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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.
