This doesn’t seem to ‘take’ with autistic folks.

This defies logic. Why should one disattend something and pretend it doesn’t exist? With a reason for engaging some things and not others, the process becomes at least sensible. This would be especially tough in Victorian settings, where Some Things Are Simply Not Spoken Of...

As a child in the 1950s, I enjoyed looking at 3D comic books. The technique use to produce and view them was primitive - images were printed in red and blue pairs, and viewed with paper-framed “eyeglasses” containing cellophane “lenses”, one red and the other blue. When viewed through the red lens, the red ink became invisible, and the same for blue. Thus each eye saw a separate image, producing the illusion of depth.

The technology has improved since then, but is still nothing like the “disattending filters” referred to in the textbook quote. Things just aren’t there. With the 3D comics this happens because one’s visual field is already saturated with the color to be ignored. Bringing this aspect of disattending into the larger context of socialization can certainly account for the “for-grantedness” of practices which, to an external observer, have glaring inconsistencies or profound ramifications or other obvious properties...

Last revised: June 23, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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