Seeing the trees in the wood
Apparently, most Allistic people do top down processing and Autistic people do bottom up processing.
Top down means folk do an overview of a scenario, and generalise on what's going on, while filtering out data that might contradict their general observation. It comes with concepts based on previous experience, and essentially predicts what should be happening and tends to ignore contradicting data.
Bottom up means we look at each datum point and try to make even the outliers fit into our synthesis of a scenario. We start with the raw data and then build up an hypothesis of what's going on. It's very powerful, especially in noticing and accounting for outliers in data, but it takes longer and often takes a lot more energy.
As an example, an Allistic botanist somewhere along the River Murray sees an isolated plain with a host of River Red Gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) and says, "Classic Red Gum forest. It benefits from the periodic flooding of the land." But I'm likely to say, "I can see three Pepper Trees and a Date Palm. Pepper trees did not arrive until the 1830's. And Date Palms are 1845 arrivals here in South Australia. I wonder if there was a post invasion settlement or sheep station near here."
We can see that in some circumstances, this bottom up processing will be enormously helpful. And at other times, a pain in the neck, aka unneeded info-dumps. It can end up, literally, in the case of this example, of not seeing the wood for the trees.
As an autistic person I deal with the processing load of working bottom up by developing a "muscle memory" for where things should be. So I learned what a Red Gum forest looks like, and can see that even if it's littered with other "incomer" trees that shouldn't really be there. Muscle memory lets me deal with common scenarios as efficiently as an Allistic person.
But muscle memory has its limits. Faced with the bewildering variety of the new pantry when we shifted house, I slowly learned where stuff was. But if someone shifts the location of the brown sugar, I have to slowly container-by-container search for it. And that might include spending some time looking straight at it but not seeing it because its in the "wrong place."
When I cook, I lay all the ingredients out in the correct place by the stove or on the kitchen bench so that it's all where is should be. If I don't do this, I have to look for stuff and either get overloaded or forget to put ingredients in at the correct time.
Our favourite milk has had the perfectly good company logo changed by some bright spark in sales. Not only is the new logo an aesthetic dud, in my opinion, but each week I spend 10 or more seconds finding the stuff because that change essentially means it's "in the wrong place." Muscle memory takes a while. And if you want something small that isn't in the right part of the supermarket according to the cataloguing logic of my brain, I can walk past it multiple times, even while looking carefully. It wears me out. Sometimes I just have to stop or I panic.
Andrea (August 2026)
Would you like to comment?
I have turned off the feedback module due to constant spamming. However, if you would like to comment, or discuss a post, you are welcome to email me using the link at the bottom of this page, and I may include your comments at the bottom of this article.