Problems with Generalization

Q: Have you ever heard of Generalization in Autistic people? Where they learn something in 1 setting but can not carry it over to another setting. This is what my daughter appears to be doing. Her teacher showed me that she can do things like draw a person with 2 body parts but at home she can not.Someone mentioned this to me. Are you familar with this?

A: You get two Aspie Answers for the price of... well... free ^_^ Two of
our panelists wanted to answer your question, so make sure you read
the whole email to get both responses.

From Brian:
I sure am! To take a simple example from my own experience, I have an
awfully hard time recognizing someone I know from, say, class, when I see
them in a different setting. I've offended much more than one person by not
recognizing them in the dining hall in spite of having (finally) learned to
recognize them in class! Similarly, I've read about an Aspie who had a
phobia of house plants; his parents persuaded him to accept a very small
plant on a table across the room from his bed, and (with his consent)
gradually moved it closer to his bed every day as he acclimated. He came to
be unafraid of *that* house plant -- but he was still terrified of others!
Indeed, this difficulty in generalizing is seen by some experts as being at
the "core" of Asperger's (I don't know about classic autism), to the extent
Asperger's *has* a core. I'm not sure I agree, but I'm no psychologist! In
any case, it certainly does pose problems for a lot of parents, who don't
understand how their child can be so high-functioning at home but
practically nonverbal in school (or vice versa). The best I can do to
explain it from my own experience is to describe it as an intensified
version of what I think is an experience everyone has. People are used to
thinking in particular ways in particular places, or with respect to
particular things. I believe it's been established, for instance, that
students perform better on biology exams when they are allowed to take them
in the classroom where they learned biology. Getting into any given mindset
is easier in a situation where you're used to being in that mindset. I
suspect this is essentially what your daughter and others are going through,
only in a much more visible and obvious way. Like many other autistic
traits, this one will likely recede with time.
--Brian

From Wiley:
I think Brian wrote a great response, so I won't write anything too
long, but as I was reading your letter I thought of an analogy and a
personal example, so I'll just write them down here. The example I
thought of was my spelling. I write nearly everything I write on
computers these days, and my spelling when I type is relatively good
(now of course I've cursed myself and the entire rest of this response
will be littered with spelling mistakes). I'm not conciously
remembering how to spell the words, I just remember how to type them.
So when I have to write things down by hand, which is a completely
different sensation, my spelling is atrocious! Because it's a
completely different experience from typing on a computer.

The best analogy to pop into my head is the difference between sleeping
in your own bed and sleeping in a hotel. It's not necessarily that the
bed in a hotel is any less comfortable than your bed at home, it's just
a different sensory experience than your bed at home, and it's hard to
convine your brain that it's still a place where you go to sleep.

Wiley