group dynamics: March 2008 Archives

Received via email, March 21, 2008:

"I understand you're using my book in your course this semester. May I ask how you're using it? Colleges all over are adopting my book for a wide range of classes, and I try and see how it's used.

If it's a major part of a class, perhaps I could stop by and talk to your students.

Best wishes
John Elder Robison"

Hi John,

I am glad you contacted me.

How did you find out that I'm using your book?!

I like the idea of you coming to the class. I need to think about how and when. The course is "group dynamics" - we are studying ourselves going through stages of group development, which means self-reflection and interpersonal communication skills are crucial. The Aspergian way of stating the obvious (i.e., what you observe, think, and feel) is a trait that I admire and find immeasurably useful in groups who seek to understand relationships among themselves (say, within the group of students and me in this course) and between them/ourselves and others (e.g., people in other classes at UMass; people who aren't in college; or people in college in other countries).

The first idea that comes to my mind - if this seems good to you? - is to have you read and respond to some of the public conversation that I've structured through the use of weblogs (I have one for teaching, and each student has created one for certain assignments). If that goes well, then you could come to the class in person...

What do you think?

"If your students have blogs on this tell me where they are and I'll look."

I wrote about your book for the first time today, in the blog I use for teaching. Students will probably not do their homework and respond until next Sunday or Monday, but there are many links to their work/writing so far if you want to get a sense of how things are developing: Why are you writing sideways?

Hi John,

A friend read the same link I sent you and said it is "thick." I know. The links to student blogs are way at the end, when I'm writing about the various cultural terms that they analyzed. (Or you can wait until they post replies to that blogpost and then follow the links.)

Class was not well attended yesterday (first day after spring break) but half-a-dozen students had read your book completely and others were a third of the way into it. They really wanted to talk about it! Obviously they benefited and were excited. I will post some pictures from notes I wrote on the board and send you that link when it's ready.

steph

"Steph,

Your use of my book in this context is unlike any other application I've seen to date. And that's interesting to me. And I do agree, the blog entry is "thick."

I have talked to parents, people on the autism spectrum, special ed teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and many other sorts of specialists.

You, however, stand distinctly apart from all those folks.

You wrote:
Robison's tendency was to answer "with whatever I had been thinking." This is not so different, in my mind, from people who simply say the first thing that comes to mind. Neither response involves any anticipation - there is no forward-in-time quality of considering how the thing one says might lead to a certain kind of outcome, be it as mundane as a polite social interaction or as intense as a long-term relationship. And then, even within the range of possible responses that one might choose among, hoping that they might lead to the outcome you want (or at least one that you dimly perceive or otherwise don't outright dislike), you can still get it wrong.

To me, the interesting phrase there is: Neither response involves any anticipation

To have anticipation, I think one must have a grasp of what the autism shrinks call Theory of Mind, or the recognition that other people have their own unique thoughts.

I am very focused, and very driven. In many cases, I enter into exchanges with other people with some goal in mind. That goal may be to buy, sell, learn, teach, etc. It could be almost anything. However, even though I may have such a goal clearly in mind, I may still answer with whatever I am thinking about.

For me, there may not be a clear and strong connection between the stream of words I address to a person, and my overarching goal in the ongoing interaction with that person. Yes, while that response is happening, I still retain an anticipation; an overall goal for my dealing with the person. It's just that the actual spoken words may not take me closer to the goal; indeed, they may take me farther away.

As a child, that was a nearly insurmountable problem as I described in the book. As an articulate and mentally agile adult, it's usually something I can recover from in the ongoing stream of conversation.

I see new twists to this stuff every day. Very interesting.

Best wishes
John"

I did the math. :-)

My body's capacity to contain joy maxxed out last night at the All Things Spring Potluck, replete with a special bean (with bits of corn) dip.





Meanwhile, one Bird of Paradise begins to peek out amidst daffodil glory. (Notice Muffin is determined to remind me of her claim to everything; a fact countered by Work It Out playing in the background.)

We started at the UMass Sunwheel circa 6:15 pm. The clouds cooperated, beginning to clear an hour in advance of sunset. The wind was bitter, though: fortitude was required to make it through until the moon cleared the 7 degrees of forest obscuring the horizon in the East.


