Details or big picture?

[Harrison]

Thanks for the pointer Harrison. It's good to have that confirmation.

Do you think that one can get on stage and enjoying singing and performing and yet still have a low threshold of neo-cortical arousal? (which is what introverts are said to have - they need very little social stimulation to be cognitively aroused whereas extraverts need a lot of social stimulation to put them at optimal levels of cognitive arousal).

I can only speak from my own experience. I love being on the stage, however, when I am away from it I am the definitive loner. I find social occasions difficult so rarely involve myself in them preferring my own company or that of similar minded folk. I have no idea why I can become the extrovert when on stage except that the 'masks' I have created come into their own there and through them I can safely translate my inner self.

When I lectured I was in my element as it involved my special interests, as such I could just talk knowing I would not be interrupted. In that environment our passion for our subject becomes the over riding 'carrier' of our personality.

For me, then, being an extrovert is apparently a narrow band issue. For others it will depend on their backgrounds, special interests etc. They may appear far more extrovert in the 'true' sense, or social sense, than I.

 

[DogwoodTree]

Are all Aspergers introverts (because of the sensory overload?) or can some be extraverts?

I don't think this is so much of an introvert/extrovert question when discussing the relationship between personality types and AS. If you look at the function stacks of an introvert and an otherwise same-lettered extrovert, such as ENTP and INTP, their functions are all the same, just in a slightly different order. But even with a different order of functions, each pair of functions is still in the same order:

ENTP: Ne Ti / Fe Si
INTP: Ti Ne / Si Fe

So I/E is really more about where your energy comes from...inside or outside...but you might still think about the world in much the same way as an E or I with otherwise the same type letters as you.

But if you look at two different introverts, say INTJ and ISFJ, their function stacks could be complete opposites:

INTJ: Ni Te / Fi Se
ISFJ: Si Fe / Ti Ne

So these two people, though both introverts, collect, process, and interact with information very differently from each other, drawing very different conclusions about what the world is like. They probably won't even like each other very much.

My understanding is, and this thread seems to agree, that most aspies are ISTJ, INTJ, or INTP. There are other aspies of other types, and many people of these types who aren't aspies. But these three are the most common types among aspies (from what I understand).

In case anyone's curious, since I listed the functions for the others, here's ISTJ: Si Te / Fi Ne

Do you think that one can get on stage and enjoying singing and performing and yet still have a low threshold of neo-cortical arousal? (which is what introverts are said to have - they need very little social stimulation to be cognitively aroused whereas extraverts need a lot of social stimulation to put them at optimal levels of cognitive arousal).

FWIW, I usually score 100% introvert on these personality tests, and yet I enjoy and do fine with stage performances and public speaking. My background is in education.

 

[DuckRabbit]

I can only speak from my own experience. I love being on the stage, however, when I am away from it I am the definitive loner. I find social occasions difficult so rarely involve myself in them preferring my own company or that of similar minded folk. I have no idea why I can become the extrovert when on stage except that the 'masks' I have created come into their own there and through them I can safely translate my inner self.

When I lectured I was in my element as it involved my special interests, as such I could just talk knowing I would not be interrupted. In that environment our passion for our subject becomes the over riding 'carrier' of our personality.

For me, then, being an extrovert is apparently a narrow band issue. For others it will depend on their backgrounds, special interests etc. They may appear far more extrovert in the 'true' sense, or social sense, than I.

Thank you for your detailed insights. What you say reminds me of Michael Jackson who is also said to have been on the autistic spectrum, yet he had a ‘performing gene’ – his special interest, aptitude or talent was singing, dancing and performing. He was known to be shy around people and found it difficult to make friends and have relationships. He also had difficulties with sleeping, as many Aspergers do. Yet once on stage, he transformed into the showman and the ultimate King of Pop with excellent physical coordination.

Personality psychologist Brian Little would say that his ‘fixed trait’ was introversion but is ‘free trait’ was performing. Free traits enable us to deviate from type in order to fulfil some other goal – such as acting sociably in order to host a birthday party for a child, or acting like an extravert in order to give a lecture that keeps people engaged, or putting on an aggressive persona in order to stop ill-treatment.

