"Meta minds" and ADD

[Carla B.]

[breaking off from the middle of the "notice your own behavior" thread]

Stabile and I got off on a branch in this thread, musing upon the "extra wide" lens that some ADDers seem to have attached to the eyes of their minds. I said it was like "seeing a tapestry whole while others see colors one strand at a time" and several others agreed. Stabile added his own wry PS when he said "Any thread can always be reconstructed from the view of the tapestry, but the converse is obviously not true"which earned a big grin and nod from me in return.

The question is whether this "extra wide" or "meta" style of thinking is a "hallmark" of ADD, as some have suggested, or if it is just one of many routes towards the expression of ADD symptoms.

I do agree with the suggestion that many ADDults are "meta thinkers" but it's not my impression that the converse is true, i.e. that everyone with a "meta mind" will have symptoms of ADD or even that this style is true of the bulk of ADDers.

Part of the problem is that we don't have a good lexicon yet for describing these conceptual differences, much less for doing empirical studies. Some of this division we all know exists intuitively used to be portrayed as the difference between left and right brain. Today we know that the brain is too complex a distributed system with too much individual variance to be clumped that simply. But granting all that leaves us without a clear simple way to describe what we see.

I find it helpful, personally, to strip off the classic labels and just look at the functions. It's pretty clear that people tend to have an innate preference for working "bottom up" from specific to general, while others work "top down" from general to specific. That, I think, is the essence of the difference we are trying to describe. Meta thinkers are on the latter side, seeing the broad outlines of disparate but connected things before diving into specifics, and as a result are quite often able to spot connections across domains that more tightly focused folks might completely miss while they dwell on specifics.

To a tighter focusing "normal," someone with a meta mind might look inattentive by comparison. However what's closer to true is one is focused on forests while the other is looking at leaves. It's only because "most" people look at leaves for more of the time that the meta thinker may feel "deficient" for his/her lack of detail. But meta thinking is not in itself 'disordered'; it's simply a natural and preferred frame of reference for those who view the world in that fashion. Both approaches to conceptual processing have their costs and benefits. There's no right or wrong any more than there is in being right or left-handed. There is just more and less common.

But even this is still not sufficient, I think, to describe how most ADDers differ from non. It simply describes one of a host of causes that can produce "inattention" as a consequence. In other words, while many meta thinkers may qualify as "ADD" not everyone with ADD has a meta-thinking preference. But many ADDers DO have that preference and it's a shame that we are not yet equipped to speak of it in schools and teaching or even when dealing with therapists and have a prayer they will know what we are talking about, much less find it relevant {wry grin}.

The closest book I have seen to deal with some of this is the one on visual thinking by Thomas West. But I prefer "meta" to "visual" as a distinction since "visual" suggests that all "meta" processing is pictorial which is not the case. Meta thinking can be in words or pictures or both. What it distinguishes it as a processing style is not if it's verbal or visual, it's whether the content is more abstract than concrete, symbolic rather than literal, and driven by relevance rather than rules. In short, this thinking style underlies some of our most creative times.

Tammy chimed in on this thread branch also to note that she didn't think it applied to her because she is a 'simple' person. That is another common misunderstanding . Because meta-thinkers frequently have a talent for systems analysis and chaotic complexity, people who are not drawn to complexity think it doesn't apply. To me, the core difference is simply between focusing wide or focusing deep. If you focus wide, you may also be good at parsing complexity and viewing systems wholistically, but not every wide-angle thinker will be.

This is probably my longest post to date! I hope it made sense and I'm happy for any feedback

[Scattered]

Are you in part then dealing with left and right brain operations? Isn't the left brain more apt to analyze and logically step through something, while the right hemisphere is more holistic and whole picture oriented. If I'm off correct me -- I'm trying to see if I understand where you're going and at the moment cognitively things are a bit out of balance and I'm really living up to my screen name.

