Seeing the big picture...

I know a lot of people who claim to be the ones to see the "big picture". I'm often very amused because they seem to use this as an excuse to avoid dealing with hassle and details. People who really are "big picture thinkers" are either going to fail to notice the details or work meticulously to make the details they do notice fit into the picture they see in their mind's eye.

In my experience, the "big picture" thinkers are the visual-spatial people. They see everything in terms of an overarching principle or theory. When something doesn't mesh with that theory, they're usually quite bent on getting it fixed...as adults.

Children who are visual-spatial thinkers, however, don't really seem to even see the details. I didn't realize how pervasive this was until I started thinking of everything my son did in terms of process (a typical sequential approach) versus theory (the spatial approach). Looking at common examples, I saw the following:

Language - The theory that most children deal with in language is story-telling. Visual-spatial (VS) thinkers understand a story in it's general sense: a chronology of something that happens. Then they work their way down in detail. The next level, so to speak, would be that this chronology should have a main character who solves some problem. Further down, they realize that they must introduce the character, introduce the problem, and then explain how the problem is solved by the character. As you work your way down from the main principle, the requirements of a story become more and more detailed. For most VS kids, once you've gotten to the level of writing words, they're starting to get shaky. At the level of spelling and the mechanics of writing, they're overwhelmed. VS learners have notoriously sloppy handwriting and are notorious, at young ages, for swapping or inverting letters.

In contrast, a gifted auditory-sequential (AS) learner will start by going the other direction. They will often quickly learn reading skills and sequentially work their way up in difficulty. When VS and AS thinkers have the same grasp of the main principle, the AS thinkers are already skilled in the lower-level requirements while the VS thinker is struggling with how to manage the details. The VS thinkers take longer to figure out how the details fit into the big picture, but with time and persistence, they can find a way. However, they may never be as proficient as an AS learner at the details. In many ways, VS learners are at a disadvantage relative to AS learners.

Mathematics - The opposite seems to happen in mathematics, if the instructor is astute enough to realize what is going on in the VS learner's head. VS learners will quickly pick up on mathematical models and processes when they are presented in a visually appealing way, but will have difficulty with formalizing it or writing it out. They have an intuitive sense which often works well for them, but they cannot translate it well to language or writing. They seem to just "know". Because of the difficulty in translating their intuitive knowledge, they will often appear to not understand. Arithmetic is a nightmare for the VS child, but he or she is very clear on the concept of what it means to subtract, add, multiply, etc.

Compared to AS students, VS students will seem at a disadvantage here as well unless the presentation and assessment of concepts is done in a way to bring out their knowledge and reasoning processes. AS students, by comparison, will tend to do well early with mathematics as things like arithmetic will not pose issues for them. They are also more adept at memorizing.

Social skills - When one views social interactions from a principle versus process perspective, it becomes too clear why VS children may be more apt to earn a label like autism or Asperger's syndrome. Most VS learners have a clear idea of how they want interactions to happen. If they learn to visualize the process of socializing with others, anticipating how their behavior will cause people to react, they may have an easier time with other people. As often as not, they simply have a notion that they want to get along with other people and can see in their mind's eye that they are with people who like them. However, the low-level "social cues" that people give are not quickly noticed or recognized as being significant. They are more busy matching how they feel internationally about their interaction with the person while not noticing that they are, perhaps, monopolizing the conversation. They're having a good time, why wouldn't everyone else be?

The difference between a VS learner and a person with autistic spectrum disorders is that the VS learner can be taught to notice the details of social interaction. Once they know what they are looking for and have gained some facility in reacting appropriately, they can actually be very social. A typical example is the shy person one meets in high school who ends up being a "late bloomer". They may end up being very successful later in life and not appear to have any of the shyness that seemed so pervasive in younger years.

A person on the autistic spectrum will not be able to change their inability to focus on details. The follow-through in conversation will seem more mechanical because the person with autistic spectrum disorders is taking a very methodical, institutionalized approach to socialization.

I once read Tony Atwood's book on Asperger's Syndrome. There was a part where he discussed female "Aspies" and how many of them seem to grow out of their disorder. This puzzled me for a long time because, as a neurological dysfunction, it seems absurd to think that they would "grow out of it". I have since come to the conclusion (a personal opinion of mine, mind you) that a number of "Aspies" may in fact be visual-spatial learners who are more concerned with higher level principles of interpersonal relationships.

I find this bothersome as being labeled may cause people to believe they are not capable of mastering "the art of interaction", leading them to believe that there is no point in trying.

