Published on 12, July, 2020
I find this so hilariously annoying and wonder if anyone else suffers this:
I have trouble putting small food into my mouth with my hands. I've taken up eating dry fruit and nuts lately and I miss my mouth a lot.
Would this be a trait at all? I'm clumsy as hell anyway.
I am interested in the neuroscience of sensorimotor processing as I experience visual, somatic, olfactory and proprioceptive hallucinations to varying degrees.
I find the classic Theory of Mind model lacking in plausibility, from both an experiential and theoretical viewpoint. Indeed, it is increasingly being challenged. I suspect that it, along with theories of excess testosterone and extreme male theory, are part of the reason that female diagnosis is so haphazard and seems so arbitrary.
Given the diverse global range of cultures, and the fact that cultural environments evolve far more quickly than biological evolution is able to, it would be prudent to consider social cognition as a process of ontogenesis rather than phylogenesis. More acquired than innate. Biological evolution supplies us with a toolkit to acquire social cognition in the ecological niche into which we are born. I think that social cognition - and to some extent executive function - is developed via sensorimotor interaction of body, brain and environment. In other words an embodied or enactive approach.
Not many things make me laugh out loud... this did I'm terrible for walking into Shin Devils. I often get my sleeves caught on door handles too - or I just body slam into the door handle. I walked face first into a door the other night - we usually leave it open and I didn't even look properly to see if it was closed before walking through.
Glad I'm not the only clumsy one
Maybe I should've grown out of it I still eat soup like this alone and tend to avoid eating soup in public (or it takes me ages to eat while I awkwardly sip it from the spoon).
Ooh, that's a bit of a pet hate of mine. I have restless leg syndrome, too, so if there's anything to catch my legs or feet on, I am guaranteed to find it. Raised foot-boards or sides are a complete no-no.
Thankyou, Graham.
For all my earlier goofing and making light of things, over the past few years I've been becoming more and more aware of how tightly bound the social and emotional effects of autism are with its deeper sensory and perceptual aspects.
I realise now, for example, that my attempts to mimic typical body language are far less successful than I once believed, because the problems with mirroring which I mentioned in my earlier post give me a false perception of how I look from the outside. And when I was receiving therapy for my alexithymia, I was surprised at first that there was so much emphasis on actively directing attention to my interoception; but I now know that my body is part of the reporting and regulatory systems of emotion. For cognitive empathy to work effectively, it might be said that "theory of body" is required in addition to "theory of mind".
These difficulties may be explained by what lies at the heart of the autistic experience. Atypical sensorimotor feedback loops that produce difficulties coordinating sensory input into effective planning and execution of movement.
These sensorimotor difficulties can account for reduced social attention in early development, which in turn has a cascading effect on the subsequent development of social and communicative skills.
Large parts of the cerebral cortex in the parietal and frontal lobes are involved in transforming sensory information into action.
Movement is performed to both execute a physical task and to collect sensory information. Without precise control of movement, sensory input will prove atypical. For an example, refer to the voluminous literature on the role of eye gaze in autistic individuals, and the generative repercussions for social cognition.
Other parts of the brain, such as the posterior parietal association areas, process visual and somatosensory input and also issue commands to motor areas. In fact many areas, including it has recently been discovered, the cerebellum, participate in sensory and cognitive tasks.
It is also not possible to ascribe top-levels of the Central Nervous System with particular tasks - motor, sensory or cognitive - it is a process of interaction that allows us to perform complex functions.
A similar interaction between interoceptive, exteroceptive, proprioceptive mechanisms and the environment is necessary to perform fine motor movements.
Information taken from:
The role of Sensorimotor Difficulties in Autism Spectrum Conditions. Online here.
The Central Nervous System : Structure and Function / Per Brodal. — 4th ed.
The Prefrontal Cortex 4th Ed., Joaquín M. Fuster
Trogluddite said:About twice a week, when I stub my toe on the leg of the bed that's been in exactly the same place for two years with enough room to drive a bus around it, I promise myself that I'll just put some padding on the damned thing.
Me too, me too (once upon a time)!
My solution was to buy a metal framed bed with a head board and footboard so I can see from great distance and be reminded of exactly where all four feet are at all times. It’s not totally me-proof, but it’s definitely reduced the frequency of collisions from daily down to about monthly or less. Being metal, it’s comprised of smooth, round bars rather than sharp, leg-scraping edges, which helps keep the skin on my thighs instead of shredded onto my carpet:
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/leirvik-bed-frame-white-luroey-s19277296/
What I hate is when family oh-so kindly invite you to stay and their guest room is furnished with sharp corners that leap out and attack you at every turn. I spent a couple of nights at my parents’ over Christmas and I swear the bed corners were forged by Hades himself, and obscured by a big, puffy duvet to entice you into Hell. I left with my legs covered in swollen lumps where I repeatedly walloped myself—too hard and deep for bruising to appear initially; must have been February before they looked vaguely normal again. And don’t even get me started on the razor-edged, solid wooden futon-style bed that my brother offers to guests. I think, secretly, he knows it creates a torture chamber of a guest room and does it to make sure people don’t come back too often.