I know for myself I'm wonderful at seeing connections and that is how I remember things by cross referencing and networking them in my mind. I am an abysmal failure and stepping through things in a linear manner. Case in point was my WAIS -- I got a perfect score on recognizing similarities but couldn't put the pictures in the right order. This is so bad that I struggle with puzzles designed for first graders and have to ask my husband help me figure out what order the pictures in my 2nd grade daughter's books should be in. However, ask me to assess a kid for learning problems and I can reference the appropriate information from a number of fields and present it in a cohesive whole without preparation. I taught pretty much the same way -- know the whole subject and then shoot from the hip. In college, I couldn't write a paper until I had the whole feel of it -- then I could sit down and write the whole thing at once with little effort.

Am I in the ball park of this discussion, or lost somewhere out in center field near the highway?

Scattered

[Uminchu]

People in general have a lot of trouble dealing with multiple levels of abstraction. As a computer programmer, I can verify this first-hand. Usually about three and smokes starts coming out of my ears. Impaired short-term memory probably makes this even harder.

Also, something one of my college English professors told me, and that I have observed myself, is that very smart people tend to make lots of leaps in their writing because they were obvious to them, whereas "normal" people would consider those leaps unsupported or even unconnected.

There are some really smart people on these forums, and probably on a lot of the online ADHD gathering places. So couple difficulty dealing with multiple layers of abstraction with a keen intellect and tendency to make logical leaps, and we get the intellectual lemurs, leaping from one thought tree to another high above the forest, covering a lot of territory but only rarely walking on the ground.

[SB_UK]

Heya Carla,

How about squidging meta-phor and meta-though(t) together (as a container for the whole left/right 'berainnn thang') ...?... fond memories back to your halcyon first posts here :-) ... meta-phor and meta-thor in Halcyon ... kinda' reminds me of Thor and Loki in Valhalla --- an interesting antisyzygy {g} - on both ... *the level* of Norse mythology, since Thor and Loki were 'brothers', - and ... *the level* platform on which we must stand in order to gain an understanding of the mind (ADDer (and nonADDer by default.))

Recognizing this antisyzygy is of indubitable unequivocal undeniable and absolute* [*at least partially :-)] importance ... as we look down from our vantage point in your avatar at our minds, and wonder ...well... 'What on Earth is that all about?' alongside the more rhetorical ... 'Wait a minute --- you are my Earth?'

So in the midst of my verbiage, I believe that I'm suggesting that left/right brain thought metaphors, visual and verbal thinking metaphors, meta-phor and meta-thor metaphors for thought, all represent a fundamental antisyzygy which we have the capacity to see through, through to the mechanistic basis which underlies these seemingly contradictory aspects of the same 'berainnn thang' ... that thang being thunking.

If possible, I wonder whether I might interject and highlight a problem that we may run into, the problem of engaging in a discussion with two slightly different definitions for metathought. This problem may bite us as this discussion progresses. I think, Carla, that your usage is a little closer to what I describe as mmmetathought (the individual's experiential perspective of using their mmmetamind), whereas Tom&Kay use the terms in this form, but also in a more absolute and less subjective(non-pejoratively) sense (MMMetathought and MMMetamind), however, interestingly, with a similarly definable core structure in both cases. In some ways, I view a structure containing all aspects of reality that we can possibly encapsulate as MMMetamind, and our own subset of this as mmmetamind, with mmmetamind and mmmind differing in only 1 noteworthy aspect.

So ... systems ... :-) ... would Mademoiselle care for an apéritif?

Just three, from a list drawn from this forum, a list with more entries than even the most expansive of wine lists in the most expensive of wine bars.

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25444

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23179

So when Pia mentions she wants to immerse herself in 'Systems Biology', or Tom points us to Weinberg's text on 'Systems Theory', ... , not to mention the frequent clashes between the top-downs and bottom-ups ...in all out gang warfare... well it kinda' makes sense.

