Spectrum landscapes.
Regarding my post where I talked about neurotypes in terms of planes and pinnacles and pits, I have searched up a couple of landscape images that illustrate a related idea.
Here is a link to a landscape which evokes the 'low plain/high peaks' variant: http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/The-Pinnacles-and-The-Milky-Way
And another link to a landscape which evokes the 'low plain/deep holes' variant: http://amazingdata.com/mediadata9/Image/amazing_fun_quaint_weird_offbeat_20090728074026340.jpg
You will notice that in the former, it is trivially easy for any onlooker to correctly assess the landscape as being uneven. In the latter, it takes a special, dedicated effort to gain the perspective to see that the plain is not actually even. It's no wonder that so many neurotypical people think that the pinnacle style is the only kind of autism there is. They cannot, from their casual perspective, "see" high functioning people's flaws, so they assume that they are "normal".
This landscape analogy works for me in another way, because the results of neurological/psychological testing is generally much less even for people on the spectrum than for the rest of the population. A graph of the results of that testing for Neurotypical people shows reasonably even scores across different areas. Neurptypical people's lived experience as someone with an even sort of graph and dealing mainly with people with an even sort of graph, but with some exceptions where a person will have a clearly observable "low-plain", sets them up to naively expect everyone they cannot promptly see to be "low-plain" as being "normal".
So it's little wonder that they are shocked and confused when someone they could "see" was "normal" falls into an impairment pit right in front of them, and behaves in unexpected and, to them, unexplained ways.
Here is a link to a landscape which evokes the 'low plain/high peaks' variant: http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/The-Pinnacles-and-The-Milky-Way
And another link to a landscape which evokes the 'low plain/deep holes' variant: http://amazingdata.com/mediadata9/Image/amazing_fun_quaint_weird_offbeat_20090728074026340.jpg
You will notice that in the former, it is trivially easy for any onlooker to correctly assess the landscape as being uneven. In the latter, it takes a special, dedicated effort to gain the perspective to see that the plain is not actually even. It's no wonder that so many neurotypical people think that the pinnacle style is the only kind of autism there is. They cannot, from their casual perspective, "see" high functioning people's flaws, so they assume that they are "normal".
This landscape analogy works for me in another way, because the results of neurological/psychological testing is generally much less even for people on the spectrum than for the rest of the population. A graph of the results of that testing for Neurotypical people shows reasonably even scores across different areas. Neurptypical people's lived experience as someone with an even sort of graph and dealing mainly with people with an even sort of graph, but with some exceptions where a person will have a clearly observable "low-plain", sets them up to naively expect everyone they cannot promptly see to be "low-plain" as being "normal".
So it's little wonder that they are shocked and confused when someone they could "see" was "normal" falls into an impairment pit right in front of them, and behaves in unexpected and, to them, unexplained ways.