as small as a world and as large as alone, “There are three basic levels of conceptual...

2:46am January 30, 2012

“There are three basic levels of conceptual thinking: 1) learning rules 2) identifying categories, and 3) inventing new categories. Category-forming ability can be tested by placing a series of objects on a table, such as pencils, notepads, cups, nail files, paper clips, napkins, bottles, videotapes, and other common objects. A person with autism can easily identify all the pencils, or all the bottles. He can also easily identify objects in simple categories, such as all the objects that are green or all the metal objects. Conceptual thinking at this basic level is generally not a problem.

Where the person with autism has extreme difficulty is inventing new categories, which is the beginning of true concept formation. For example, many of the objects in the list referenced above could be classified by use (i.e., office supplies) or by shape (round/not round). To me, it is obvious that a cup, a bottle and a pencil are all round. Most people would classify a video cassette as not-round; however I might put it into the round category because of its round spools inside.”

–Temple Grandin, The Way I See It

Something about this feels ‘off’ to me. Some of the components seem right, but the way they’re put together has me really confused. If the above sequence is truly real for a large number of people, then there’s clearly more than one way to come at conceptual thought.

It says that autistic people don’t have trouble with things like ‘pencil’ or ‘bottle’, and can also figure out which things are green or made of metal. But those things aren’t easy to me. And the easier of the two is the one that relies on sensory aspects of the object rather than the identity of the object. Although things like “what’s green?” are difficult because the cutoff for various colors can be subjective.

The problem with all this is that it assumes that forming rules is the most basic, then simple categories is also basic. And that’s just so very much not even close to the level of basic that I start off at. Besides the confusingness of what they mean by rules and why it is put beneath simple categories in the first place. I wouldn’t think those things would have to be in a sequence like that.

Unfortunately, at this moment I’m not even close to a state of mind where I could possibly translate the category-less sensory modes of experience I identify as basic, into the language of categories and words that other people speak. Let alone lay out the hierarchy of those modes, first of perception and then of categorization, that I experience quite differently from Temple Grandin.

Suffice to say you don’t get this sort of painting from any kind of category-based or rule-based thought, nor from Temple Grandin’s visual but also clearly heavily conceptual mode of thought (yes, even before she figured out how to tell cats from dogs):