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Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training Learning Disability and Autism

NAS80540
10 months ago

Hello,

I am just completing the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training Learning Disability and Autism training as I work in healthcare and also treat many neurodiverse people. I am also autistic myself.

I came across this statement in it and wondered what peoples opinions on it was.

Social communication can be challenging for people because of:

  • taking things literally and not understanding abstract concepts
  • needing extra time to process information or answer questions
  • repeating what others say to them (this is called echolalia)

My feeling on this is the taking things literally is definitely true for the majority of us however I felt this is very different from our ability to understand abstract concepts, I do not think those two things are linked and this I personally do not feel this is the reason we take things literally. Many many autistic people are artists and poets and the very nature of this is centered on abstract concepts. I feel this inability to understand abstract concepts is not very accurate for a lot of autistics and just wanted to hear others thoughts and feelings on it. Abstract language, metaphors and sarcasm is completely different to abstract concepts.

Maybe its me just reading it too literally.

I have other thoughts on this training and I'd be interesting in any other autistic people's thought and feelings on this training if they have done it? WARNING for anyone who does have access to it as part of their job it is upsetting in parts.

Parents
  • 10 months ago
    NAS80540 said:
    I feel this inability to understand abstract concepts is not very accurate for a lot of autistics and just wanted to hear others thoughts and feelings on it.

    I had a long conversation with my therapist about this some time ago as I had said I was not very creative with original thinking (ie brand new ideas) but was extremely adept at re-structuring something or improvising solutions with the things at hand.

    She said this was a classic autistic trait and one that has led to a great many inventors through history turning out to be autistic (a bit hard to prove in retrospect).

    I looked up evidence for this corrollation and evidence is there but it has not been researched that thoroughly yet.

    Psychology Today talk about mind types for autist having a Systemizing Mechanism for thought processing:

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/autism-and-invention/202109/is-there-link-between-autism-and-the-capacity-invention

    The Systemizing Mechanism allowed humans to look for special patterns in the world, which I call "if-and- then" patterns. These are the basis of any system. If I take something, and I do something to it, then I get an outcome

    It appears we can take existing ideas and rework them by using the what-if process to form variations on these ideas and keep on with the process until we have something that looks completely different but still "works".

    In the absence of proper studies in the area I guess it is just conjecture though.

Reply
  • 10 months ago
    NAS80540 said:
    I feel this inability to understand abstract concepts is not very accurate for a lot of autistics and just wanted to hear others thoughts and feelings on it.

    I had a long conversation with my therapist about this some time ago as I had said I was not very creative with original thinking (ie brand new ideas) but was extremely adept at re-structuring something or improvising solutions with the things at hand.

    She said this was a classic autistic trait and one that has led to a great many inventors through history turning out to be autistic (a bit hard to prove in retrospect).

    I looked up evidence for this corrollation and evidence is there but it has not been researched that thoroughly yet.

    Psychology Today talk about mind types for autist having a Systemizing Mechanism for thought processing:

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/autism-and-invention/202109/is-there-link-between-autism-and-the-capacity-invention

    The Systemizing Mechanism allowed humans to look for special patterns in the world, which I call "if-and- then" patterns. These are the basis of any system. If I take something, and I do something to it, then I get an outcome

    It appears we can take existing ideas and rework them by using the what-if process to form variations on these ideas and keep on with the process until we have something that looks completely different but still "works".

    In the absence of proper studies in the area I guess it is just conjecture though.

Children
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