... and would Mademoiselle care for ice in her vermouth :-)

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11832

How very refreshing - the crackle of 'ice' rattling around our 'tif', melting in our 'ver-mouth.'

I have high hopes for this thread, Carla ...
:-)
... and am kinda' hoping that a series of short sharp tugs by ADDers famed for their 'creativity' ... might allow us to unravel the very fabric of rrreality, once and of course for ALL; RRReality can wait.

Or perhaps to put it another way ... in the finest of spirits, drinking the finest of spirits in this post, around the finest of spirits that have inspired this thread ... and if you guys will forgive the blatant plagiarism, that ...
... the ADDer thought process differs from its nonADDer counterpart in that we may take a selection of as many spun coloured threads as we choose, and then dreamily weave them, dreamily unweave them and dreamily reweave them, at will, into a tapestry of lllife, or rrreality, where the goal is to weave the closest fit that we can achieve to the TTTapestry (although perhaps here, Tttapestry might be more suitable).
We therefore can potentially "...see a tapestry whole..." "...while others see colors one strand at a time...", however we can also "...see a tapestry whole..." and if we want ... "...see colors one strand at a time..." ...because... "Any thread can always be reconstructed from the view of the tapestry."
The difference then between ADD and nonADD thought processes, resides in the observation that ... "...the converse is ... not true ..."

SB.

[Adamant1988]

Originally Posted by Scattered

Are you in part then dealing with left and right brain operations? Isn't the left brain more apt to analyze and logically step through something, while the right hemisphere is more holistic and whole picture oriented. If I'm off correct me -- I'm trying to see if I understand where you're going and at the moment cognitively things are a bit out of balance and I'm really living up to my screen name.

I know for myself I'm wonderful at seeing connections and that is how I remember things by cross referencing and networking them in my mind. I am an abysmal failure and stepping through things in a linear manner. Case in point was my WAIS -- I got a perfect score on recognizing similarities but couldn't put the pictures in the right order. This is so bad that I struggle with puzzles designed for first graders and have to ask my husband help me figure out what order the pictures in my 2nd grade daughter's books should be in. However, ask me to assess a kid for learning problems and I can reference the appropriate information from a number of fields and present it in a cohesive whole without preparation. I taught pretty much the same way -- know the whole subject and then shoot from the hip. In college, I couldn't write a paper until I had the whole feel of it -- then I could sit down and write the whole thing at once with little effort.

Am I in the ball park of this discussion, or lost somewhere out in center field near the highway?

Scattered

I think the left brain is the center of logical thought, as in dealing with facts and numbers, while the right brain contains the creative center of your mind.

[meadd823]

I think the left brain is the center of logical thought, as in dealing with facts and numbers, while the right brain contains the creative center of your mind.

Hmmmm kind a bit like …. Toes, heal, foot, shin, fibula, tibia, calf, patella, which one is allows a person to walk the best…….. okay all are parts of the lower leg some parts play a minor roles while others play a more of a major role all need to work together for optimum performance!!!!!

So it is with the brain…..

For those who prefer things written by “experts” I can speak your language as well and shall provide reference…….

Source:

“A Users Guide to the Brain”
John J. Ratey M.D.

Quote~~~~~~~~::=) (glasses)

Page 155-156

The motor system extends throughout the body, from neurons in the spinal cord to neurons in the brainstem and motor cortex. While a lot of brain talk has concerned the interaction between the left and right hemispheres, we really should bethinking more of the interaction between the front and the back of the brain---the sensory and motor divisions.

Page 205-206

Motor memory and skill learning are intimately interrelated. Interrupting either one of the systems interferes drastically with the other and like any other higher cognitive skill (such as language or emotion) motor memory is a global enterprise. Studies have shown that people who learn to sing or play a musical instrument benefit from the greater communication between the hemispheres. Playing a piano exercises the entire brain. As a result other cognitive signals fly faster and are read more accurately. This significant impact on a person’s mental acuity because the communication between the hemispheres becomes better than that of the average person.


