![]() The topic of "mind control" is not complete without all those bits. Everything I've ever linked to mind control is in there in this massive file, stored by words, principles, feelings, and synesthetic colors. Mind control is a network in my brain of all the thousands of things I've read about over the years, and my own experiences, and my views on how it appears in religion, politics, public schools, and the media. I can can perceive the concept as a whole, but not without all its parts. For instance, one of my special interests, cults and mind control. Yet there is an aspect of sensory fragmentation I can relate to, and that's in memory storage and in my understandings of concepts. I can see a person, a face, a room, a coffee shop, as a "whole thing", though sometimes details jump out at me like the eyes on a cartoon character, causing distraction (but it's also a superpower of observation). Sounds and other senses take on the same fragmentation, and it's difficult for the autist to lump them all together into "mother" or "dining room". A room is instead a "wall", "wall", "table leg", "table top", "plate", "chair", "floor". A person then is "hand", "arm", "ear", "face", "hair". A face breaks up into "mouth", "nose", "eye", "eye". As a result, NTs leave alot of things out, and in return for this compression, they get a speed boost.Īccording to Bogdashina, autists on the severe end of the spectrum cannot sense objects as part of a whole. NTs tend to take in sensory data all at once, summarizing, and comfortably filling in gaps with assumptions. I knew from the get-go that my search for the perfect metaphor would center around this question: "Why does it take so long for me to get started?" The answer is wrapped up in other autistic tendencies: hyperfocus, special interests, distractibility, and "getting stuck".īogdashina describes how the autistic brain processes sensory information differently than neurotypical brains. For someone on the spectrum, it's something else. For a neurotypical, it's as simple as shifting a gear. It totally fails to describe the struggle of wrapping up one task and beginning a new one. And you're still driving, not suddenly riding an elephant. It's just BAM, you're in first and now you're in second. It's to avoid meltdowns.Įven the gear metaphor is problematic, because it takes no energy or time or frustration or boredom to shift a real gear. Anyone who's worked with autistic kids knows the reason for taking this extra step. Skilled teachers of autistic kids know to give a child ample warning of an upcoming task and to explain the purpose of moving on. The single greatest resource hog during my day is what some call "shifting gears", or moving from one task to another. What does this have to do with Asperger's? Separately, "Reticulating" and "Spline" are real words, but put together they make no sense. Other software drops this phrase in as an Easter egg, and everyone who knows the joke gives a chuckle. Maxis has carried on this fine tradition for decades, and while games now load lickity-split, they ensure you have just enough time to see "Reticulating splines." flash past. One remained on the screen the longest, while a voice read it aloud: "Reticulating splines." Some of them flashed by so quickly you couldn't read them. Maxis wanted to be funny, so their load screens repeated random nonsensical phrases that sounded Really Important™. While games loaded or maps generated, many companies showed useful information, like "Decompressing graphics files.", "Loading sounds." Back then, games took forever to load, especially on my old 386. I'm a huge gamer, and in the 90s I loved old school Maxis games. The perfect metaphor, "Reticulating splines." Last night, after doing a little light reading from Olga Bogdashina's book, " Communication Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome," eureka! I found it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |