Imagination

[beware_the_sluagh]

I feel I don't have a very good imagination because I associate imagination with visualisation and I don't see things in my head very well, but I was always more often in another world than this one. I have cut back on the other world stuff though because it has interfered with my ability to live in and be satisfied with this one.
I'm thinking of trying to get back into it in a literary sense - imagine stuff but write it down so that I am producing something from it, thus linking the imaginary and real worlds and positively affecting my life in this one with the satisfaction of creating something and improving my writing skills.

[mopodile]

It's interesting reading this thread about imagination. My son, age 6, and Aspergers has a very vivid imagination as do I (i hover somewhere on periphery of AS) yet it has always confused me the way that many diagnostic criteria seems to assume that nobody on spectrum has imagination which is clearly just not true. I guess there may be some differences in the qualities of autistic imagination and neurotypical imagination, but has this been articulated anywhere?

Also it is interesting to read different people's experiences with being lost in their imaginations/dreams as i wonder if it relates to a strange experience i have had. Hard to describe and you may think i am mad. A few years ago, after i had been working too hard for too many weeks on the computer (i am a graphic designer) i turned off my computer and started having strange 'fits' in which i would have these images in my head and then i would try and look at them and work out what they were and where they came from and then i would feel this flash of intense nausea and then the image would disappear. I put this down to stress of overworking but i have had this happen from time to time since then and what i think was happening is that i would have a flash of a memory of a dream i have had in the past (thats what it seemed like) but when I looked into my mind at the image of this dream, it suddenly became very real and too detailed to be a dream, so it felt like i was suddenly living in my dream and this feeling of being popped into a different world would bring up this nausea. I have wondered if a possible reason is that some people have unusually vivid encoding of their dreams, a bit like some of you are describing.

Does this make any kind of sense to anyone? I had not related it before to autism related issues until quite recently.

[SomethingElse]

The meaning of the word 'imagination' in the diagnostic criteria doesn't expressly mean that people with autism don't have them, or have poor imaginations creativitywise. It (also?) relates to us being poor predicters of what would happen next (socially, etc.) and there might be some other examples, but I'm running late and so can't dig up the description I found yesterday that I really liked.

Maybe later.

[ukenkerl]

mopodile,

One thing I always hated was that spoken language is so imprecise. There are so MANY things that just can't be explained. I spoke to my mother once about how I reacted to people, etc... as a little kid, and she said I seemed pretty normal but sometimes would be in "my own world". I have to wonder even what SHE means. Her perception sometimes IS off.

Sometimes I DO start to get glimmers of another world that is REAL! It is like I am seeing with my eyes, color, etc.... That is rare but that might be simply because I usually don't let myself go very far because it is usually not in a private area, and nobody else ever let me go too far. USUALLY it is just a sensation. STILL, it CAN end up seeming VERY real. I have whole experiences where I have seen, smelled, built things. At 7 years old, I had memories of building aircraft, flying them, etc...!

I imagine it is kind of like Benji sometimes sees because, like her, I tend not to see faces. I may see books, but not writing. I could be in that world and doing different things, and see people acting seemingly autonomously, and even physically react to it, and yet seem awake lucid, and be programming even here! Still, vision in that area is more a sense than real vision.

I haven't had imaginary friends, outside of my little world, so to speak. I haven't don't anything like pretend to be anyone else(outside of a little acting). I haven't imagined that any toys were anything other than they were. HECK, I couldn't even get into playing house, not that I wanted to, but with a young girl friend that DOES, what can you do? But I guess I do have a concious imagination. My subconcious certainly does also.

Benji,

You are probably right, but I think I review dealings with others more than most. I try to analyze everything and see possible outcomes. I try to err on caution. I rarely miss something. But I haven't seen NTs do all that great. And it seems that FEW, if any, review things as I do. Some autistics DO though! HECK, YOU have indicated HERE about how you have reasoned things out. Your reasoning wasn't off.

[Sophist]

It's interesting reading this thread about imagination. My son, age 6, and Aspergers has a very vivid imagination as do I (i hover somewhere on periphery of AS) yet it has always confused me the way that many diagnostic criteria seems to assume that nobody on spectrum has imagination which is clearly just not true. I guess there may be some differences in the qualities of autistic imagination and neurotypical imagination, but has this been articulated anywhere?