Creative and artistic individuals do indeed posses higher levels of interhemispheric communication. The creative meanderings and patterns of the right brain are not enough for creativity; they must be joined with action or language (motor function) coordinated by the left hemisphere to be demonstrated to the world.

Other studies show that creative people also have a higher degree of cortical arousal.

A freebie: One reason motor function and memory are so closely linked is they are both coordinated by the frontal lobe; home of the brain’s executive function….. ~~~~~~~~(=:


Underlining bold I put there..

Hmmmm more movement memory stuff….exercise butt exercise brain!! Nope my brain couldn’t want me to wiggle in order to develop it self it had to be the lack of inhibition , executive function stuff…… out side of development thereof…… yep still stuck on that!!!

Hmmm for a wiggle worm I learn how to play interments rather rapidly...... I can hear the math in music, due to the dyslexia interfering with reading music (like words) I memorize the music piece over 60% the first time, 85% second time, third time I got it for the rest of my life (so far) YET I am told I am hyperactive because my executive function is screwed up??? I still don't "get it"

The brain is a global organ….. do we control it or does it instead control us…… the world may never know!

To me, the core difference is simply between focusing wide or focusing deep.

YIKES-- -- both??? I will see wide but various layers and angles some times at the same time causing me to seem confused or dingy because this is very difficult to communicate…linearly is about impossible….I see expanse and it will go “deep” almost instantaneously . ….. try to explain this while in constant motion!!!! I think best on my feet or at least with plenty of wiggle room!!!! A lot of people seem to feel they think better if they sit and think ( I don’t understand this at all) ?????

It takes only a moment or two before the various angles begin to appear several at once some times ( I can get lost in this from time to time )… I understand why many see me the way I do and have adopted the persona to allow them to keep their rrreality. Making others uncomfortable only causes the other person to shut down close off or become irritable- I see no need to “prove” or explain myself---takes too much time any way.

Besides I can figure out how to explain what I am seeing two dimensionally much quicker than explain my “vision” as I can speak “their language” also… it just takes a moment to narrow down and place into words. Thus the “slow to snap appearance”!


This is another way of explaining it……

the ADDer thought process differs from its nonADDer counterpart in that we may take a selection of as many spun coloured threads as we choose, and then dreamily weave them, dreamily unweave them and dreamily reweave them, at will, into a tapestry of lllife, or rrreality, where the goal is to weave the closest fit that we can achieve to the TTTapestry (although perhaps here, Tttapestry might be more suitable).

[Scattered]

Ummmmm --yummy post, Tammy! I think you also sold me that I have to move A Users Guide to the Brain up to the top of my gotta buy list! The front and back of the brain rather than just side to side -- very interesting -- need to learn more. The music thing is even more interesting in that in develops better communication between the hemispheres. Along with exercise and estrogen the most likely suspect in my book for why my brain "kicked in" suddenly around eighth grade was music (band, guitar, and piano had been added to my life).

My question is, if music increases the connections between the two hemisphere (which I believe is thought to be a weak area for ADDers due to the fewer observed connections between the two in the corpus collasum) would that allow the left brain to have better access and be able to better analyze and convey the intuitive leaps of knowledge obtained by the right hemisphere. I mean how many times have you known something and had no idea how to explain how you knew it or even explain exactly what it is that you knew in a way others would understand. Would better communication between the hemispheres reduce that problem?

Scattered

[Carla B.]

LOL! I *love* all the thoughts you folks are spawning, and purposely held back a bit before I waxed on more myself. (I am working hard on my tendency to over-explain..)

Wow, sideflash, it just hit me (again) how the "overexplaining" thing so many of us wrestle with comes from just this conundrum , i.e. seeing more angles at once than most people do. We are soooo accustomed to having to slice, dice and reframe it before others can get the gist of what we mean. No wonder the more linear types sometimes think we are juggling a bunch of beads while losing the string.

