12 Jul 2019, 7:29 pm
Mona Pereth wrote:
Kang03 wrote:
HighLlama wrote:
[Unfortunately, some specialists believe autistic people don't like fiction.
I don't see what makes some specialists think autistic people are not fond of fiction.
Why do you think is that?
Two reasons:
1) Because we tend not to engage in pretend play as children. Autistic children tend to be fascinated by their toys as objects in their own right, rather than playing with them as the objects that they represent. Also, autistic children tend not to play games of make-believe with other children. From this, some specialists have concluded that autistic children don't have imaginations -- rather than concluding, for example, that autistic kids prefer to keep their fantasies to themselves because they cannot express their fantasies in a way that other kids can relate to.
2) Because we tend to fail tests of imagination. Problem is, the tests of "imagination" don't just test imagination per se. They test one's ability to be imaginative in a quick, spontaneous, on-the-fly, open-ended kind of way, in response to some random set of stimuli. And that is, indeed, something most of us tend to be very bad at. On the other hand, when given enough time to think, we can be deeply imaginative, probably more so than many NT's.
I remember once when I read the book called <The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night-time> by Mark Haddon, in which Christopher Boone, the narrator who tries to figure out how he had solved the mystery of his family and the death of his neighborhood dog, is implied to have Asperger's syndrome. It wasn't exactly specified, but most readers could assume from the context that he is autistic.
I was quite fond of this book because I liked the overall storyline and how Christopher unravels his story with his unique speech. But one thing that I found problematic is that people with ASD, represented by Christopher in the book, are described as unimaginative people who only focus on facts that they can find clear evidence of. It does have some parts where Christopher shows excellent imagination skills e.g. imagining he is exploring underwater in a submarine with a protective glass wall as thick as 30cm, but he being unimaginative compared to neurotypicals tends to be more dominant to the readers. I think that's why a lot of my friends who read this book got the wrong idea that all Aspies are unimaginative. I tried my best to convince them that if only Aspies take their time to think, they could be evenly or more imaginative than NTs, but obviously, they won't listen. I guess some biased idea about ASD is quite more widespread than what I thought. To this day, I still hope the author had encouraged the readers more to notice that Christopher is a keen observer who finds his own way to imagine something new.
12 Jul 2019, 8:23 pm
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16 Jul 2019, 12:39 am
dyadiccounterpoint
Velociraptor
Joined: 31 Jan 2019
Age: 35
Gender: Female
Posts: 464
Location: Nashville
16 Jul 2019, 9:59 am