Brian Little maintains that enacting our ‘free traits’ – personality traits that we voluntarily enact – takes a psychological toll on us and that we need to retreat into a ‘restorative niche’ afterwards to get back on an even keel. But in my view it could also be that ‘free traits’ are just as much part of our psyches as our ‘fixed traits’, and in need of expression, such that we would feel out of kilter, blocked or stifled if we did not perform on stage, write stories, sew, play violin, or whatever our special interest is.

I like your description that ‘being an extrovert is apparently a narrow band issue’ – I think that captures the apparent ‘contradiction’ very well.

 

[Harrison]

Brian Little maintains that enacting our ‘free traits’ – personality traits that we voluntarily enact – takes a psychological toll on us and that we need to retreat into a ‘restorative niche’ afterwards to get back on an even keel. But in my view it could also be that ‘free traits’ are just as much part of our psyches as our ‘fixed traits’, and in need of expression, such that we would feel out of kilter, blocked or stifled if we did not perform on stage, write stories, sew, play violin, or whatever our special interest

I like this, very true in my own case.

 

[DuckRabbit]

Thanks for that information about function stacks, DogwoodTree, and all those fine discriminations within MBTI - I definitely need to read up on it more.

 

[psychotopsy]

Referring back to the title of this thread, when we talk about details vs big picture, I always get so confused. I don't want to make a separate thread cause its just this one little question. So basically, what do they mean when they talk about autistic people focusing on details rather than the big picture? I probably need some examples to understand it. It's confusing because details make up the big picture so when you focus on one, you are at least partially focused on the other in some ways. If I look at a detail, I'm looking at a part of the big picture. If I look at the big picture, I'm looking at many details at once that make up the big picture so I am technically looking at the details as well. Can someone give me a simple specific everyday life example, please? It would help me to get this concept.

 

[DuckRabbit]

Referring back to the title of this thread, when we talk about details vs big picture, I always get so confused. I don't want to make a separate thread cause its just this one little question. So basically, what do they mean when they talk about autistic people focusing on details rather than the big picture? I probably need some examples to understand it. It's confusing because details make up the big picture so when you focus on one, you are at least partially focused on the other in some ways. If I look at a detail, I'm looking at a part of the big picture. If I look at the big picture, I'm looking at many details at once that make up the big picture so I am technically looking at the details as well. Can someone give me a simple specific everyday life example, please? It would help me to get this concept.

An example could be a person pointing out to an able maths student that she omitted to put a superscript 2 in some mathematical equation she has written out, to indicate some number squared. The person could be missing the bigger picture that the equation was actually worked out correctly, and the mathematician had simply for gotten to write 'to the power of 2'. The AS person may take this as a mathematical error instead of an oversight.

Another example could be asking a friend to repay the £1 they owe and not resting until it has been repaid. The bigger picture is that, in the larger scheme of the friendship, £1 should not be that important and it could be evened up in other ways and at another time. The big picture is that asking for it back, making an issue of it, in this particular context, fulfills some *logical* goal (the money is owed) but is defeats the *social* goal of not being petty with a friend and maintaining the harmony of the friendship.

These are both social examples - where the AS individual fixates on something logical while failing to take cognisance of the social vibe/ the larger context. As American actor Jerry Seinfeld said: autism means ‘never paying attention to the right things’ - right in terms of neurotypical meanings and values.

Perhaps when it comes to intellectual or analytical problems, AS individuals are perfectly able to see the bigger picture - perhaps even more so than NTs, because they (AS individuals) have such an acute understanding of the details or they are able to put things together in novel ways. For example, there are many animal and environmental practices that to NTs are unproblematic, but some Asperger researchers may find them catastrophic because they can appreciate their longer-term implications i.e., the bigger picture. Obviously this is to generalise, but in my view Aspergers have a bigger chance of missing the bigger picture when the realm is social but a greater change of seeing the bigger picture when it's their area of interest or expertise. But just as I write this many paradoxes come to mind, so I'll end by qualifying that this is just a generalisation, obviously!

 

[Adora]

Details always focus on small things gets me in trouble sometimes.