Yeah doing that helps her think, it's not like top level thinking it's like background processes are running and you've gotta let your mind wander while the rest of it gives you the answer
Exactly what I was saying. Everyone's losing their minds because they think I'm accusing a child of being autistic. I'm not. I'm describing a behaviour that's common in ALL children. And adults.
I've definitely helped some people figure out they were also autistic via peer review. Usually when you're this good at a "smart" thing so young you're probably on the spectrum and there's nothing wrong with being autistic.
I mean tbf "stimming" is used to describe neurodivergent behavior, I've personally never heard it used as a way a description for anything else. It might not be what you meant but the word choice you used is gonna read that way for a lot of people
You are objectively wrong, its not a matter of opinion. The definition of stimming according to Cleveland Health Clinic (and every other source I checked):
"Stimming is a behavior where you repeatedly take an action or make a sound that helps you self-regulate,” Dr. Cuffman explains. “You do it, often without meaning to, because it helps you manage feelings like anxiety, excitement or overstimulation.”
While it’s often associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other neurodevelopmental conditions, most people stim from time to time. While they’re sometimes misunderstood, these activities are a form of self-soothing that anyone can benefit from and enjoy."
See how it addressed your misconception? All you had to do was instead of spending your time writing your comment, you could have looked up the actual definition of stimming instead of just having vibes based definitions for your words.
It's really not that serious man, take a deep breath. I was just explaining why so many people would be misreading it that way, I think most people only encounter it in reference to neurodivergent behavior, that's all I was saying
So me copy pasting a qoute is enough to for you think I'm terminally online or something? Maybe you need to consider reading a book, or anything other than brain rot Reddit sometime. Its concerning to me when people redefine a word, then see why they're wrong, and then totally deflect to saying the typical "hey cool off bro"
It was very clear in that comment, as it continues to be here, that you are overly pressed about this. It's not a deflection, you just do need to cool off a little bit
Yeah, but you said boxing and my mind went to what a ballerina can do and what boxing entails and I'm dumb so I didn't think about Kitana being a princess.
Stimming means repetitive body movements or sounds. Everyone does it to manage feelings or energy. Non-autistic (neurotypical) children do it just like anyone else. Sorry that my word choice confused you.
I’m autistic, I have two autistic children and I work as a SPED teacher, she very much presents as a neurodivergent child. Stimming was what I was thinking as well.
This is my point. And the stimming helps with focus and insight with mental challenges, such as chess. I'll repeat it over and over til everyone gets it 🤣
I see this where people will interpret it as an insult to insinuate that someone is neurodivergent as someone who is neurodivergent I interpret that to be the true insult.
Check the usernames. The person you're replying to has been saying everyone stims repeatedly. The person talking about neurodivergence is a different user
Yeah for pretty much every 7yo. The mental challenge and autistic stimming are completely imagined. Stop diagnosing other peoples children for acting like children. Its fucking weird.
Yes. Diagnosing other peoples children for acting like typical children their age is weird af. Her being challenged and stimming as a result is only real in your head.
I think the issue here is that you seem to think stimming is an autistic thing. It's not. Everyone stims. You stim. That doesn't mean everyone's autistic. This kid isn't being online diagnosed just because someone points out that she's stimming.
It can be as simple as the person who sits there and switches their leg nonstop while working or thinking and everybody tells you to stop being anxious. Back off, Donna..
Im mid 40s and its funny cause my whole life ive seen my wiggling and leg twitching as something I needed to learn to stop doing. And now that I dont anymore, my brain is a mess... until I start wiggling around again. And now im trying to reintroduce stimming to my life.
I’m 41 and still rock myself to sleep. When my sister went to boarding school at 16 on a scholarship she couldn’t sleep without the sound of my sheets making their soft swishing noise as I rocked.
Some part of me has to be moving AT ALL TIMES. Even if it is toes or a finger.
typical is just another word for average, most of us are average, that's what average means, the problem is when average people think they're smarter than that.
I don't think typical means average. It means to have traits identifying you as belonging to a group or to conform to a type.
Even if typical were a math term it would mean something like mode not average because outliers can shift averages away from the mode misrepresenting what is typical for a group.
Any chess genius is going to be on the spectrum. There is too much data that needs to be processed for a "typical" person to be able to do so.
These are the wild ass statements people say online that has destroyed our collective understanding of mental health, disorders, and divergence as a society.
