Autism People Don't Daydream???

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I seem to recall commenting on another thread when this "study" was first released, pointing out its major procedural flaw.

The test involves checking on cerebral activity in subjects when they are asked to look at a cross. The researchers fail to account for the possibility that the autistic subjects followed the instructions as given! They weren't instructed to "look at this cross and let your mind wander", they were instructed to "look at this cross". Is it our fault that NTs can't obey a simple request like that?

what the hell? I have AS and I daydream CONSTANTLY.

I daydream all the time. Its pretty much where I live.

However, I do not dream at night, at least not that I can remember. I can't remembering having a dream for a good ten years or so.

I day ponder. I don't get any cool images in my head (ever), so it's all just pondering.

Not as much nowadays but when I was in my teens and possibly younger, I used to daydream... I'd create a parallel life for myself... like "I was the sister of someone famous (someone who in real life was famous) and then I'd be protected and cared for by that person, meet his friends, and have a fantasy life.
I'd escape reality as often as possible as this daydream life was much nicer than my own.

I have sleep apnea and do not reach the dream state often while asleep.

On the other hand, I rarely sleep at all and daydream almost all the time awake. The more sleepy I am, the more I daydream, to the point of not being able to fall asleep.

When I do sleep I have dreams that obsessively repeat over and over. Glad to know I'm not the only one.

Isn't a researcher's conclusion potentially flawed just by virtue of the fact he starts with a personal interest in the topic he is researching, which in itself implies foregone opinions? Then he must set the research up to prove or disprove an assumed hypothesis about how things work. That might influence the way he interprets his data.

Sometimes he faces loss of substantial grant money if he proves himself wrong and he can write himself out of an entire career if he does it too often. A lot of unbiased university research gets funded by corporate entities with an agenda and any researcher who tempts the big money to pull out can get fired.

What if his major interest in researching a topic amounts to resentment against a sibling, spouse, offspring, or parent with a particular diagnosis and he's in denial about his personal role in helping to create their odd reactions? Would that appear in his documentation of his qualifications to do the research, and if anyone found out about the relationship, would they demand he publish the connection or even question it?

What I've learned from research studies is that if the shoe doesn't fit me I don't wear it. Otherwise I have a lot of interesting material for further thought that might or might not merit another shoe.

Depends how the word daydream is defined.

For some reason, I tend to absorb exterior images - what my physical eyes see in a day - in a grocery store - in a room vs internal imaging such as daydreaming.

For example, I am not a kind of person who can retire at night, have a dream, then wake up in the morning, writing that dream into a short story, even a book, as Robert Lewis Stevenson said he did as I recall.

Also, stick a blank art canvas in front of me and I have to make a conscious effort to determine what I might paint on that blank canvas. For me, it is a labored art process due in part to something which is called constructional apraxia.

Because of the above, I really have not had a problem trying to determine what I may have imagined and what I likely saw. It comes down often to what I saw since I did not engage my imagination.

Also, many years ago I decided to ignore part of how the imagination can be used since I found it was too easy for a teacher/whatever to try to engage the imagination and I decided to kind of observe what the process was vs let my mind participate in the process automatically.

Today I am very aware that some artists like movie directors have extraordinary strong imaginations where they can turn almost endless ideas in their brains/minds/heads into stories for the screen through a process of daydreaming of sorts. These theatre directors can turn vivid daydreams into films which last ninety minutes plus.

It's an interesting topic.

Wow, really? All I ever do is daydream.

Or just get distracted easily by my mind wandering. I also likely have ADHD, which is a part of that, but still.