Autistic brains 'never daydream'

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If I'm reading the very confusing quiz results right, as of this post 150 of us, or 92 percent, don't feel it applies to us.

Which suggests that either

a) he was referring to a specific type of autism that does not include AS, which I expect is what most of the respondents have,

or

b) there is something else affecting his experiment, either obvious or subtle,

or

c) he produced his results through the research method known as rectal extraction.


My guess is b and c. I bet that he's making a leap of faith that the test environment is free of anything that would prevent daydreaming (such as an annoying electronic machine scanning your brain), and also that the absence of what he's calling daydreaming (there may be more to it, but I wasn't convinced he was measuring the right thing by the article) in the test environment applies to the world at large. Even if he is measuring daydreams, and doing so accurately, the most I can see his data supporting is that there are certain conditions under which NTs daydream that autistics do not.

Maybe there's more to it, but it comes across as sloppy and stupid.

That study was crap. I know for a fact I daydream frequently when I'm bored, about what I'll write my next story on (I have fantasies from the reader's view BEFORE writing them), etc.

I agree with Catalyst. B and C indeed.

I would hazard a guess that we are able to concentrate on a single task for longer, not that we don't daydream per se. It's already known that an Aspie's obsessive interests can keep us occupied for great lengths of time, far longer than an NT would be able to sustain.

I know for a fact that I daydream, as I'm an award-winning fiction writer, and one of the most common questions I'm asked is: "where do you get all of your ideas?" Simple, I daydream a lot!

So I would say that our brains just manage to stay focused for longer before needing a "rest break". But that's a good thing, isn't it?

Alison

Agreed. I'm also a writer, though I've not finished any fiction since high school. I've done a fair amount of commentary, but mostly I just roll the ideas around in my head now. which is most of the fun.

Interestingly enough, one of my last finished pieces of work was about a fiction writer named "Alison." Which won't be creepy as long as you haven't written a story about a butch exhibitionist college student chasing a fastidious serial killer.

My daydreams are beginning to cause problems for me. Not in that normal, everyday, I lose focus on something, or get caught not paying attention in class. It's that I'm starting to confuse what is a daydream (and to a lesser extent, a regular dream) and what is real. There's this one thing that I have been struggling to remember if it really happened or if I just imagined it happening. It's incredibly frustrating, and starting to be a little scary, because I'm worried if this is leading up to a total break with reality.

However, I still absolutely LOVE to daydream.

Yeh, I know, I had this wierd thing a little while back. I think it was a (night)dream but...I'm not sure. People keep asking me whether I've done such-and-such. Well, I honestly don't know.

I almost cracked up when reading the title of this post. If there is anything wrong with me with regards to daydreaming, it's that I do it too much. Unless I am specifically focusing on something around me, I am never living totally in the present moment. I assume that anytime you are mesmerized in your own thought process, which is unrelated to what is going on around you, that qualifies as daydreaming.

I remember at one time I went to see a guy who does biofeedback, where electrodes are placed on your head to record brain waves and the results are reported back to you in real time as graphed bars on a computer screen and/or tones. One particular frequency of brain wave was supposed to act as a "daydream-ometer" as he put it, and I had to work really hard when sitting there to keep that bar down, considering that the conditions were perfectly conducive to daydreaming (sitting still for a long period of time, with nothing to do, in a semi-reclined posture). The only conditions that are potentially better are when I'm listening to music and walking around (listening to music makes me pace constantly, I don't know if that's common for us)

It'sB.S. I daydream constantly. Why don't these danged researchers actually get a bunch of us and try asking us questions about how we perceive the world, if they really want to know?? This irks me.

I read about autistic people and dreaming in one of Temple Grandin's books, as well as a scientific article that seemed pretty confident about their findings, yet my little guys tell me about a dream occasionally, but with their speech delays you can never really tell. I like to hear adult perspectives like this.
Cheers
http://whitterer-autism.blogspot.com

I would ignore most of this research coming out it's a load of BS, feel like a load of Cold fusion at room temp scientist’s are been let out...