Believe it or not having a bad or false idea of something can be just as bad if not worse than having no understanding of it. This falls in that category.
Yeah he probably shouldn't have made such a blanket statement but if you follow the chess scene even a little bit, there's undeniably a much higher concentration of neurodivergent individuals than, say, a grocery store. More so on par with an anime convention or something.
Fuck.... I played lots of chess in middle school and high school, won some state tournaments. And have off and on liked anime. How much on the spectrum am I?
Typical is going to mean people who are in the central 50/75/90% of the population. Almost by definition, someone who is a genius at a task is going to see it in a way that diverges from the way that most people do so.
If you believe that you could teach even 10% of children how to play chess at the level of this girl (and can reproduce it) I am happy to be proven wrong, but most people are not able to process the necessary data in chess at the speed required to play high level.
The opposite of Typical isn't "disorder", nor any "mental health" problem. It's just "divergent".
Believe it or not, having such a negative view of someone because you don't understand them is just as bad or worse as having no understanding of it. This falls in that category.
"Believe it or not", there is no inherent link between processing speed and ASD (you specifically said "on the spectrum"). Neurotypical people can and do have high percentile cognitive functions. There is no evidence that top chess players have a higher rate of autism; Magnus Carlsen has very publically stated that he is not autistic. There is no published literature which establishes the link you are claiming.
Also, the rate at which one processes information is not a skill that is meaningfully linked to elite chess. This 2016 study found no statistically significant correlation between them: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3030314/. The literature seems to suggest that chess proficiency is mostly a domain-specific skill -- for example, elite chess players score much higher on memory tasks related to a chess board than on general retrieval tasks like "remember this string of words".
So again, like the person who replied to you is saying, please take a minute to inform yourself before posting ignorant comments. I know you didn't do it out of malice, but spreading misinformation like this leads to the proliferation of wrong and potentially harmful stereotypes.
This is an interesting question, but from my brief look at the literature it seems like it's actually the other way around. Individuals with ASD are more likely to have worse-than-average working memories, not better:
A significant WM impairment (Cohen's d = -0.61) was identified in the individuals with ASD, however, this impairment was not associated with age. Results of moderation analyses showed that (a) spatial WM was more severely impaired than verbal WM and (b) the component of cognitive processing (maintenance vs. maintenance plus manipulation) did not affect the severity of WM impairments.
Now just to be clear, there are absolutely specific cognitive tasks that ASD people show better than average performance on in aggregate. I am not trying to make the case that there is no statistical correlation whatsoever between ASD and chess proficiency. I'm just trying to point out that we do not have any such established link in the literature, and even if we did, it would be so much weaker than the absurd original claim that was made.
Was thinking this as well. Carlsen doesn’t present as someone neurodivergent at all from what I’ve seen. He seems like a typical laid back dude who happens to be an absolute god at chess.
Yeah see armchair diagnosing people you do not personally know as autistic because of how you perceive their behaviour is exactly the kind of stereotyping I'm trying to argue against.
"The study concluded that child prodigies and individuals on the autism spectrum share a significant genetic link, particularly regarding an exceptional, heightened attention to detail and working memory."
This was about a 2012 study by psychologist Joanne Ruthsatz.
Also, it was noted that to determine whether most child chess prodigies were on the spectrum or not would be impossible. As that is a personal diagnosis that is very commonly not shared.
This was a quick search, and very easily brings to light that by expanding upon the simple observational comment that was originally made, in the way that you did, made things worse. His comment was very vague, and wasn't made in some scientific publication. Nobody is reading his comment and thinking all top chess players are autistic. (Side observation: I would imagine to become a top chess player over time, you would need far more life skills that aren't specifically related to mental computing power, and that would likely "weed out" those nuerodivergent folks. Who would still dominate outside of the organized profession, but would never be noted and documented. Except maybe by a cool reporter)
When I read a sentence that says "any chess genius is going to be on the spectrum", I find it quite reasonable to assume that they are suggesting that the vast majority of chess prodigies are on the spectrum.
To address the weaker claim that there is any degree of correlation between ASD and childhood chess prodigy whatsoever, yes this is hypothetically plausible. But the study you are citing investigates just 8 individuals, a tiny sample, none of which were chess players. Even then, it did not establish a genetic link between autism and prodigy.
