Focussed attention

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It's been an article of faith for me for many years now, that properly focussing attention on problems inevitably leads to their solution. Sort of a law of nature.

I've been wondering recently whether there's an impediment in the asperger's makeup to making a free choice of where our attention is focussed. As opposed, for example, to your average NT.

Yes, we have the power to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of all others, but do we have the power freely to choose the object of that concentration? On the other hand, does the average NT? Is conscious direction of attention a skill only developed by adepts - of whatever neurological persuasion?

so... where would you freely care to focus your attention?
in answering that question, what kind of impediment (if any) would you think you might be experiencing?

aren't you just describing 'concentration' ?

but yes, i assume there is a certain impediment, i would almost necessarily guess NOT in relation to the freely chosen object [X] but rather in the way you would deal with it, the style of your imagining

in my scope, i would maybe best turn to artistic style... i assume auties will have trouble 'projecting' (as in creating anew, conceiving) but would be brilliant at separate parts of executing a given project-target ... within the individual artistic creation that would translate in a tendency to be 'secondarily' creative: rearranging a given reality rather than creating a new one

i believe auti-art would tend toward fragmentation, toward impressionism and even pointillism, construct a highly elaborate novel by means of short stories, which may or may not be related; collage, the list is endless
of course there is 'primary creativity' in the act of creating one's individual style ...

or, of course, it's exact 'rigid' opposite: extremely cold, essential, bare art

in terms of literary history, i would say anything between the extremes of almost boundless James Joyce and the rigidity of Franz Kafka - but oh are they the same...

Yes, that might be it:

Because the style of imagining that leads to solutions in the larger domain isn't quite the same as the one that yields solutions from internal dictionary searches. Which is what brings to mind.

It's not impossible that the style of imagining could impose restrictions on the freely chosen object [X] (how could we tell?). The difficulty I have, for example, when attempting to model into a world larger than the one that's formed with me at its centre.

Yes we suffer dys-regulation in attention, and not just in directing attention.

Deficits in the ability to handle multiple information streams are well known for instance (such as many people finding it more difficult to listen when they are looking, and vice versa). Deficits in the ability to "tune out" environmental stimulus, to interrupt tasks when not completed and in "withdrawing" attention, as well as some deficits in purposely directing attention; in my understanding these are all common if not ubiquitous among people characterised by autism.

remarkably, i think the last sentence defines the 'human condition', so even that would not even set us apart, but yes, it would be less natural to us (if not un-natural) to venture outside the bounds of our ego(ec)centricity

[INSTANT ADDIT:] i am suddenly also halted by the term un-natural - which i realize i could just add to that growing list of imagery to possibly ... indicate ... how it must feel, ... the autistic experience;
- grounding has to do with it: always feeling ungrounded, unearthed
- having to keep the garden decently arranged and simply not being equipped with green fingers
- (social) life to us is like having to do DIY, and being doubly left-handed
i would say a certain awkwardness in moving around, is the minumum to be expected, if not dead right fear, so we hang on desperately to what we know, e.g. our obsessions, our stimming, it's sort of like the blind man and his dog & cain
(though i am so glad i am 'only' aspie and not blind!) [ENDIT]

not sure how this little piece of exercise would be related, but if you enjoy playing chess, or checkers, or any such game - you might want to start playing yourself black v white, and both really wanna win: physically start imagining at least yourself from different points of view