Know What You Don’t Know – Part II

My last post Know What You Don’t Know may seem a bit abstract. Let me make it more concrete. Like last time, I am going to use a story to make my point. This time, the story concerns an 8 year old boy, who was referred to me for evaluation of poor school performance and temper tantrums. Let’s call him Billy Smith (not his actual name, and I have altered the history a bit to preserve the family’s confidentiality). Billy makes limited eye contact, and has an obsessive interest in the solar system. He prefers to play by himself, and has no close friends. Academically, he did well in kindergarten and first Grade, but lately he seems to be having trouble with reading comprehension. He has difficulty with transitioning between tasks at school, and at home he gets into frequent arguments with his father. Billy’s father is a software engineer. At work, Mr. Smith does everything “by the book.” At home, he expects his wife and son to follow all rules to the letter. “Billy is always focused on himself,” Mr. Smith declares during my interview with mom and dad. “He’s stubborn, and he needs to learn to obey his parents.” Mrs. Smith says nothing, but she looks unhappy. Read the rest of this entry »

Know What You Don’t Know

This post is for those of you who are on the autism spectrum. I will try to explain something in a way that makes sense to you. My intention is to inform. I am going to take a roundabout way to get to my point. Some people like it when I tell stories, other people get impatient with me. I hope you like the story. At least, I hope you are patient with me. I want to explain a concept: The difference between “don’t know,” and “don’t know what you don’t know.” It’s like the difference between (X) and ( X squared).

For example, I don’t know the mass of the earth. But I know that I don’t know. And I also know how to get the information if I ever want to: I can look it up on-line.

The other kind of situation – not knowing what you don’t know – is much different. Here’s where the story comes in. My step-father grew up in England during the 1930s. His family was affluent, and they gave him flying lessons. When World War II broke out, my stepfather volunteered to become a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force. Since he already knew how to fly a plane, the RAF whisked him through the enlistment process. Things were going smoothly until the very end of the physical exam, when the medical officer pulled out a bunch of flashcards, and asked my step-father “What number do you see in this pattern of colored dots, Mister Friedman?”

“Number? What number?,” my stepfather replied. “I don’t see anything but dots.” Unbeknownst to my stepfather, he was color blind. Until he took the color vision test, he didn’t know what he didn’t know. After he took the test, he knew what he didn’t know. Get the difference? Years later, when my stepfather married my mother, she made sure to keep the clothes in his closet in separate groups, by color. He still couldn’t see the colors, but he knew that if he took a suit, shirt, necktie, and socks all from the same part of his closet, his clothes would match.

The Ishihara Color vision Test. If you have normal color vision, you will see a large “74” in this picture. People with partial color blindness may see “21” instead of “74.” People with complete lack of color vision just see a pattern of gray dots.

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