Literally, tears streaming down my face! It’s been a very long time since I laughed so much I couldn’t read this aloud to my partner. Thank you, and I feel you. Totally.
To paraphrase Monica in Friends when she was stung by a jellyfish: “Damn the Shin Devils! Damn all the Shin Devils!”
This really made me laugh! I used to do that as a kid!
Nessie said:For the first time in my life now, I don’t have cuts and bruises all over my legs
TRIGGER WARNING: Coffee Tables
Before I begin, a sincere apology; I realise that even the warning may have been painful reading for some of you. I shall henceforth refer to the abominations in question as Shin Devils (but only because I realise there may be minors reading this).
Having a space of my own where I decided what furniture to have and where potential obstacles would damned well stay where I put them! (pffft, sorry) meant being able to wear shorts again without people constantly mistaking me for a world class shin kicking champion and ferret legger.
Unfortunately, I had to revert back to sharing digs again after a few years. On the day of the move, I was thankfully able to fend off a Shin Devil pusher who was adamant that chipped shin-bones were all the rage and said she was trying to clear out her attic. Imagine my horror when, upon returning home from a trip to the corner shop (I was gone no more than 5 minutes, I swear), I discovered that my housemate had succumbed to the pusher's advances, and that thing, that monstrosity! (deep breaths now) had been given pride of place in... in... erm...
Sorry, I...(sniffle)... I... just can't go there. Dammit, why did I have to go and catch my sleeve on that bl**dy door handle on the way out of the house? I still lie awake at night wondering if this cost me the vital seconds that might have averted disaster.
Suffice to say, the former housemate is still top of my list of people who will be put up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Even though I spend almost every meal time alone, I still resist buying myself a bib, but I really ought to. I can't wear a clean T-shirt for more than five minutes before I've got something all down the front of it. My other favourite is losing control of my spoon/fork hand such that I plop something into a puddle of sauce, so that I get a nice 360 degree splatter. When I was a kid, my Mum once gave me the epithet "Dolphin Lips" because I just can't drink out of a cup properly somehow, and apparently it's something do with how I shape my lips - but I'm nearly 50 now, and I still can't for the life of me work out what it is.
For me, there's definitely a huge component of having bad proprioception (the sense that tells you where your body parts are without looking). I lose track of where bits of me are sometimes when I've not used them for a while, and I can't for the life of me copy another person's motions properly. School gym teachers and my Boys Brigade drill Sergeant didn't know what to do with me - in my head, I felt I was doing exactly what had been demonstrated; but no, I never was, and they could never get through to me what I was doing wrong. I still tie my shoe laces in my own special way; I end up with the same knot in the end, but I had to work it out by trial and error, because I just couldn't be shown how ("but you're showing me with your hands, and I'm going to have to use my hands - how's that ever going to work?")
It's only very recently that I first saw video footage of me in my natural habitat, and it truly shocked me. I can see very clearly that my movements and postures are not at all what I think they are inside my head. I've always had a bit of a problem using mirrors, too; my brain just doesn't quite "get" them. For example, a weird kind of confusion sets in about whether my real hand or the reflection of my hand is the one connected to my body when I try to shave (rather like the rubber hand illusion, but without the fancy setting up). It doesn't scare me, in fact it sometimes makes me giggle out loud; but suffice to say, I'm usually bearded!
Oh, and I'm missing half the skin off the top of one of my toes. About twice a week, when I stub my toe on the leg of the bed that's been in exactly the same place for two years with enough room to drive a bus around it, I promise myself that I'll just put some padding on the damned thing. My executive functioning then files this idea away somewhere for recall the next time I stub my toe.
[Edited in: Thanks Breadpud for inspiring to write this down. Following some rummaging in my bedding drawer, phase one of building my very own padded cell is now complete. A little unexpected success for the day!]
I'm terrible with soup spoons too... I end up putting my whole mouth around it and looking like a right oddball
I find I’m more likely to miss my mouth when using cutlery—soup spoons are a particular problem for me as I either seem to hit the side of my mouth, my bottom lip or my front teeth.
Like others, I’ve spent my whole life walking into furniture, door frames, door knobs and stubbing my toes on pretty much everything... and being told off by my mother for “not taking more care”. (I didn’t get dx’ed until I was 30.)
It’s better since I bought my flat as I have quite minimalist furniture, mostly slim-line things or multi-purpose things, wide walk ways and everything else is wall-hung. For the first time in my life now, I don’t have cuts and bruises all over my legs.
I'm super clumsy. Walk into door frames, drop plates or glasses. When I worked at sea we had bunk beds and every day I'd hit my head on the top bunk. Im always covered in cuts and bruises
Haha, I'm really clumsy (always walking into furniture) and miss my mouth all the time. I often think I should just wear a bib :)