Another Dream Topic

josht

Well I was wondering, if a kid, was born and raised without seeing anybody else but his parents.
Until he was 18 the only people he ever saw was his parents, would he be able to dream about other people besides his parents?

SizarieldoR

Well, as a young boy I, being autistic, oftentimes liked to think of cars and other vehicles as having "faces" (you know the lights... and the windows on an airplane's cabin). Furthermore, I liked most models, which looked "frowning" and "angry", so that they express supremacy for example.

This is why I am inclined to think, that the kind will, in an effort to make some social contact, start "animating" and "personifying" inanimate objects around him or her. And, in time his fantasy will probably make his new "friends" do some of the social acts s/he saw from his parents.

So I think that since the mind will find its own way of satisfying social needs, it will do so in dreams without problem as well.

zoobyshoe

Are you authentically "autistic" or do you merely have Asperger's syndrome, which is sometimes called a "mild" form of autism?

As a kid I also saw cars as having faces. I think this is normal (I'm neither autistic nor do I have Asperger's), and was even more so for cars from the late 50's and early 60's when the fronts of cars looked even more like faces than they do now.

wuliheron

There are mathematical reasons for why crude faces tend to show up in nature. For example, the face of the man-in-the-moon. Three simple circles and you've got a face. :0

LostInSpaceTime

Another thing to ask (amongst other things) is if the kid was raised with no contact(or at least the caretakers wore a mask around him) from people and not even being able to look at himself in a mirror if he still would recognize a face. How ingrained in us is it to see faces? You could even go all the way and lock him in a dark room for like the first 15 years of his life and ask what his imagination came up with in the room. With no stimulus from the outside would he be able to visualize anything? What would "things" look like to him inside his brain seeing how he's never even saw anything?

P.S Don's try this at home parents. :S

zoobyshoe

The patterns on the moon aren't interpreted as a face in many cultures, and it's hard to get some people to see it as such even if they're looking for it. It's actually quite a stretch to see it as a face.

A remarkable variety of animals have two eyes and a mouth and our tendency to interpret things like cars and smilies as having faces is probably an extension of our ability to recognize a newly encountered animal as such, even if we haven't seen that particular animal before. This ability is probably basic to mammals and birds, but I'm not sure about reptiles or insects.

Things like the face of Mother Teresa in a tortilla are usually much more elaborate than your "mathematical" two eyes and a mouth, despite the fact they're still accidental. The face on mars is a good example.

zoobyshoe

There was a famous experiment where a litter of kittens was raised in a box with vertical stripes painted on the walls. After a month or two they were let out and, while they could avoid vertical obstacles, they didn't seem to be able to perceive horizontal obstacles and walked right into them.

I don't think the child deprived of the sight of other people would even conceive that anyone else existed, much less dream about them.

LostInSpaceTime

Humm so what type of things would he imagine...i mean its only speculative but even so. It's almost unconceivable to think of not being exposed to anything....but the thing is people will who have never seen "see" in there heads they imagine colour and stuff don't they. I read before about people who were born blind gaining sight only to be disappointed with what they saw. This also bring up something i think about a lot and that's how far could the brain go on not taking anything in. What could it come up with with no influence. If it can come up with anything I'd think thats a pretty cool thing to advance mentally with no outside influence. But interesting about those cats...makes me thing if we could even imagine ourself if we couldn't see. If you could go one step closer and take away all senses what would you be left with...i mean the brain COULD be active, it just isn't so would there be thought with no experience at all?

Anyway just a thought...... L.I.S.T