Anne, feel free not to answer this one: What do you know about neurotypicals that neurotypicals don’t know about themselves?
Wow, that’s an interesting one. I don’t think I can make a valid general statement that some particular thing that’s true of ALL nonautistic people but that none of them know themselves, so I won’t even attempt that.
However, the thing that does come to mind in response to your question (and I don’t know if this counts but I’ll put it forth anyway) is that I do find myself often aware when (nonautistic) people are making certain assumptions about reality that are transparent to them because they happen so automatically, but apparent to me because I don’t make those assumptions.
I’m sure I make other assumptions (as all humans, insofar as I know, use heuristics to some extent), but it’s pretty evident that my heuristic set is somewhat atypical, and judging from the cog-sci stuff I’ve read, some of this could probably relate to a difference in how low-level perceptual information is processed.
E.g., there have been times when people have commented on something I’ve done, “You must have spent a lot of time on that!” or even “Too much effort” (as one teacher wrote on a project I did in high school), when in fact I haven’t necessarily spent a lot of time on said thing, or put in what I’d consider to be heroic amounts of effort. I’ve also had the opposite experience, wherein I’ve tried very hard to do something for a long time, and still not been able to, and gotten numerous comments regarding how I could do it if only I “tried harder” or “relaxed”.
To me, this says that many (mostly non-autistic) people tend toward a particular way of perceiving and processing certain kinds of information, and are hence presuming that certain things are going to be relatively easier or more difficult based on the assumptions their processing style encourages. And it also tells me that in those cases, I am sometimes more aware of how their processing style might be working than they are—that is, what variables they might be ignoring without realizing it.
Hopefully this doesn’t come across as horribly presumptuous—I’m perfectly aware that this can go in the other direction. Where I see there being potential here (as far as helping further an understanding of cognition goes) is in the fact that minds with at least somewhat different basic assumption-sets can sometimes point out these assumption sets across cognitive style gaps, leading to a greater meta-awareness of the kinds of assumptions that tend to get made and what their consequences can be.
Anne, feel free not to answer this one: What do you know about neurotypicals that neurotypicals don’t know about themselves?
Wow, that’s an interesting one. I don’t think I can make a valid general statement that some particular thing that’s true of ALL nonautistic people but that none of them know themselves, so I won’t even attempt that.
However, the thing that does come to mind in response to your question (and I don’t know if this counts but I’ll put it forth anyway) is that I do find myself often aware when (nonautistic) people are making certain assumptions about reality that are transparent to them because they happen so automatically, but apparent to me because I don’t make those assumptions.
I’m sure I make other assumptions (as all humans, insofar as I know, use heuristics to some extent), but it’s pretty evident that my heuristic set is somewhat atypical, and judging from the cog-sci stuff I’ve read, some of this could probably relate to a difference in how low-level perceptual information is processed.
E.g., there have been times when people have commented on something I’ve done, “You must have spent a lot of time on that!” or even “Too much effort” (as one teacher wrote on a project I did in high school), when in fact I haven’t necessarily spent a lot of time on said thing, or put in what I’d consider to be heroic amounts of effort. I’ve also had the opposite experience, wherein I’ve tried very hard to do something for a long time, and still not been able to, and gotten numerous comments regarding how I could do it if only I “tried harder” or “relaxed”.
To me, this says that many (mostly non-autistic) people tend toward a particular way of perceiving and processing certain kinds of information, and are hence presuming that certain things are going to be relatively easier or more difficult based on the assumptions their processing style encourages. And it also tells me that in those cases, I am sometimes more aware of how their processing style might be working than they are—that is, what variables they might be ignoring without realizing it.
Hopefully this doesn’t come across as horribly presumptuous—I’m perfectly aware that this can go in the other direction. Where I see there being potential here (as far as helping further an understanding of cognition goes) is in the fact that minds with at least somewhat different basic assumption-sets can sometimes point out these assumption sets across cognitive style gaps, leading to a greater meta-awareness of the kinds of assumptions that tend to get made and what their consequences can be.