Comments on: Aspergers and accurate words http://blog.xanthippas.com/2008/05/01/aspergers-and-accurate-words/ A place for raw, uncensored ideas to be hurled about, recklessly... Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:19:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: 1389 (@1389) http://blog.xanthippas.com/2008/05/01/aspergers-and-accurate-words/#comment-5650 Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:42:48 +0000 http://xanthippaschamberpot.wordpress.com/?p=62#comment-5650 Seems as though teaching the concept of “inductive reasoning” might help here, in the sense of trying to take a larger or more “functional” view of what the other person is saying.

For instance, if the teacher wants everyone to have a hat, you then try to figure out why the teacher thinks you will need to have a hat. Oh, yeah, winter is coming, freezing temperatures, teacher doesn’t want your head to get too cold. How are you going to keep your head warm? You’ll put on that scarf/hat combo. That will keep your head warm. As far as the teacher is concerned, any warm head covering qualifies as a “hat.”

Of course, this is just a guess on my part. I have been acquainted with many people on the autism spectrum at various times in my life. My own neurological issues are entirely different – matter of fact, I’m a brain surgery survivor and I work in retail sales, not something most aspies would want to tackle!

Xanthippa:

The Aspie would reason that if the teacher had meant ‘warm head covering’, then the teacher would have said ‘warm head covering’. By using the more exclusive term, the teacher was obviously referring speciffically to a sub-class of ‘warm head coverings’ called ‘hats’!

This is especially true of Asie children.

The fact that it was a teacher who said is a complication: following the chain of reasoning you have outlined would undermine the credibiliy of that teacher in an Aspie student’s mind. After all, teachers are supposed to be smart enough to say what they actually mean! In the future, the Aspie student would never really trust anything else that teacher said (in or out of the classroom) because he/she would always be questioning if the teacher means what she/he is saying or if it is yet another instance of oversimplification to the point of error.

I myself remember that if I ever caught a teacher (or a textbook) in an error, I was unable to trust anything else they said – ever.

I am sorry to read you have had difficulties – I do hope you are doing well despite them.

As for retail: I loved working retail! So did my Aspie hubby. Though, that is a long time ago…

]]> By: Hugh7 http://blog.xanthippas.com/2008/05/01/aspergers-and-accurate-words/#comment-2892 Sat, 19 Jun 2010 01:08:44 +0000 http://xanthippaschamberpot.wordpress.com/?p=62#comment-2892 Reminds me of the time a few years ago I brought a meeting to a halt because the speaker kept talking about “critical mass” with reference to staffing levels. I only understood the expression with reference to nuclear physics (when a radioactive substance reaches critical mass a chain reaction causes an explosion). The expression was so entrenched with him that he had trouble defining it so I could understand him. Turns out he meant “enough staff” (to do all the work, presumably).

Xanthippa says:

Well, I suppose….

….if you had an average ‘mass per person’ to work with, and an average person-hours to be performed within a specified time-frame, you could calculate the ‘critical mass’ of employees that would be required to perform the work.

Nothing as accurate as the critical mass in the proper sense of the word, but…

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