"parts of objects"

Post Reply New Topic

A lot of autism criteria mentions a fixation on parts of objects. Does anyone here know exactly what they mean by that?

This usually means that one is fascinated with one part of an object to the point of neglecting to use the object as it was originally intended; .an example of this in "playing" would be a child spinning a wheel of a toy car for an extended period of time instead of using the toy car as a "make believe" automobile. I suppose that this could also mean only noticing one part of an object and becoming immersed with it to the point of neglecting to notice the rest of the object; to use the cliche example, one could be so fascinated with a particular tree that one never realizes that they are in a forest.

Yep.

I'm guessing it could also apply to being "excessively" focused on details, to the exclusion of the larger gestalt.
So I may get upset about a change even though it seems like a minor difference to other people-because to me, it's a huge adjustment.

I did that wheel thing!

Isolating words from sentences.

I used to obsess over how to remove the cool transparent pink plastic crown from the head of my life-size ballerina doll when I was little. I wanted to wear it. Also, the ears of my stuffed dog, Ginger, were soft and silky. I could've done with just the ears and never mind the rest of the dog. If a board game came with a spinner, never mind the rest of the game. I'd just flick the spinner all day. I stole the beaters from our hand mixer, used the silver branches of our aluminum Christmas tree as magic wands, and found the pegs from my Battleship game just amazing.

This reminds me of how much I loved to take apart old mechanical alarm clocks when I was a kid, to play with the cogwheels, letting them spin... Those old clocks contained a great variety of them, of differing sizes and shapes, which were really beautiful to me.

I think being preoccupied with parts of object is a symptom of being preoccupied with objects in general.

When an NT child plays with a toy car, he is not interested in the toy car object in itself. Rather, he is interested in it only as a representation to real life cars, and the associated experience of the thrill of driving which excites his young imagination.

On the other hand, I suggest that when an ASD child plays with a toy car, he sees it simply as an object in itself. It is free from any representations to real life things. Therefore, he will do odd things when exploring the car, e.g. spinning its wheels. Since he does not see its link to real life cars, he is less likely to do the standard thing to it (drive it around and make vrooom vrooom noises)

So in reality, IMO its not really that ASD children are obsessed with parts of objects as such. Its that instead, NT children aren't preoccupied with objects at all. Rather, they are interested in the experiences those objects represent to them.

Hmm, a lot of this sounds really familiar to me! Making a lot more sense. And I like that theory. ^ I think it's very true, at least in my case.

I used to do that with the wheels of cars, too. I remember having a favourite toy car when I was a kid, that was a silver hatchback. It had a hood that opened, and I used to turn it upside down and pretend the hood was a mouth and the headlights were eyes, and I would make the car talk. I almost never played with it like a car. It also had springy wheels, and I would sometimes just play with the wheels, pressing them down and letting them spring back up, or putting the car on a hard surface and pressing it down and letting it spring back up.

I also remember being fascinated with the clips on my mother's sewing machine case. (The kind of closure that's made of metal. It has a sort of loop part that hooks around a post, and a lever part that you push down to snap it closed. I tried to find a picture online, but I don't know what they're called). They had the same general shape as a dentist's chair, so I used to play with one of them, pretending it was a dentist's chair.