Thread by @DellAnnaLuca

AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER is a tendency to look for signal in the details and to treat context as noise.
(a thread on the nature of ASD)

Let me explain with an example: consider the following image. This is how a Neurotypical sees the world. How would he complete the sentence?
1/

2/ Because he can see lot of detail, the neurotypical would complete the sentence as "you can go hunting with a knife and catch a bear".

The completion ("catch a bear") makes sense in the context of the previous words.

Instead, …

3/ This is how a person with mild autism would see the same sentence. Little context (a few words at a time) but more details. How would he complete the sentence?

"a knife and a fork"

The completion ("a fork") makes sense in the context of the words it considers as context only

4/ Finally, this is how a person deep on the Autism spectrum would see the same sentence. Almost no context.

He would almost be unable to find a completion that makes sense.

The sentence makes no sense (in his perception where context is absent).

The world makes little sense.

5/ The sentence used for the example above has been inspired by @HappeLab and Dr Booth's 2010 paper.

(Of course, when I say "a person with" I mean "…on average, a person with".)

6/ (Before we continue, a disclaimer: I'm not a medical professional and nothing here is medical advice. Full disclaimer in my profile. This thread contains hypotheses, some of which still unverified. More info in the last tweet of the thread.)

7/ Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is like the magnifying glass in the examples above.

It amplifies details and neglects context.

The deeper one is on the Spectrum, the stronger his magnifying glass.

8/ Having mild ASD results in focusing on details while neglecting context.

This is an advantage in fields where signal is in the details (e.g., coding, math) and a disadvantage in fields where details are noise and context is signal (e.g., social interactions).

9/ Being deep on the Spectrum is a full disadvantage because no field is purely based on details.

Social interactions and perhaps even speaking and reading become so noisy that it is impossible to find any pattern and learn anything.

10/ People with ASD tend to have poorer motor coordination because motor coordination is a field where the signal is in the relative position of muscles / body parts, and relative position = context.

11/ Autism is a Spectrum, so it makes sense to hypothesize that just as some people are impaired in considering context (people deep on the spectrum), others focus too much on context ("overneurotypicality", one might say).

12/ Symptoms of the latter would be trouble learning fields where context doesn't matter (such as physics or coding), just as a symptom of the former is trouble learning fields where context matters (such as social interactions).

Their "magnifying lens" is too weak & broad.

13/ We just don't notice "overneurotypicality" because the current society we live in is based on social relations (necessarily; it's a society). So lacking them is considered a disorder, whereas being bad at coding is not considered a disorder (yet?).

15/ The hypotheses above are contained in my book gum.co/twtamg which is available for free at the link above and in my papers (available for free at luca-dellanna.com/research).