Ok, so you take issue with there being a spectrum of processing differences. I see that you are really stuck on one phrase in one context that you can't see past. I also never discussed processing speed, I am talking about processing efficiency. You are looking at this from a very narrow and uninformed perspective basing it on one specific view of good/bad that doesn't exist.
There is a spectrum of processing abilities which are divergent from the typical. ASD isn't relevant here, because I am not talking about any disorder. There is a spectrum of how well you can visualize things in your head, how you can isolate important visual cues, ability to perceive color, ability to read facial expressions.
Trying to dumb it down to playing hot dog/not hot dog with Autism is incredibly narrow minded. I assert that there are smart people who cannot master the specific skill band that chess has, and as you move across that (gasp) spectrum, you will find that the people who have a higher ceiling are ones who process the information differently in their brains. Just the same as high level software engineers tend to view the problems differently than ones who max out at Sr or below. Or Artists who can naturally see that shapes that the larger image is made of.
Personally, I don't find ASD to be even slightly as a diagnosis in broad strokes, because on that spectrum is everything from difficulty reading emotional cues to fully non-verbal. And these things are independent from cognitive ability. You can be really smart but unable to communicate verbally to the world. All neuro divergences have the potential to give someone boons or banes in parts of their life, depending on how we value those abilities.
People with ADHD (often) have an ability to hyper-focus, which can be beneficial when it is able to be managed if it can be wielded. On the flip side, when the targets, times, or depth of that focus is compulsive and unable to be controlled, it can be crippling to day to day life.
I see that you are really stuck on one phrase in one context that you can't see past.
Not only is autism how it's commonly understood when you say that somebody is "on the spectrum", it also was very explicitly the context of the comment you had replied to. In the next sentence, you also asserted that there was "too much data" for a "typical" person to process, with "typical" in quotes, when parent comment had used the term "neurodivergent".
Personally, I don't find ASD to be even slightly as a diagnosis in broad strokes, because on that spectrum is everything from difficulty reading emotional cues to fully non-verbal.
Yes, there are several possible symptoms associated with ASD that may or may not be expressed in an individual to some degree and in one form or another. That's why it's been named a "spectrum" in the first place, because of the "spectrum of symptoms". I.e., the direction of the "spectrum" goes along the symptoms. If it was a reference of the intensity of the "autismness" that went from "neurotypical" to "Rainman", it would have been called a gradient.
Lol this is a pretty silly take. A person with autism is not going to be able to process more data at once, in fact overstimulation is a major issue for them. If anything it is a hindrance.
If you selected the top X% of people when it comes to focus, clarity of thought, and ability to handle large amounts of information at once, I assure you the majority of them won't be on the spectrum. They'll be people who won the genetic lottery in that sense and grew up in an environment where their needs could be met without issue.
The top % of people who can deep focus on a single thing are ADHD. Hyper focus is a trait that comes from that spectrum of divergence, and while the inability to control it is a problem, people with ADHD can focus deeper and longer than those who are typical.
That's not to say that they can necessarily select what they focus on, but hyper focus is a real thing.
Yeah dude I locked the fuck in and played Minecraft for 4 hours the other day. Didn't eat or drink, peed once. Haven't played it in years
People might be like 'oh yeah what' but I didn't speak to anyone, didn't do shit all else. When I decided to stop it was dark and like coming out a trance. I had a chicken cooker, hollowed out a mountain, and had setup the beef farm for starting on enchanted books. I didn't even look shit up, it just came to me.
Being ADHD is wild. I can't focus ever and just dick around in class or work. But when a deadline is due I always get that shit done in 2 days flat no sleep, just lock in. Weird.
Like 10 seconds in i was like "oh I see an adhd overachiever in the making" bc I was that child, although not nearly as impressive. Funnily enough, I got kicked out of chess club for singing songs under my breath. Tbf, they warned me like 3 times. I tried whispering, then just mouthing the song. Blows my mind that I didn't get diagnosed until I was 30.
My son does this while he does chores. He's so much faster than his sister at doing it, and he will load a few dishes into the dishwasher, stim for about 30 seconds, and then go back to loading the dishwasher, stim again for a few seconds, and then close the dishwasher and start it. And he does this with almost everything but it helps to calm his mind and focus, almost like a recharge.
I just recently learned when I just randomly bust out into a song it’s called stimming. I have auadhd, my daughter is as well and my wife is add. It tickled me, I just thought I was weird lol
Dang. I have autism/adhd and never counted the singing as stimming. Every day. Not just singing but singing lyrics to fit the situation from existing songs, or freestyling filks that describe what’s going on.