Also it is interesting to read different people's experiences with being lost in their imaginations/dreams as i wonder if it relates to a strange experience i have had. Hard to describe and you may think i am mad. A few years ago, after i had been working too hard for too many weeks on the computer (i am a graphic designer) i turned off my computer and started having strange 'fits' in which i would have these images in my head and then i would try and look at them and work out what they were and where they came from and then i would feel this flash of intense nausea and then the image would disappear. I put this down to stress of overworking but i have had this happen from time to time since then and what i think was happening is that i would have a flash of a memory of a dream i have had in the past (thats what it seemed like) but when I looked into my mind at the image of this dream, it suddenly became very real and too detailed to be a dream, so it felt like i was suddenly living in my dream and this feeling of being popped into a different world would bring up this nausea. I have wondered if a possible reason is that some people have unusually vivid encoding of their dreams, a bit like some of you are describing.

Does this make any kind of sense to anyone? I had not related it before to autism related issues until quite recently.

That sounds a bit like a seizure to be honest. Not saying it is, but seizures are definitely not uncommon in autistics and family members. Especially when you say it was related to stress.

Just a thought.

[Hippocampus]

I've always had a very intense imagination. When I was a child, I spent most of my time day dreaming and ignoring reality. As a result, my parents, teachers, and pediatrician thought I was autistic or had some kind of neurological abnormality. They gave me an EEG, which turned out to be normal. The autism diagnosis didn't quite fit because of my language skills, so I was diagnosed with ADD-PI and punished for using my imagination too much.

Years later, when I learned about ASD, I thought I couldn't be diagnosed because of my imagination. Everything I read said that people on the spectrum lack imagination. Then I learned otherwise, so I went ahead and got diagnosed.

[Sophist]

I've always had a very intense imagination. When I was a child, I spent most of my time day dreaming and ignoring reality. As a result, my parents, teachers, and pediatrician thought I was autistic or had some kind of neurological abnormality. They gave me an EEG, which turned out to be normal. The autism diagnosis didn't quite fit because of my language skills, so I was diagnosed with ADD-PI and punished for using my imagination too much.

Years later, when I learned about ASD, I thought I couldn't be diagnosed because of my imagination. Everything I read said that people on the spectrum lack imagination. Then I learned otherwise, so I went ahead and got diagnosed.

I bet Lorna Wing regrets having originally written the triad of impairments in such a literal fashion as to imply autistics don't have imagination.

[teejay]

I certainly do have imagination, so does every modern human (Homo Sapiens). So much for the assumption that Autistic people have no imagination.

*Imagination is a trait that only Homo Sapiens has, it is doubtful that previous species of Homo had it.

[hesperus]

Years later, when I learned about ASD, I thought I couldn't be diagnosed because of my imagination. Everything I read said that people on the spectrum lack imagination. Then I learned otherwise, so I went ahead and got diagnosed.

I think it puts doubt in a lot of people's minds (about them being on the spectrum) when they read things like that. It's rarely explained properly and in the way Benji mentioned above. I had doubts myself because some criteria specify things such as lack of interest in fiction or lack of varied, spontaneous pretend play (appropriate to developmental level). There were some differences to my play, and my mother surprised me by remembering how, in nursery school, I would only do what is referred to as parallel play, but I also remember playing games alone where I'd imagine I was a character from a favourite book or TV programme. It's difficult to tell, in many cases, exactly what they consider as not "normal". Also, from what I've gathered, an experienced diagnostician will often not take the way in which the criteria are worded at face value. When Benji mentioned how it can also mean being a poor predictor of what will happen next in a social situation, that made a lot of sense to me as it's something that I can recall from almost any of my recent experiences.

[anhaga]

Actually, the idea that it's just "social imagination" that's being talked about is just one of those awful professional backtracks that I wish people would quit making.

It did originally mean that we could not imagine anything beyond what was literally in front of us, in any way. That we just did not have that capacity. We were described in that fashion very frequently. For instance, the whole fuss about imaginative play was a big part of why we were said to have no imagination (when really a lot of us do have imaginative play and show it differently than usual), not just social imagination but any imagination.