Stabile, I loved your "antisyzygous" [just made that word up] response especially, even if, maybe only four of us on the forum would chime to that without a lot more translating. In a word "yes!" to a lot of what you said.

But now having started this thread, the need to ride the train of thought could not have come at a worse time in terms of things I must deal with offline. I shall take that interruption as a sign from the PTB that this should be permitted to perk in reader's mind first before I add a lot to it {wink} but I do look forward to getting back!

PS.. Yes, Ratey speaks to some of this in UG2B. He and I have had more than a bit of dialogue over the years in email and in person on these themes, and he sent me an advance of some UG2Btext for comment. For years we've both been interested in the "cross-hemispheric" thing and the possible role of the corpus c. in the "interference" of ADD-style thinking. But it's my personal sense that more recent anatomical evidence, including gender variations, are pretty much blowing a hole in the "classic" paradigms of left vs. right. So rather than use those labels myself or tie it to any specific geography, my kind of meta mind {g} likes to compare what seems to be happening functionally, as well as how it feels to folks internally.

PS2.. to Stabile and anyone else who wonders about my avatar.. I am afraid it's not as poetic as the "earth" falling out of a hole in that little guy's head, but now that you mention it, perhaps it should be! It's intent was more mundane and wry; it was a brain drawn to look like a basketball, which in turn ties to my "bouncing brain" themes. The full version includes a caption that says something like "As Bob gives birth to another brainchild"

However, now that you've given it even more substance, perhaps I should switch my own interp of my own cartoon

[Scattered]

Originally Posted by CarlaB

Stabile and anyone else who wonders about my avatar.. I am afraid it's not as poetic as the "earth" falling out of a hole in that little guy's head, but now that you mention it, perhaps it should be! It's intent was more mundane and wry; it was a brain drawn to look like a basketball, which in turn ties to my "bouncing brain" themes. The full version includes a caption that says something like "As Bob gives birth to another brainchild"

Oh brother -- that's cool, but I thought it was someone about to eat a cantelope -- shows where my brain's at -- I'm not even on the same planet as other ADDers.

Getting to bounce ideas back and forth with John Ratey really sounds cool -- wow. Okay, I've got a severe case of hero worship --- his book Shadow Syndromes finally helped me understand how I could make such a wonderful success and total disaster of my life. And since I need the whole picture in order to feel okay this explanation made a big difference to me -- suddenly the pieces fit and I could reinvest some of that energy that had been desperately trying to put my puzzle together back into living. Of course the chapter you wrote in Think Fast helped do something similar for me in providing a framework in my own brain to understand the polar opposites of being both hyperactive/impulsive and a daydreamy slug. When the pieces don't fit, my mind just won't let it alone until I find a framework where the picture does fit, so this kind of thing is a very big deal to me.

Scattered

[SB_UK]

Lots more to add, but if I might just throw in one other point about your avatar, and I'll continue to be Stabile for a while, with Tom&Kay's permission, of course ... :-) ...

Art permits an expression of 'something' which defies adequate expression using the standard tools of verbal or written language.

The best art gives the creative a feeling of a special something, and also ... others ... too, potentially.

Often, beyond the feeling that there's something very special about their art, there is no method for the artist to convey the root of those feelings using words ... ... ... for the creative, most likely, will not know the reason (the best art as the most inexplicably meaningful.)

I purposefully played with an interpretation of your avatar, but chose to leave out another interpretation ... which sits at one of the vertices of the triangle that envelops ADD.

Your avatar can be interpreted as an individual observing their own thought processes, that is, the brain on the floor thinking about ... dunno' ... 'being low' :-) whilst the pointy nosed dude that's looking down ... thinking about ... dunno' ... 'pulling his brain out of the gutter' :-).

The ability to fire off >1 thread of consciousness concurrently is the mechanism which we use to support the novel structure of storage of information which supports systems thinking.

So ... was it a dream? or did 'Stinky&Thinky' exist ...?...