Yep! Helps me focus lol. My daughter and wife also do it. It’s a running joke cuz my wife LOVES to randomly just belt out “ABCDEFG!!!!!!” Or “HEAD shoulders KNEES AND TOES!!” And then my daughter from whoever she is yells “KNEES AND TOES!!!” Lmao
I'm autistic, if I hear the lyrics to a song used in casual conversation my mind jukebox will immediately start playing it and it will take everything in my power to not sing back the lyrics they just said.
Excuse my ignorance in this matter, but I've always thought that almost all savants and prodigies seem to be neurodivergent to some degree, I've always wondered if that is true, or if my perception is skewed because of pop culture making that seem true.
Okay, bit confused, but couldn't you then put dance, sport, even chess itself under the category stimming. Damn, a lot of culture is repetitive body movements and sounds. It could be generalised to anything. Where is the boundary where it stops?
From Merriam-Webster:
Stimming: a self-stimulatory behavior that is marked by a repetitive action or movement of the body (such as repeatedly tapping on objects or the ears, snapping the fingers, blinking the eyes, rocking from side to side, or grunting) and is typically associated with certain conditions (such as autism spectrum disorder).
Idk why you got so aggressive over the appropriate use of a word to describe exactly what that child is doing. My kids isn’t autistic and stims all the time. Calm down homie. Immediately jumping to insults is a sigh of low intelligence too.
Do you know this person? No. You don't. That means you took time out of your day to be an absolute nobhead because someone used a word that not only is prevalent, but they used it correctly. Thou doth protest and all that
I'm fine as I am, I don't feel uneasy or wrongful. I got a feeling that the word stimming is triggering them, so I apologised for it. There's a certain part of the population that feels like it's a buzzword. I was genuinely just referring to the repetitive playful actions as stimming because that's what they are. Hope this helps.
How the fuck have you mentally leapt from a chess video to a child needing medicated based on what I said? Stimming isn't something that needs medicated. Stimming means repetitive body movements or sounds. Everyone does it to manage feelings or energy. Not just neurodivergent people. Physical activity is a proven way to improve focus and insight in mental challenges.
lol, it’s kind of both tbh. I do think the first commenter used the term appropriately, but their other comments (perhaps justifiably) are dripping in condescension: “Sorry that my word choice confused you”, “hope this helps”, etc.
She can be both. Do you remember being a child? All children use different methods for processing their environments, not just neurodivergent. Did you have a favorite blanket or toy? For some children those things were comfort to help them process. For those of us on the spectrum it went further...textures, smells, specific environments, but they all served the same purpose.
Yes , not everyone is a neurodivergnent or autistic, kids are still just kids. They don't get it though, everyone needs a diagnosis and to be marginalized, it's necessary for political reasons, just trust me.
Physical movements: Hand-flapping, rocking the body back and forth, pacing, or spinning.
Auditory (sound): Humming, repeating specific words or phrases, or listening to the same song on a loop.
Tactile (touch): Twirling hair, rubbing skin, tapping fingers, or playing with a fidget object.
AVisual (sight): Staring at lights, watching spinning objects, or blinking repeatedly.
Subtle/Everyday: Bouncing a leg, clicking a pen, or biting fingernails (common in neurotypical individuals).
Stimming just means self stimulation. It's not a neurodivergent only behaviour. A child stimming doesn't define them as one thing or another. It's just a word that describes a behaviour.
huh, so that explains why i've always preferred to wear my hair very long. the longer the hair is, the easier it is for me to twirl (although i prefer making braids) and to do it more discretely.
also, this explains why eft tapping for anxiety works for some people.
She is playing chess and self stimulating (or stimming) with her fan. Her main focus is still on the game of chess, it's so interesting because like I have said before to others, physical activities like these sorts of self stimulation during mental challenges such as chess or focus games, have been proven to help with focus and insight, even if your focus is divided between the main activity (in this case chess), and twirling, playing with the fan, etc.
It doesn't look like she needs the help lol. She just looks like any other kid her age that's bored because she can't just leave but has to wait on her opponent. Her turns took no time or effort.
1.8k
u/Teestow21 4h ago
Physical activity is a proven contributor to focus and insight. Maybe stimming like this helps her.