects in a way that's unusual, not related to the typical function of the object or the typical way the object would be seen, and isn't just a one-time thing.

This can mean paying attention to color, texture, sound (including sound when manipulated), etc., instead of "Here is what the object is called and how to use it."

It can also mean taking one piece of the object and paying attention to it while ignoring (or seemingly ignoring) other pieces. This is like spinning a wheel on a toy car, or spending ages staring into one particular hole within a (clothing) button, or pressing a (keyboard-or-phone-like) button over and over again.

I used to be drawn to small parts of object of a certain shape, it didn't matter what they were made of or attached to. This included mini-PacMan joysticks (see a picture here, the little things that stick up on 1970s and 1980s telephones (like this one) that the receiver goes onto, some locking mechanisms on cars, and human nipples.

I would then grab that object and start moving it around side to side regardless of what it was attached to. On car locks, nobody bothered me about it. Same went for miniature Pac Man machines. On telephones, I got chased away a lot because people thought I would push down (I never did) and hang up the thing. On nipples, I got severe talkings-to because I didn't realize they were a private part of a person's body and not something to grab onto. I didn't differentiate between any of these things based on what they happened to be attached to.

That particular thing went from the ages of about 3 to 8 I think. I still have that tendency but not as strong about that particular thing.

The reason, for me, is that I don't automatically perceive objects the way other people do to begin with. I notice pattern, color, texture, shape (or partial shape), sound, and all those other things like that. I don't automatically notice "table", "chair", "blanket", etc. I don't even differentiate automatically between things that have similarities in the qualities I do notice, even if other people notice them as being very different from each other in the normal definitions of what they are.

Normally I have to work at finding the ordinary definitions (and am best at this in a familiar environment), but often I also can't even find them at all, and end up just working with patterns rather than "here is what this thing is conventionally seen as and here is what to do with it". Many of the routines I have memorized to do things, are completely in a sort of spatial and motor memory that allows me to run around doing things without awareness of what the objects are I'm manipulating to do it. Changing a little the environment so that that memory no longer works as well, can make it much harder or impossible, even if it seems like "doing the same thing" to other people.

So that's some of what "preoccupation with parts" can mean, it can tie into a totally different mode of perception than most people have, that is common in autistic people, hence it being common for us to view and relate to objects in non-standard ways.