I know that people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders are often poor conversationalists, yet some can talk for hours about a certain favorite subject. I want to give my character such a subject; something about which he is obsessively knowledgeable.
But I don't know how to pick a logical topic.
My question is: At what age does the fascination with a subject begin?
Related questions: Does the subject need to be something he knew at age three? Or can it be something he learned about at age ten? Can an ASD person develop multiple topics of expertise, or does having one preclude the development of others?
He also definitely picks up interests. He knows all about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, for example.
Hope that helps.
But instantly when I read this I thought of cars. A 15 year old boy might normally be obsessed with cars and know the makes and models of a bunch (or of a subset, like 1970s muscle cars) but a child with an ASD might know the model numbers of all the parts to a 1973 aston martin, or the exact color numbers/names that the cars rolled off the factory line painted. He might also speak in run-on, without breaks the way a 15 year old would to stop to allow the other person to speak, or allow the other person to express their awe at his knowledge.
A child with ASD isn't boastful about their knowledge as far as I know, but would rather rattle off detail after detail after detail, all of which would be fascinating to him but perhaps not that interesting to others. He could have a little obsessive compulsive component too, where he would have to finish listing all the parts before he could talk about or do anything else. I don't know if that's at all characteristic about ASD, but I've been playing with an OCD character for one of my stories so it's fresh in my mind.
Good luck!
Perhaps I asked the wrong question. Maybe I don't want to know when the expertise develops, I want to know how it develops.
Your responses make me suspect that the character needs to learn autonomously by reading or doing things for himself. If so that is a critical thing about autism that I had not realized.
My problem comes from my setting. It isn't modern-day America, it's a fictitious country around the First World War. The character has spent most of his life in an asylum with little exposure to information. He is out of the asylum now, and he recently learned to read.
If he needs to learn his expertise autonomously (like reading or playing a game) then my question is answered. My character must have developed his expertise very recently, within a year of the story's beginning.
Does that sound right?
I have only worked with teens thus afflicted so i don't know the timeline of the development of special interests. They come fully loaded when i get them.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited March 13, 2008).]
Also, she has obessions with watching certian TV shows, and will often watch the same episode many times a day, as with movies she likes. The key is, not to clump all autistic traits as the same. There are many types of autisitic children, and only a few, savants, have the ability to real off tons of information on a certain subject or have a special ability such as being able to draw from memory or some such. As, in the case of my daughter, she has a great ability to remember places she has been to before, even if she hasn't been there for years, if she goes again, she will know exactly where everything is.
If you want any more info, let me know and I'll see if I can help.
Cheyne: do you find that they are capable of loading new ones after you get them? Or are they truly "fully loaded?"
Bent Tree: I've already built in that this character can sing with excellent pitch. But someone must teach him each song, he cannot compose a song.
An ASD friend of mine--who is currently 13--loves textile arts: weaving, crocheting, knitting, etc. He picked them up from a grandparent, I believe, then obsessively began learning about them. He doesn't read well. His mother recently told me she believes he's learned much of the added information (over and above what his grandma taught him) by looking at the how-to pictures in the books he's looked through.
He also enjoys gardening, which he learned from another grandparent. He collects information largely from talking to other people about it--me included.
He's funny in that he doesn't like to be proven wrong or doesn't like it when someone else knows more about him than a subject he loves, but he'll still take the information he learns from the know-it-all and add it to his body of knowledge.
Hope that helps.
ASDs often have a hard time learning to read--and I suspect it would be more difficult to do so as an adult, but I'm not sure--unless, of course, that becomes one of his obsessive endeavors. Your character might better learn in other ways, especially in light of the relative unavailability of information during that time period. He had no internet, probably not much info available in libraries--at least not NEARLY as much as is available today. Where is he getting his information? Is he writing to people to find it out? That was a fairly common mode of learning information during that time period. How does he know who to write to? How does he know how to write? How does he learn to read? How has he learned to communicate with people so he can learn anything?
Sorry to put so many questions out there, but they're questions that I'd want answered if I were reading a book about such a person.
Another aspect of the disorder that I noticed was that when not in a social group situation they tend to be very much more communicative. A student who will not talk in class may talk your ear off in a car. So your character may really clam up when someone other than family is around.
I've found a related link to this news story:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Story?id=4323585&page=1
It's a fascinating report.