Most of it does not even go to another lab to be researched NAS are getting a bit bored of the jumping to stuff....

If that's the case, than why are my Daydreams so vivid?

Jumping in a little late here, but I found this post and had to respond. I have two theories on this.

First of all, what, exactly, constitutes “daydreaming”? Does it mean fantasizing about mythical places and characters, escaping from the world of reality? If that’s the case, I hardly – if ever – do that. To be honest, I don’t think many people – other than the most creative of us – really do (while awake, anyway). I like Wikipedia’s definition of daydreaming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daydreaming), stating that it usually means fantasizing about the future or reminiscing about past events, of course being associated with the dreamy “blank stare”. This I do a lot.

Wikipedia also talks about “mind-wandering” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-wandering), and implies that it is different from the traditional definition of “daydreaming”. Mind-wandering means having your mind flit from thought to thought, undirected and uncontrolled by the conscious mind. It apparently happens continuously, and is probably what was actually measured in this experiment. It’s the root cause of traditional daydreaming, since you can’t daydream about something without having the thought first. This is the phenomenon that gets me in trouble – my mind wanders continuously, and when I’m bored, daydreaming inevitably ensues. Actual daydreaming, technically, can be controlled and directed (meaning, of course, that you can willfully picture what kind of house you’d like to buy some day). Mind-wandering cannot. It’s always there, running in the background, no matter what.

However… when’s the last time your mind wandered while riding a roller coaster? Enter theory #1:

Dr. Edward Hallowell is a leading authority on Attention Deficit Disorder. He is a psychiatrist and former Harvard professor, but most importantly he has ADHD himself – therefore I’m more inclined to believe his theories on the subject. He proposed that clinical testing for ADD/ADHD can result in a lot of false negatives, because oftentimes the inattentive symptoms of the disorder tend to disappear completely in a high stimulation, testing environment. People with AD/HD crave stimulation – it provides an outlet for their unfocused energy. For many people with ADHD, the novelty of sitting in a clinical setting, performing a test, is the perfect example of this sort of stimulation.

Autistics are also strongly affected by stimulation. We crave certain forms of it, and others make us incredibly anxious. One thing that – generally – makes us anxious is a new situation. While those with ADHD may crave novelty, for autistics it causes anxiety. But either way, it is a high stimulation environment. Both people with ADHD and autism would probably not experience nearly as much daydreaming (or even mind-wandering) in such an environment. And certainly not for 21 second intervals. It would be interesting to see how the results would change if they conducted the same test every day for several days – the novelty would eventually wear off, and the autistics might start showing some more “normal” brain activity.

To not experience mind-wandering at all, to me, would suggest some sort of catatonic state. Mind-wandering is absolutely necessary for all conscious thought. Without thought, there would be no logic. And, if anything, autistics have proven to thrive at logic. So here is theory #2:

Perhaps our mind-wandering doesn’t happen in the background. As many of the previous posts have stated, perhaps our mind-wandering/daydreaming simply takes place in another part of our brains – the foreground, as opposed to the background – and therefore wouldn’t show up on a scan in the same way an NT’s would. As I said before, my mind-wandering gets me in trouble. I’m always aware of it. It gets me off task and causes me a lot of problems at work and in social situations. It has long been said that autistics seem disconnected – living in their own world – well this could be a very good reason why. We can’t easily switch between the “real world” and the world inside our minds, because our brains just aren’t wired to do so.

When was the lasr time the experts were right? I'd place more reliance upon the opinion of a flatworm who has never been a maze than these w*king oafs. How bout we aspies fire the experts, and figure out aspie for ourselves.

I daydream so much, I even daydream about daydreaming.

I spend a large portion of my life daydreaming. The problem is more that I can't stop daydreaming.

That sounds wrong. An old dictionary definition of autism is "daydreaming." I daydream a lot.