Page 2 of 3 [ 34 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3  Next

naturalplastic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Aug 2010
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 33,873
Location: temperate zone

25 Sep 2014, 5:40 pm

Johannes88 wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
There is a neurological condition that is sometimes refered to as "the opposite of autism". Its called "Williams Syndrome". Like autism it appears in childhood. It causes you to compulsively socialize. You can't keep to yourself, and you're compelled to interact with others in the room- in contrast to autistics who are known for being withdrawn, and "into themselves".

But I don't think that that's what your're looking for as an "opposite of autism".

People who keep up appearances,and do everything seemingly perfectly?

If they happened to be female then they might be called "Stepford WIves" (after the novel and the movie of that name). Have no idea what you would call the male equivalent of Stepford wife.


Call me crazy but I thought asd was more about not being able to read peoples emotions and understand social cues. I was social, I was a social kamikaze. Maybe if I was smarter I would've been shy.


I dunno.

The "aut" in "autism" means "self". They named the condition that because children who have it are remote from other people, and dont interact.

But people on the autism spectrum also have trouble reading social cues etc. Do they get that way because they are not interested in other people and dont learn the skills? Or do they become withrawn because they try to socialized and fail, and hurt and withraw? Chicken, or the egg?

And I'm just saying what some folks say. Not everything in life has "an opposite". But among the few folks who are familiar with William's Syndrome (even more rare than autism) are those who describe it as "kinda the opposite of autism". But "willies" have some traits in common with auties as well Ive heard.



Birdsleep
Blue Jay
Blue Jay

User avatar

Joined: 5 Sep 2014
Age: 54
Gender: Female
Posts: 79

25 Sep 2014, 9:44 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Johannes88 wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
There is a neurological condition that is sometimes refered to as "the opposite of autism". Its called "Williams Syndrome". Like autism it appears in childhood. It causes you to compulsively socialize. You can't keep to yourself, and you're compelled to interact with others in the room- in contrast to autistics who are known for being withdrawn, and "into themselves".

But I don't think that that's what your're looking for as an "opposite of autism".

People who keep up appearances,and do everything seemingly perfectly?

If they happened to be female then they might be called "Stepford WIves" (after the novel and the movie of that name). Have no idea what you would call the male equivalent of Stepford wife.


Call me crazy but I thought asd was more about not being able to read peoples emotions and understand social cues. I was social, I was a social kamikaze. Maybe if I was smarter I would've been shy.


I dunno.

The "aut" in "autism" means "self". They named the condition that because children who have it are remote from other people, and don't interact.

But people on the autism spectrum also have trouble reading social cues etc. Do they get that way because they are not interested in other people and don't learn the skills? Or do they become withdrawn because they try to socialized and fail, and hurt and withdraw? Chicken, or the egg?

And I'm just saying what some folks say. Not everything in life has "an opposite". But among the few folks who are familiar with William's Syndrome (even more rare than autism) are those who describe it as "kinda the opposite of autism". But "willies" have some traits in common with auties as well Ive heard.

In another thread, GhostNeanderthal posted this link about the Empathy Imbalance Hypothesis:
Empathy Imbalance Hypothesis

This hypothesis explains why Autism and Williams Syndrome have traits in common and why the opposite of autism is Anti-Social Personality Disorder or Narcissism.
(I'm posting a few excerpts from that long text in the link below:)

[...]
"The empathy imbalance hypothesis (EIH) of autism, in keeping with the theory of mind
hypothesis (Baron-Cohen, 1995), proposes that autism involves a significant
cognitive empathy (CE) deficit. However, the hypothesis also proposes,
in contrast to prevailing theory, that people with autism actually have a
heightened capacity for basic emotional empathy (EE).
This combination of a CE deficit and an EE
surfeit can be termed EE-dominated empathic imbalance."
[...]
"Defining empathy and Autism Empathy:
CE is the ability to understand and predict the behavior of others in
terms of attributed mental states, particularly epistemic mental states such
as believing, knowing, pretending, and guessing. Similarly, Blair (2005) wrote
that the term CE is used when ?the individual represents the internal mental
state of another individual?.
CE is thus synonymous with theory of mind or mentalizing (Baron-Cohen, 2003; Blair, 2005).
EE is an emotional response in an individual that stems from and parallels
the emotional state of another individual. Similarly, Hoffman (2000) defined
empathy as ?an affective response more appropriate to another?s situation
than one?s own.""
[...]
One way to test the hypothesis that CE and EE are separable systems
is to look for the potential empathy disorders that are consistent with such
a relationship.
I predicted the existence of four developmental empathy
disorders:
(a)CE deficit disorder (low CE ability combined with high EE sensitivity),
(b)EE deficit disorder (low EE sensitivity combined with high CE ability),
c) general empathy deficit disorder (low CE ability and low EE sensitivity), and
(d) general empathy surfeit disorder (high CE ability and high EE sensitivity).

I hypothesized that these four disorders tend to be part of
(1) autism,
(2) antisocial personality disorder,
(3) schizoid personality
disorder (and some cases of autism spectrum disorder), and
(4) Williams syndrome, respectively.
Williams syndrome is a neuro-developmental disorder
characterized by intellectual deficits, linguistic skill, hyper-sociability, and
concern for others.
People with schizoid personality disorder are solitary
individuals who unintentionally disregard social norms and appear to lack
empathy. Schizoid personality disorder, unlike schizotypal personality
disorder, is not closely related to the positive symptoms of schizophrenia
and can resemble Asperger syndrome.
According to this approach, autism and antisocial personality disorder
are opposite empathy imbalance disorders." [...]

Sorry for this wall of text, but I thought this may be interesting.



btbnnyr
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 May 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 7,359
Location: Lost Angleles Carmen Santiago

25 Sep 2014, 10:20 pm

If looking at the social cognition aspect of autism, then the opposite of bad social cognition in autism is good social cognition in neurotypical people.


_________________
Drain and plane and grain and blain your brain, and then again,
Propane and butane out of the gas main, your blain shall sustain!


1024
Sea Gull
Sea Gull

User avatar

Joined: 13 Dec 2013
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 231

26 Sep 2014, 4:48 am

Antisocial people (as well as Machiavellians and perhaps Narcississ) lack emotional empathy, but do they really have more than average cognitive empathy? I'd guess that the main antisocial symptoms (such as lack of emotional empathy, agression) are probably orthogonal to, or slightly negatively correlated to cognitive empathy. Those antisocial people who incidentally happen to have high cognitive empathy will be manipulative (which is something that requires cognitive empathy). So manipulativeness becomes known as common among antisocial people, but not because they have more cognitive empathy, but because those who have it are likely to be manipulative; and thus perhaps also more likely to be recognized as antisocial.


_________________
Maths student. Somewhere between NT and ASD.