It is important that my character display a little savantism so that he can play a role in the adventures. But he is not Kim Peak. My character is closer to the center of the spectrum. I want ASD teenages and their parents to relate to my story.
Without giving too much away, the character lived in the asylum through age 12. At age 13 his family "bought" him a job in the Navy. The Navy is stuck with him until he dies. Now he is 15 and living on a battleship.
Assuming that he can read, could he obsess over the naval manuals and handbooks? Or must I find something from an earlier age?
I have much latitude with his backstory, but he did not see naval manuals before age 13.
Because this is a ficticious country with a ficticious culture, any literature he is exposed to will be things I make up.
This really is just a question about the development of ASD teenagers.
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He's funny in that he doesn't like to be proven wrong or doesn't like it when someone else knows more about him than a subject he loves, but he'll still take the information he learns from the know-it-all and add it to his body of knowledge.
Wow! This is a great bonus detail for me! It fits my understanding of ASD, and it would be a nice characteristic to incorporate. Thanks!
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I think that we should make a distinction here between savantism and special interests. A special interest will develop, may change over time, and there may be more than one. Savantism is an innate ability to process a certain type of information, that improves only marginally, if at all, with practice, although it may not be apparent until a suitable situation presents itself. To the best of my knowledge, you can only ever have one savant trait, although it may be an odd category that appears to be more than one. The way I think of it, normal people have savantism in certain aspects of people skills. People with autism are missing this, and therefore often have another savantism instead. Also, to the best of my knowledge, people with an active savantism will always have at least one related special interest. Also, while musical and mathematical savantisms are most common, it can be just about anything. For instance, my savantism is in a certain type of analysis--seeing the most effective way to approach a problem. Any problem. For example, while I am not a math savant, I have never had to practice any kind of math in order to learn it; and often, when there is a disagreement, I can find a solution that will give both sides exactly what they're asking for.
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Assuming that he can read, could he obsess over the naval manuals and handbooks? Or must I find something from an earlier age?
It's intersting that you say, assuming he can read. In the case of my daughter, reading came late to her. She didn't learn properly until she was around fourteen or fifteen. Until she was given one to one learning, she found even simple words difficult, and would rather have someone read to her. Also, now she can read, and writes at lot on texts and MSN, she is obsessive about every word being spelled correctly.
If you want any more help or info, feel free to email me. Hope I've helped.
A friend of ours has a son who is higher functioning than ours is, and he obsesses about the weather. I mention it because weather can fit almost any story. This boy focuses on weather reports, the internet, etc. etc., but you could just as easily direct your character to weather-related adages ("Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning; red sky at night, sailors delight"), animal behavior patterns, Groundhog day, umbrellas brought (or not) to work...
He's impatient with ignorance and will talk down to people without realizing that he's using an insulting tone of voice. He has harsh prejudices against unintelligent people in the lower-class, which often comes across as racism even though he will respect a person of any race if they are intelligent.
He had to learn a lot of social cues that are natural to everyone else, such as sounding happy or looking interested in what another person has to say. While a normal person would show interest in their face, he would look bored, even if he was really interested.
He has a horrendously embarrassing belly laugh, which makes a very funny situation into an awkward one immediately. He gets VERY angry and shuts down in an argument because of his all-or-nothing mindset.
If I ever told him that his laugh was embarrassing, he would probably get angry and then promise never to laugh again when I'm around. To him, he would feel hurt that his daughter is embarrassed of him, and feel like the only way to solve the problem is to never laugh again. He wouldn't consider that it took courage for me to say that to him, and wouldn't see it as me trying to help him in social situations, and wouldn't think of my feelings being hurt by his response. He only sees his feelings being hurt, and an all-or-nothing solution that solves the problem.
It's extremely complicated, because he will also comfort me when I'm sad and give me good advice. He's not completely socially inept, but there are habits there that keep him from having many close friends.
I hope that sheds a bit more light on the high-functioning side of Aspergers =)
While my research has helped me depict the world of the ASD character, I have found very little about how such a character can change over time. Their own accounts have depicted them as relatively static and unchanging, as if they are unaware of their own personal growth.
Thank you all for your wonderful help.
She makes me reconsider the nature of savantisms. Suppose someone were predisposed to savantism in computer programming . . . but they were born before computers were invented?
Perhaps every autisitic is a savant of some sort, but sometimes humanity has not yet discovered the area of that would attract their attention.