As visual-spatial learners get older and gain more facility with incorporating details into their "big picture thinking", many of the difficulties they experience as children will lessen or possibly go away. The more positive guidance they have in figuring out how to piece things together, the more successful they're likely to be in all their endeavors.

Diagnosis Soup

When high intelligence is coupled with an auditory-sequential processing difficulty, these two exceptionalities tend to mask one another so that neither the giftedness nor the difficulty is readily apparent. Their learning difficulty depresses these students’ IQ and achievement scores and, as they are frequently not identified as gifted, their educational needs in this area are not met. Their high intelligence enables them to compensate well enough for their weaknesses to maintain year-level expectations and so their learning difficulty goes undetected. They are in a “Catch 22” situation where their giftedness and their learning difficulty cancel each other out and they are perceived as average. In addition, some IQ tests put so much emphasis on processing speed that the IQ of a gifted child with a learning difficulty is likely to be depressed and so the result is an under-estimate of the child’s intelligence.

-Lesley Sword

Ironically, it was because of my first struggle with the autism diagnosis issues that I came to find out that my son was gifted. In the process of wading through article after article on autism, I started investigating visual thinking processes. (Although I will never meet her, I would like to say thanks to Temple Grandin for being one of the most articulate writers on this topic.) This eventually led me to the article I Think In Pictures, You Teach In Words: The Gifted Visual-Spatial Learner by Leslie Sword (quoted above). I read it, thought it was interesting, but moved on.

This was the first time I had come across something which explained my son's behaviors while not mentioning the words autism or Asperger's, however, so I did keep a copy on file. I had never heard of visual-spatial learning styles, I knew nothing about overexcitabilities, and I did not have any clue that my son was gifted. In fact, he seemed moody, temperamental, stubborn, and ornery. It's hard to build a good relationship with and teach such a child.

Had I known these things about him earlier, I think we would have bypassed a lot of unhappiness for both of us.

The suggestion that autism was involved came when my son's teacher had spoken to a friend, who also happened to be a psychologist, and was sure he had Asperger's. Over the next three months, I watched my son became more angry and irritable every evening. (I didn't believe such a thing was possible, but it was.) I watched him chatter happily on his way to school. Once he crossed the threshhold into school, he became sullen, angry and unresponsive. The change was palpable.

After our first round of consultation with doctors, he was put on medications for ADHD and told he also had Oppositional Defiant Disorder. He had bad responses to several different medications. After a few months, we quit trying them. His problems at school kept getting worse. He got more defiant and started having violent tantrums.

I finally had him evaluated for Asperger's. I was sure that must be it. I was told that he didn't, even though I didn't believe it. One of the evaluators had the wisdom to suggest I have his IQ tested. Given my financial situation at the time, I didn't feel I could afford it. However, I presented his teacher with the article by Sword, but for reasons I will never understand, it was ignored. She still believed the words of the psychologist friend over the doctors who had seen my son.

I finally could take no more and pulled my child out of school.

I thought it was crazy that an educator would feel like they could make a medical diagnosis better than a medical doctor or psychiatrist. I learned later that this is actually fairly common, much to my dismay.

Autism

Of all the diagnoses that have been thrown around concerning my son, I abhor the autistic spectrum disorders the most. They have included high-functioning autism, Pervasive Development Disorder - Not Otheriwse Specified (PDD-NOS), and Asperger's Disorder. The problem I have with these diagnoses is that my son doesn't have them. He has been checked by medical and psychiatric professionals who do research on these disorders as well as non-research professionals. Despite the fact that I have a file drawer filled with the results of these evaluations, it never fails that someone in the education industry will try to attach this label to my son.

Not that I am claiming my son is as brilliant as Einstein, but how many people think Einstein really needed a social skills class? Perhaps he should have been working on his social skills and forgotten about all those crazy theories and ideas that he came up with.

I realize that there is a problem of mindset. So many education professionals are seeking to help children. By assuming a child needs help, you have thus determined the child has a deficit. There are only a handful of people working in the nation's education system, public or private, that understand that this "deficit" may correlate to a gift or ability in another place. Most assume that a problem is a problem and fail to look at what else could be going on.

The problem relates to, quite ironically, the lack of education of the educators. If they had learned somewhere in their training that giftedness doesn't always correspond to the characteristics identified by the Renzulli method and could in fact be associated with a host of problems and difficulties in a normal school setting, the state of gifted education would be miles ahead of where it is now.

Instead, we take the most bright and able students and turn their gifts into disabilities, negative diagnoses and labels, and reasons to hold them back.