Dr. Judith Young from the Astronomy Department at UMass regaled the crowd (52 brave souls who stayed) with enlarged photos, anecdotes, history, and education. I was struck by the range of nuance embedded in the careful alignment of static stone with the motions of our solar system. In particular, I learned of the Callanish Stones for the first time. Dr. Young showed some pictures and explained the presence of an "extra" stone that - if one stands just right - creates a visual notch with the stone next to it that outlines the precise location on the horizon where the summer solstice sunrise occurs. "They found," she said, "a way to let us know."

Hmmm, a way to know - what? If there is a message in these stone circles, what might it be? Was there an active intent to leave a sign that would invite us to wonder? What would people from four or five millennia ago want to convey to us, their descendants in a future as dim to them as their present is removed in a distant past? I considered these questions: they want us to know there is another mode of perception. They want us to remember that scientific measurement with all its technical specificity is not the only way to apprehend life. (My conviction was profound in the moment. Some hours later, I imagine that the possibilities of their intended meanings range beyond imagination, yet in this time - our time, now - this meaningfulness jumped into consciousness.)
I missed parts of the lecture walking around taking photographs and whispering with friends, still - the qualities of the equinox that I did learn struck me as propitious. Were there four? Equal lengths of night and day, sun (and moon?) rising and setting due east and west, sun directly above the equator, and . . . well. At the moment I heard the list I thought, this is exactly how I need to go about my upcoming research. (When I told Anne the good news she described it as "impossibly cool!" "I know!" I hollered.)

Just-in-Time and I spoke about the need for evenness in one's emotional life as we drove from the Sunwheel to the apartment for soup. Suppose 80% of your emotional experience is "okay," 10% is elation, and 10% is all the other stuff? That 80% takes in a lot, eh? It's good! Is such a spread worth the highs of the high and the lows of the low? "Hey, maybe I've already done my ten percent? Five years or so of the lows....finished! It's out of my system! Been there, done that!" :-)

The Béguine Cream Soup was a hit. (Yah!) I confess I doctored it a bit. (Who, me?) Check out this description from Twelve Months of Monastery Soups:

"This recipe is a version of a soup from Flanders in northern Belgium. Its name suggests it originated among the Béguines. Béguinage was a medieval institution that allowed pious laywomen to lead a form of religious life in common, without becoming actual nuns. It was one of the few alternatives to either marriage or the cloister...In general, they were a progressive group of women who wished to assert, as much as the times allowed, their independence from men. They were women of great culture, and some of them became renowned mystics."

The recipe calls for chervil, which I could not locate. Having received an email from one of my teachers about the Apache New Year (which, like many other cultures, recognizes the spring equinox as the beginning of the year), sage seemed an ideal replacement. We were cold coming in from our hour in the wind; it took a few minutes to settle in and get the soup warming. Soon enough, the Wanokip put on The Doors and the party started. :-) Pete and Sinead got me going on my research question, so much so that I had to take notes! They gave me an absolutely crucial framing, later clarified even further by The Ever-Smiling Evil Indian and Ambarish, who asked, "Isn't it obvious [why certain people use or don't use the interpreters]?" Aha! The fact that they are making a choice is obvious, but the reasons for the choice are not! I have no idea what their reasons are, and (to be honest, gulp) I'm not sure (?) they have thought (?) very much (?) about it themselves. This is what I need to find out!

Searching human behavior for patterns is not so far removed from searching the stars for meaning, is it? I mean, come on, Renee found her way to the event by approximating a time in memory and correlating that temporal position with its internal references to other times (if she received the invitation two days ago and the event was specified as "tomorrow" then that meant "tonight" not Friday). A skill she has improved, apparently, after reading Longitude by Dava Sobel. (What role does the chronometer now play as "control" in a cybernetic civilization?!) Then there was the long convo with Anuj about inattention blindness and the basic fact that our brain must select - and therefore also de-select - where to aim one's focus. (We also conjured the amazingly cool idea of eye tracking deaf people as they watch sign language.)