Then later when it became really obvious (...again...) that some of us had great imaginations, then to excuse that word, people started saying "Oh, it just means social imagination."

Nope, sorry, wrong, it doesn't, that's just a backtrack for a really bad concept in the autism world.

Same with "lacking empathy". They really meant it at one point, then when that became obviously wrong, they started claiming that it meant some really specialized definition of empathy.

A lot of things work that way, and I can't stand perpetuating the idea that they just mean some really specialized definition of a term, when that's really just a way of covering for a word used in a really sloppy, inaccurate way to begin with. It's just a way for the "experts" to claim they're not wrong.

[anhaga]

*Imagination is a trait that only Homo Sapiens has, it is doubtful that previous species of Homo had it.

I really doubt that. I've seen a parrot playing imaginatively with toys (substituting them for other things or people and then acting as if they are those things or people). And my cat seems to imagine things sometimes.

Most traits when described as exclusive to homo sapiens are more like exclusive to homo sapiens arrogance. Even when we have some traits that most other species don't, there are usually other species that have those traits. And there is no way of knowing just by looking at someone or something, whether they can imagine or not, especially species we can't even interact with because they've died off.

[SomethingElse]

But at least now it is accepted that the terms were incorrect, and the corrections make better sense.

I would have thought that dreaming is a form of imagination, and animals definitely dream. They are also able to predict events and make sense of things that require some kind of imagination (like my kitten walking behind the mirror to find her reflection). I think that a lot of ideas on the capabilities of animals are grossly underestimating them. It wasn't that long ago that they discovered that apes made tools, which takes some kind of imagination.

[hesperus]

I've noticed that a lot too: how animals' capabilities are grossly underestimated. People put a lot of emphasis on brain size, yet I've seen birds (mostly parrots) engaging in what's considered very socially intelligent behaviour. One parrot we knew would even know how to manipulate people by playing hard to get etc. . When I saw some cockatoos together in a wildlife park, I could even see bullying and ostracism going on between them. Yet, some people might question things like this by saying it just looks like something intelligent but you can't really know, and then go the other way, assuming it's more likely to be mindless instinct. It seems the proof of intelligence some people require would come only through the animal being able to do something like speak or write, which is a very narrow way to think of intelligence.

The social imagination aspect of some diagnostic criteria of ASCs does seem to be a bit superfluous. I'd have thought it could just as easily come under their general category of social impairment. That's one reason the Cambridge CLASS criteria confused me. They added the imagination section to intentionally make their criteria stricter than the others, such as those in the DSM, and didn't just stick to repetitive activities. Perhaps they want to narrow the range of those who meet the criteria for AS for research sample purposes so they can create more homogenous population samples. I'd be interested to know.

[anhaga]

I think parrots have actually been shown to be more socially adept than humans.

I have a friend with a parrot, and the parrot manages to manipulate her into doing all kinds of things and it takes her hours or sometimes days to realize what he's been up to.

[Sophist]

Actually, the idea that it's just "social imagination" that's being talked about is just one of those awful professional backtracks that I wish people would quit making.

It did originally mean that we could not imagine anything beyond what was literally in front of us, in any way. That we just did not have that capacity. We were described in that fashion very frequently. For instance, the whole fuss about imaginative play was a big part of why we were said to have no imagination (when really a lot of us do have imaginative play and show it differently than usual), not just social imagination but any imagination.

Then later when it became really obvious (...again...) that some of us had great imaginations, then to excuse that word, people started saying "Oh, it just means social imagination."

Nope, sorry, wrong, it doesn't, that's just a backtrack for a really bad concept in the autism world.

Same with "lacking empathy". They really meant it at one point, then when that became obviously wrong, they started claiming that it meant some really specialized definition of empathy.

A lot of things work that way, and I can't stand perpetuating the idea that they just mean some really specialized definition of a term, when that's really just a way of covering for a word used in a really sloppy, inaccurate way to begin with. It's just a way for the "experts" to claim they're not wrong.

I'm actually a bit surprised that Dr. Wing is still such a big proponent of the triad being the defining factors of ASCs.

Additionally, it's rather silly to base a diagnostic criterion on a term which nobody seems to be able to define adequately. I mean, most people know generally what is meant when the word "imagination" is used; but defining it in a more concrete manner, that's difficult.