ADDers (dream weavers) :

... the experiential perspective whilst one's mind is engaged in 2 (or more) disparate threads ... [of thought]*

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24744

:-)

PS: "As Bob gives birth to another brainchild" ==
"In Java spawning a child thread" ==
"As Bob1951 firing off 2 or more concurrent threads of thought"

SB.

*added

[meadd823]

It's intent was more mundane and wry; it was a brain drawn to look like a basketball, which in turn ties to my "bouncing brain" themes.

I thinks we may have us a basket ball team going!!!!!!!

Your avatar can be interpreted as an individual observing their own thought processes

Man SB that was a lot more complex than my interpretation.....

He lost is mind again......not sure if he should pick that thought back up perhaps leaving the thought "there"

...... okay another was some thing along the "dirty minded" track can't go there here!! ......

Well okay another is he is wondering who lost their mind not realizing it was his ownnnnnn…………. like that never happens in real life!!!!!!!!!!

Getting to bounce ideas back and forth with John Ratey really sounds cool --

Yea agreed is has got to be better than the conversation I am having to listen to now…..Dr. Ratey he would defiantly be of interest….

I find his work as closest to neutral... no negative twist... or positives.... he does insert his own line of thinking but it is "clear" not intertwined with the presentations of facts...... leaving room for the reader to draw conclusions of their own!!!! It is really about the brain has only a few short narratives about ADD!!!

My question is, if music increases the connections between the two hemisphere (which I believe is thought to be a weak area for ADDers due to the fewer observed connections between the two in the corpus collasum) would that allow the left brain to have better access and be able to better analyze and convey the intuitive leaps of knowledge obtained by the right hemisphere

Well this "naturally" occurring weak connection as described above would explain why I was three before learning to speak.... but doesn't explain why when I did begin talking I did so in full sentences with out the "one- two word" sentences most use as a means of bridging the gap between single word/ object and full communication in sentences conveying thoughts along with object naming......according to mom I went from a few words to full sentences in a very short period of time...


I literally remember seeing things I questioned... the most memorable one was when I was still sleeping in a crib my parents lived in a basement apartment. In my bedroom there was full length window across from my crib that was entirely under ground except for the top six inches. .which peeked out at the top of the ground.. I remember wondering ..what was I supposed to look at under the dirt??? the bugs?? If it rained was my room going to fill with water to the point I would wake up with my crib floating...but I had NO words to communicate the ideas until I was older!!!! Much older then the memory came up by way of conversation about the time period in general……. My ability to accurately describe the apartment we move out of shortly before my fourth birthday surprised my mother….heck I remember eating in a high chair.

I also "pick up" musical interments rather quickly ever sense I can remember... according to mom I was born with perfect pitch..... out of tune pianos popular in back woods country churches during the early 60’s, sent me into screaming fits... she said I was three months old before she made connection between my sudden on-set of a screaming fit (which seemed to occure when we visited back woods counrty churches) and poorly tuned musical interments.... which by the way still make me want to have a screaming fit!!!!!

Had my mother herself not had the musical ability to know the panio was "off" she may have never made the connection!!!!

If my hemispheres were not communicating already these abilities would not have been some thing I was apparently born with..... I was born hyper active impulsive ADD..... I about as pure impulsive as 40 some thing years olds come in this space time continuum!!!

I kind of wondered if the communication between the two hemispheres wasn't what causes the decrease in dopamine flow to the frontal lobes thus appearing as deficient........

The brains plastic abilities to developed in variations could easily account for extra dopamine usage thus "to much up take up (up-take) of said neurotransmitter. Who is to say our "executive function” is located in the same place or operates in same chemical manner as those who don't have ADD. Obviously some thing works differently there is a bit more…..

