![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
But maybe I did.
Now, the article is ostensibly about how children are less likely to be fooled by a certain optical illusion. So far so good, but then you get to this paragraph:
Other investigators have noted that children with autism don’t succumb to visual size illusions, consistent with the idea that autism involves an excessive focus on details. But visual context largely eludes all young children, not just those with autism, Doherty asserts.
At the risk of making a pun in bad taste, let me say that this is just typical. Here we have an autistic strength (not being easily fooled by misleading extraneous information) and yet people insist on describing it as an unalloyed negative (an "excessive" focus on details?)
Man, that is just annoying. This sort of thing can make a cloudy day seem gray and dreary instead of potentially snowy and wonderful. And it's a pity because I got the link to that first article after reading this cool article about how a class of kids studied bees and got their research published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Telling quote? "“It’s so different from other science-education programs, where the aim is to learn facts,” Lotto said."
Yes! This is something that's been bugging me about my own science education (and, by extension, the nieces') for the past several years! Science isn't just a bunch of facts piled together like rocks! You can learn the facts when you're grown, or you can look them up (when does it really come up how many planets are in the solar system?), but what you need to learn as a child is how to think and figure things out scientifically! Not how to pass a multiple guess test or what King Phillip can order.
Now, the article is ostensibly about how children are less likely to be fooled by a certain optical illusion. So far so good, but then you get to this paragraph:
Other investigators have noted that children with autism don’t succumb to visual size illusions, consistent with the idea that autism involves an excessive focus on details. But visual context largely eludes all young children, not just those with autism, Doherty asserts.
At the risk of making a pun in bad taste, let me say that this is just typical. Here we have an autistic strength (not being easily fooled by misleading extraneous information) and yet people insist on describing it as an unalloyed negative (an "excessive" focus on details?)
Man, that is just annoying. This sort of thing can make a cloudy day seem gray and dreary instead of potentially snowy and wonderful. And it's a pity because I got the link to that first article after reading this cool article about how a class of kids studied bees and got their research published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Telling quote? "“It’s so different from other science-education programs, where the aim is to learn facts,” Lotto said."
Yes! This is something that's been bugging me about my own science education (and, by extension, the nieces') for the past several years! Science isn't just a bunch of facts piled together like rocks! You can learn the facts when you're grown, or you can look them up (when does it really come up how many planets are in the solar system?), but what you need to learn as a child is how to think and figure things out scientifically! Not how to pass a multiple guess test or what King Phillip can order.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 04:36 am (UTC)I'm curious what medieval people would make of the bottom "perspective drawing" illusions.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 06:59 pm (UTC)Sure thing. It's also possible to suffer from not focusing enough on the details. The same trait can be good or bad depending on context.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-24 06:59 pm (UTC)Also, how so?
no subject
Date: 2010-12-25 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-26 12:20 am (UTC)The really frustrating thing was, that they could be trained to assemble a unit absolutely correctly, but then as soon as they got past the learning-and-checking phase, they'd apparently stop paying attention to what they were doing, and start screwing up. It wasn't until we were an all-Aspie shop that I stopped finding errors in the 'bots that came to me for testing. Of course, being an Aspie myself, I still checked every component of every 'bot just the same, just in case. My boss definitely did not consider this to be 'excessive'.
Many neurotypicals have the apparent attention span of puppies, and are unable to focus on anything very long or carefully unless they're getting frequent 'treats' in the form of social reinforcement. Many neurotypicals also go through life failing to distinguish illusion from reality in all sorts of ways - often with dire consequences - because of their pervasive perceptual bias; i.e. they see what they expect to see, thus are incapable of seeing what is really there when it differs from their expectations.
That would be what's going on with this writer, I suppose: autism=bad, so all autistic traits must be deficits. What about the fact that 21st-century technology is invented, constructed and maintained by people with extraordinary perseveration and attention to detail, and could not exist without such people? Anybody want to fly in a shiny new jet, the instruments of which have been wired by someone with 'normal' attention to detail and ability to spot errors?
LOL, optical illusions. I couldn't perceive them very well when I was a kid; it took a lot of practice to figure out how to make them work, and I never did manage to see those 'hidden pictures' that look (to me) like random paint splatters. However, as the years have gone by, my perception has changed; I do see most illusions now, and can't always un-see them, especially the false-motion kind.
I see the 'spinning mask' illusion when the inside of the mask is pointing directly forward, but it only lasts an instant; the mask appears concave again as soon as it rotates a little. In that particular case, the shadows are what give the trick away; convex facial features, especially a big honkin' nose, cast an entirely different type of shadow - I had to watch it a bunch of times before I sussed out what was giving it away, though; my perceptual array wasn't fooled, but my cognitive mind didn't know why.
Sheesh, saying that science is about learning facts is like saying writing is about learning penmanship or typing skills. Yes, you do need some facts to do science with, the same as you need something to write with in order to create literature, and you also need some techniques and standard procedures, but none of those are the point.
Anyway, happy holidays, whichever ones your household celebrates, and a very happy New Year!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-26 12:40 am (UTC)What gets me is that nobody comes right out and says "Science is about memorizing facts", but that's damn sure how they teach it. Come to think of it, history is taught in largely the same way, or it was to me, anyway. Most backwards way of doing things I can imagine.
Anyway, happy holidays, whichever ones your household celebrates, and a very happy New Year!
Christmas, secularly. Except this year we actually managed to make a bigger deal out of Hanukkah (we're not Jewish) than about Christmas. We ate latkes and doughnuts. Of course, I always say that any excuse to eat latkes and doughnuts is a good one.