Obviously, with so much goin' on in this puny brain, I had to take notes and remind everyone about the blog. "Is this informed consent?" I was challenged. I responded with the options. "Shut the F*** Up" has been duly noted.

Israel and Palestine may be the world's best example. News media repeats the fiction of "the Palestinians" as if Hamas and Fatah represent something in common. Hamas follows the breach of the Gaza Strip wall with Egypt with increased suicide bombings in Israel, and Israelis initiate attacks on Palestinian neighborhoods that are disturbingly like pogroms.

What happened to the peacemakers?

Where are those who know how to do dialogue?

Meanwhile, Navy Carrier Squadrons philosophize: "Move Along" -

and George W. Bush plays cheerleader:

Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”

I don't know for how long the dancing jig from Sinead (courtesy of Blue Mountain) will be viewable but it is quite entertaining. :-)

"Hope this greeting finds you 'having the craic' on this festive day....wherever you are, around the globe!"

No spilled pints here. (Yet.)

UMass will host an extraordinary event in early April: Landscapes of Violence. I approach it with two trajectories, one from the Dialogue under Occupation conferences (DUO 1 in Chicago, 2006; DUO 2 in the West Bank, 2007). The "dialogue" of the DUO conferences is still
"young" (as in, "new" for us in conversation with each other), but I remain hopeful that we academics and activists will be the ones to learn to talk soldiers and politicians toward other tactics. If not us, who?

I am not sure if this event in December, "States of Exception, Surveillance and Population Management: The Case of Israel/Palestine," is directly related to - or an outgrowth of - the work of DUO II participants, but the content certainly overlaps. Perhaps there is a dialogic trajectory we can build?

In considering the upcoming UMass conference, am also considering the students in the Group Dynamics course I'm teaching. Several of them mentioned concerns with a recent string of threats on campus (three messages, found in three different locations on different days, with similar content). Of course many in the campus community were affected by the shootings at Virginia Tech ... this instances are not comparable to the systemic and horrible repetitions of violence being played out among Palestinians and Israelis (or, arguably, among Colombians - with/against FARC and/or the paramilitaries and between Colombia and Venezuela) - but these are the touchpoints of violence in the lives of young U.S. Americans with which we must work.

Writing and Violence, April 20, 2007
We are Virginia Tech, April 21, 2007
"a matter of language", April 26, 2007

The first-year students' College Writing CourseWiki has a record of student reactions to a bomb scare last fall. These were captured serendipitously as a coincidence of the day's assignment with the threat of violence.

At least one student in this semester's Group Dynamics course is vocal about hating politics (i.e., "I hate politics"), and seems intent (evidence of argumentative rhetoric?) to make sure (evidence of nonverbal behaviors?) that the product designed by this semester's course doesn't "go" in that direction...I am sure he is not the only one who feels this, even if he is the most forthcoming about it. What a tension to resolve, isn't it? The world we live in is brutal, even if - here at mostly-cushy UMass - we are protected and insulated from having the day-to-day violence in our faces . . .

I'm excused from interpreting this talk, Nanometers, Femtoseconds, and Yoctomoles: Molecular-Dynamics Simulations of Diffusion in Garnet, which means I can take notes and play!

The professor is highly billed: Dr. Bill Carlson from UT at Austin. You think I'm kidding about "play"? No way, Jose!
Scale: plates, rocks in the field, mineral grains, atoms....
Geologic Time:
Sizes from macro to nano.....

Diffusion gives direct qualitative information on rates and duration of metamorphic processes. Garnet is present in a wide range of bulk compositions, is stable, and has a wide array of diffusive behaviors that can be monitored to help us understand rates of diffusion and the mechanisms behind them. You know my parallel? Groups (of people) and knowledge/understanding (disseminated via language).

Main topic: Molecular dynamics simulations.... (microdynamic intergroup relations?)

Problem: existing theories for diffusion at atomic scale don't explain the phenomena we observe...(sounds like social science to me!)

Novel systematics emerge from recent synthesis...

Elastic Strain Theory (EST) - diffusion by vacancy mechanism: work is required to move atoms apart and squeeze this atom in-between them....larger atom = more strain which slows down diffusion. Like all theory (!) "sometimes it works...sometimes it doesn't."