Food is calling I am hungry plus Gary's company is talking to me. Judging by the sound of his voice and what body language I can see in my peripheral he is having a difficult time accepting the notion that I can type about dopamine usage in the brain and process the concept that he got 24 bags of Lipton tea bags free with large bottle of Rague spaghetti sauce. He says he bought three..... I am not sure if he is talking eight bags of tea for each bottle or 72 total tea bags for buying three bottles.

Now he is having an even greater difficulty with the idea of me typing and talking...so I guess I had better go and be polite to him as he is taking my continued typing as disinterest..... which is basically true but the recipe for politely showing disinterest in a subject when in face to face conversation eludes me..... I suspect the socially appropriate action would be to be disinterested with out outward movement of my hands…combines with ..intermittent use of my vision. Gee I hope I still remember this line of thought tomorrow......

People.... okay some people......The fact I am still verbally responding appropriately apparently is not enough to extend my willingness to listen to his rather bland discussion...... which wouldn't really bother me if I could just do so without the social expectation of attention being a single activity void of all others.....same &^$@!! ing problem I have had with humanity all of my life!!!!! Besides the irritation combined with increase hunger due to the aroma of fish is messing with my dyslexia.... words can be a P.I.M.A........ all the way around...weather in coming or out going!!!!

Nope NO ADD round here....I am never distrated nor do I ever get off subject even medications wear off and I have been up 32+ hours!!!! Sorry.....gotta go fish is calling........

[Nova]

You're not as 'simple' as you would like us to believe, Tam.
I know for a fact that you're highly intelligent.
And I'm not just saying that because I'm your friend, either. (0:
Nova

[Nova]

"Meta thinkers are on the latter side, seeing the broad outlines of disparate but connected things before diving into specifics, and as a result are quite often able to spot connections across domains that more tightly focused folks might completely miss while they dwell on specifics."



I played that game on here today- Answer and Ask a Question Game.
McCoffee posted a question that normally would've stumped me. It was 'what is the air speed velocity of a swallow?'

You know what I thought of...swallows..birds...airplanes.
Then I thought of all the different planes I've flown on- from cessnas to jumbos.
Then I thought of how that affects their travel speed.
And I laughed out loud.

So I answered his question with stating that it depends on how big the 'bird' is, or the type of swallow.

I went through all that in my mind first, in several seconds, to get the answer.

I don't know if this even relates to the concept of meta minds...but from reading the above paragraph that I pasted with this message..it sounds like it would..
If not, someone please correct me.


Nova

[Carla B.]

Originally Posted by SB_UK

I think, Carla, that your usage is a little closer to what I describe as mmmetathought (the individual's experiential perspective of using their mmmetamind), whereas Tom&Kay use the terms in this form, but also in a more absolute and less subjective(non-pejoratively) sense (MMMetathought and MMMetamind)

These are all great thoughts and thanks, SB! (Also thanks for waiting for me to have time to return to this)

I don't want to mangle any threadlines that went before, but when we are plowing new ground like this, I think it might be helpful to use terms that already have some currency in public awareness. Even if we need to refine their specific applications to suit the current task, that is easier, thinks me, than starting from scratch.

I am sorry I do not know what the "MMM" prefix suggests to you or Tom & Kay. But while I suspect I would like your intended meanings , would you mind if we tried to frame this particular thread such that even a newbie might get the gist? Let me take a stab at doing that:

"Meta" is an increasingly popular term in an increasingly complex world. By itself, the word conveys the sense of wide-angle view in which several constituent elements are knit into something larger. A common example for scientists is a "meta study" which looks at what a cluster of separate studies suggest when looked at together and compared with each other. I extrapolate from that general sense of it to use 'meta' and 'meta minds' to speak of one's personal interest in pattern-matching, domain-bridging, and "systems style" thinking, where wholes are emphasized.

In other words, if we used the classic forest v. trees analogy, "meta" would represent the study of forests instead of the study of trees, although "meta studies" combining data derived from several separate species of trees might be done in the pursuit of this "forestology" .

