Living in today’s world, there is an insatiable need from humans of all ages to be consistently fed information, data, news etc.
Some have commented that this is addictive because it fills the loneliness, the boredom intolerance, the need to connect to ourselves and the disappointments or challenges we face emotionally.
Through data we can predict financial trends, career trends, health trajectories, environmental trajectories etc., and then action plans and processes to increase the chances of ‘success’. As much as we can learn from this data for some of the topics just mentioned, we appear to be further and further away from finding a ‘plan’ or a one solution ‘fits all’ when it comes to measuring and responding to the capacity needs of humans.
Here are some of the reasons why there are so many variances in human capacity across the lifespan:
Unlike computers or financial trends, humans have neurodiversity and natural variations of neurocognitive functioning.
Humans have diverse sensory preferences and therefore what works to accommodate and support one human in an environment, can be a barrier and disable another human.
Humans have diverse cognitive capacity- one person may be able to learn new skills and concepts very quickly and another person may take longer for that concept or skill to be consolidated into their working and procedural memory.
Humans have emotions that can be unpredictable, are experienced differently from one human to the next.
Humans may present as having typical functioning in an area or skill one day and then the next when asked to do the same thing, they struggle.
The similarity humans do have with computers is that there is not a ‘universal’ or single programming language that can be used for every situation. This means that for every situation, different coding/communication is required. Just as the underlying concepts of coding are similar which allows programmers to adapt and learn new ones, so too is human communication; there is not one ‘universal’ way for humans to communicate, and so they too must adapt and learn how to reach another human in their communication.
I could keep going with more comparisons, but I think you might see what I am getting at here.
You may have met or seen one autistic person or ADHDer, and they may have exhibited certain behavioural or communication differences, please keep in mind that the next autistic or ADHDer person you will meet will present differently again.
Do not put your one experience with that person as the ‘standard’ to which you attempt to make sense of another neurodivergent person’s differences. That is limiting to them and will be a barrier in your connection with them.
Humans are complex, don’t try and simplify their complexity to make your experience with them easier. Data, analytics, and research may give you some insight into the capacity of the human or neurodivergent human experience, however, it will be ever changing from one day to the next.
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