Yeah, I’ve suspected for a while that some of the autism spectrum is just the brain allocating resources differently to different things. It has a finite number of neurons (which is true even if it can grow new ones over time), so a higher emphasis on learning one thing could come at the cost of something else.
Or it could even be a matter of some people not building as strong of a foundation in some areas because their brain didn’t figure out something that others did, and it snowballs from there as peers develop on that stronger foundation of things they think they just inherently know and can’t imagine someone not knowing it and those without that strong foundation try to develop along with their peers but can’t because of what they are missing.
Like imagine that while learning math, you somehow miss learning the number 3. This would be pretty obvious because math is a rigid system, but imagine it wasn’t as strictly logical like language or social interactions. Maybe a better example would be developing drawing skills without knowing anything about perspective or lighting. Sure, there’s plenty of styles that don’t need that foundation, but if you want to draw photorealistic pictures, they are going to look off or even bad, even though they might still be recognizable. Kinda like socializing with someone with autism who isn’t good at masking.
Though the ability to mask itself might indicate it’s deeper than that. It indicates that some are capable of adjusting for their foundation, does being able to mask while still having those gaps mean the gaps are genetic? Or can we only develop by building on what we have, so the best we can do is put patches over the shortcomings we recognize in ourselves and want to correct instead of being able to truly fill those gaps in the foundation?
And all of this doesn’t even go into sensory issues related to autism. If there’s different mechanisms that result in the different aspects of autism, should they even be considered the same thing? How would one even figure out if they share mechanisms?
Yeah, I’ve suspected for a while that some of the autism spectrum is just the brain allocating resources differently to different things. It has a finite number of neurons (which is true even if it can grow new ones over time), so a higher emphasis on learning one thing could come at the cost of something else.
Or it could even be a matter of some people not building as strong of a foundation in some areas because their brain didn’t figure out something that others did, and it snowballs from there as peers develop on that stronger foundation of things they think they just inherently know and can’t imagine someone not knowing it and those without that strong foundation try to develop along with their peers but can’t because of what they are missing.
Like imagine that while learning math, you somehow miss learning the number 3. This would be pretty obvious because math is a rigid system, but imagine it wasn’t as strictly logical like language or social interactions. Maybe a better example would be developing drawing skills without knowing anything about perspective or lighting. Sure, there’s plenty of styles that don’t need that foundation, but if you want to draw photorealistic pictures, they are going to look off or even bad, even though they might still be recognizable. Kinda like socializing with someone with autism who isn’t good at masking.
Though the ability to mask itself might indicate it’s deeper than that. It indicates that some are capable of adjusting for their foundation, does being able to mask while still having those gaps mean the gaps are genetic? Or can we only develop by building on what we have, so the best we can do is put patches over the shortcomings we recognize in ourselves and want to correct instead of being able to truly fill those gaps in the foundation?
And all of this doesn’t even go into sensory issues related to autism. If there’s different mechanisms that result in the different aspects of autism, should they even be considered the same thing? How would one even figure out if they share mechanisms?