The question with which I began is whether we have the sense that people with traits of ADD also tend to be "meta" thinkers, with a distinct and continuing preference for this kind of wide-angle viewing?

Those of you who noted it are correct; this preference is often is spoken of as a "right brain" emphasis and it's helpful to note that if only to leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to some pre-existing frames for similar things. I just connect those dots and then move on when I discuss it because so many of those classic frames imply a more mechanistic view of the brain when, in fact, what happens inside that anatomy is being revealed as a compound, complex. and chaotic system in which the 'location' of functions is fluid and fast-moving and can vary widely from person to person. So for our purposes here, I proposed to dispense with the anatomy and just explore the experience of being a wide-angle thinker who is drawn to match patterns, connect the dots, and look for links and bridges across many elements that others may see as "separate."

In my experience, there is little conversation about the impact of having this kind of preference and so I am curious what others have experienced and what hypotheses they have formed over the years to explain themselves to themselves.

Examples: Do you consider yourself a wide-angle thinker, a "forestologist" in effect? Do you think it has been more of a help or a hinderance in learning? Do you think wide-angle thinkers fare better in schools (and universities) today then they did a decade or few ago? How big an asset or liability has it been for you in your career or in your personal life? Which side-effects of being a "forestologist" have felt like benefits overall and which facets have felt like obstacles that you still wish you could overcome?

Sorry I wasn't this clear when this train of thought first left my own station , but thinking about how to knit your replies into some common themes is now helping me state it more clearly

[Carla B.]

Originally Posted by Scattered

--- his book Shadow Syndromes finally helped me understand how I could make such a wonderful success and total disaster of my life. And since I need the whole picture in order to feel okay this explanation made a big difference to me -- suddenly the pieces fit and I could reinvest some of that energy that had been desperately trying to put my puzzle together back into living.

Yes! That was the particular genius of "Shadow" I thought (a book that deserved a lot bigger bounce than it had). As Ratey put it in some textbook passage he wrote about the same time, this shift of emphasis from "bad me" to "bad wiring" helped so many people come to terms with it all and move on to working on how to cope.

It's a bit disappointing, but not surprising, that all these years later people still seem to resist painting in shades of gray like this. They want to see a hard, fast, black-and-white line dividing ' normal' from 'not' and of course nothing about the brain or psychology is that simple and neat. Ratey was the first one writing "popular psych" (so far as I know) to really draw out and illustrate the "spectral" nature of all such things.

Color me a rebel , but sometimes I cant resist taking the extra step of pointing out that all these dividing lines we draw are arbitrary distinctions anyway. Not because I think drawing those lines is a waste of time; one does need a way to define the boundaries for empirical study, most especially where meds (and children) are involved. But out of the lab and down in the trenches where people live, we need more talk, I think, about the differences between how patients and scientists may see the same things. Mental conditions are not "diseases" in the classic sense where you have it or you don't, and I'd love to see us get past the need to express it that way and reach a more nuanced place.

Ratey did an outstanding job of starting a bridge across that gap and it's my hope this more integrationist view will perk around eventually (she said thus underlining her own 'meta' approach to such things with another )

Originally Posted by Scattered

Of course the chapter you wrote in Think Fast helped do something similar for me in providing a framework in my own brain to understand the polar opposites of being both hyperactive/impulsive and a daydreamy slug. When the pieces don't fit, my mind just won't let it alone until I find a framework where the picture does fit, so this kind of thing is a very big deal to me.

Thanks much! You pulled out exactly what I hoped would be the primary point to stick from that early sketch of my own take on the whole thing, i.e. that both ends of a spectrum may look a lot alike on the surface but stem from opposite drives (e.g. both under and overfocusing = distraction, or depression can come equally from being over- or under-whelmed.).

This tendency of each pole to resemble the other is also the basis for all the quips about "antiszyzygy" that SB and I keep joking about. It is the formal name for what you see when both poles are "mirroring" and it is highly relevant, thinks me, to all the confusion about what we call "ADD".