In this cute Baby Blues comic strip, there is a clear difference between the mom and her son, Hammie, in interpretating drying of dishes.
To her, she dries the dishes by using a dish towel. To Hammie, a blow-dryer works the same way - it dries things!
Applying the 4 processes of 'Social Thinking', we can understand why Hammie would choose to use that industrial equipment on a simple household chore.
Pay Attention: Hammie is aware that the dishes are not dry and hence sought out something that he presumed would help dry them.
Interpret: Hammie must have seen someone using the blow-dryer to dry some other stuff, and hence he interpreted that information to be useful in this situation.
Make Judgment: Hammie generalized that interpretation to everything that can be dried by using that equipment.
Rely on Memory: As mentioned above, Hammie must have seen someone using the blow-dryer before elsewhere, otherwise it wouldn't occur to him that that equipment could be used for this purpose.
This process is a cycle that is inter-connected with one another. This example is a demostration of how it is linked. Based on Hammie's innocently-made mistake, he would learn that a dish towel is more appropriate to dry the dishes. This new information is stored in his memory. In future situations, he would know to use the dish towel (relying on memory) to dry the wet dishes, instead of that giantic machine he (i presume) has trouble balancing it to start with.