There's a "misfit parameter" (!) = "how badly an atom fits in its new site." If a good fit, then the number is small; if the atom is too big you get a positive misfit parameter, if the atom is too small you get a negative misfit parameter. (No speculation, thanks, on the size or charge of my misfits!)

Observation: a fundamental gap in our knowledge, sometimes smaller sizes diffuse more slowly (instead of faster, which is what theory predicts).

How else can observable systematics be explained if EST doesn't do it? Perhaps - molecular dynamics (MD) ...EST relies on a visualization based on Hooke's Law ;MD takes into account all of the binary potential fields (imagine: all 756 (?) potential dyads we calculated as the total combination of interpersonal pairings (28 individuals, each with 27 unique relationships - except I don't know how to do this math!) in the current course on Group Dynamics).

Comparison of Potential Barriers for Atoms of Different Size: take potential energy, over time, and compare it to optimal diffusion (and yield (?) energy barriers to diffusion). EST predicts well for larger atoms.....for smaller atoms....start with lower energy well because more tightly bound....then a smaller atom has a larger energy barrier to cross than the optimum size....

MD: Newtonian mechanics at the atomic scale.... with forces as sum of pairwise interactions: interatomic potential, interatomic distance.

Interaction potentials:

1. ionic charges (same = repel; different = attract)


2. Born-Mayer repulsion - atoms can't get too close to each other, will begin to push each other away = gives an indication of how hard the atom is (large value = billiard ball, small value = nerf ball)


3. dipole attraction (van der Waal) - an induced dipole, if the force is strong it leads to a large value, if the force is small then it leads to small value.

Interaction parameters are determined by fitting MD models to data on static properties, eg...molar volumes, expansivities, compressivities (ah, no static properties in human relations - although social science (and basic prejudice) TRIES to make "identity" static/stereotypical...)

You have to select time steps that are a function of atomic motion...durations long enough to obtain many diffusive jumps... (time...always time! not to mention timing!)

Assign initial positions ("groups" never simply "begin" they are a convergence in time of dynamics already in motion, already historical), throw in random velocity (intensity/emphasis of attention to the storming phase of group development?)....

Diffusive Jump - Dr. Carlson shows an animation of atoms in motion.....cute!!! I wanna link to it! Could we model interpersonal relations in some kind of analogue? I've envisioned forever - do we have the technology?

Einstein relates diffusivity to time using a mean-square displacement.....average over all atoms, average over all possible times....get tau....then see how it changes, the slope is the diffusion quotient...

Vacancy concentrations are crucial - but how do we figure this out? One method comes up with a physically impossible result (100% vacancy) which indicates some of the physics is still being missed in the calculations. The standard MD simulations.... tend to significantly underestimate.... (something crucial. Kinda like social science, language, social construction of reality, you know what I mean).

Tracer diffusion simulations: replace 10% of the atoms with some other elements and examine the rate of diffusion of that element. (Can I just say, as if anything only ever goes in one way?!!!!!?)

Failure to generate (via simulation) the relationships that match measured behavior in strain relationships but the gaps/discrepancies point us to what we're missing... STATIC properties all MATCH up But the DYNAMICS do not!!! (Same as with social science?!)
Failing to account for what's happening to atoms when there are other atoms in the vicinity. Different cases pending varying polarizability. (I swear this is group relations jargon!)

I haven't busted any of them for awhile.

Our celebrity chemist gets in a tease against (?) engineers, although I have to say, the students I've had with Asperger's in Communication classes have contributed to the learning processes (interpersonal communication, group dynamics) in extraordinary ways.

A brilliant all-purpose academic advertises 60 second science . Cool! :-)

Gifts still accrue to the most recent birthday boy - whose half-hourly fortunes, apparently, ranged from the moribund to the obscene.

Which way will this bit of public (!) feedback be read?

1. "these awkward scenarios Steph likes to impose on us."


2. "these awkward scenarios Steph likes to impose on us."


3. "...despite these awkward scenarios Steph likes to impose on us?"

Now, THAT is a beautiful example for an in-class test!