Is autism the opposite of schizophrenia?

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Do you believe in God?
I'm on the autism spectrum and I believe in God 37%  37%  [ 14 ]
I'm on the autism spectrum and I don't believe in God 63%  63%  [ 24 ]
I'm not on the autism spectrum and I believe in God 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
I'm not on the autism spectrum and I believe in God 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Total votes : 38

ladyrain
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03 Sep 2010, 12:40 pm

Determinism wrote:
TPE2 wrote:
ladyrain wrote:
There is a basic idea that autism and psychopathy represent two extremes of social cognition.
Crespi & Badcock appear to equate any form of psychosis to psychopathy, when they are not the same thing.


I read the paper, and my impression is more that they equate psychosis more with schizophrenia.


I am in agreement with TPE2. Where is any form of psychosis equated to psychopathy?


Poorly phrased, I was tired.
The idea that there is an opposition between the social cognitions in autism and psychopathy isn't part of C&B's hypothesis. That idea came from others such as Attwood, as far as I can remember.

The authors' psychotic-spectrum conditions include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, also schizotypy, Klinefelter syndrome, velocardiofacial syndrome, and dyslexia. So you have a psychotic-spectrum of symptomology represented as 'mentalistic' being presented as the opposite of 'mechanistic' autism. And since negative-affect psychosis doesn't seem to fit into the hypothesis, that is mainly ignored.

I hadn't read all the articles, but now I have. They do respond to most criticism, by effectively saying 'our ideas are bigger than that'. They contrast psychopathy to autistic savantism, by introducing the psychotic savant. The given examples are an interesting choice. These authors are at all times using a very circumscribed viewpoint of autism, and are very selective about which research they quote.

Quote:
Autistic savantism is characterized by outstanding, if isolated, mechanistic skills or expertise set against a background of general mentalistic deficits. Accordingly, we might predict that psychotic savantism should show the exact opposite cognitive configuration: remarkable, if perhaps highly circumscribed, mentalistic talents coexisting with more general mechanistic deficits. By this term we do not mean to suggest that the savants in question are in fact psychotic, only that their cognitive configuration puts them on the psychotic side of the mentalistic spectrum. Nevertheless, the symmetry cannot be exact.

For a start, the normally sad plight of autistics reminds us that mentalistic deficits are typically much more significant socially and have an enormous impact on people’s personal relationships in a way in which mechanistic deficits seldom if ever do. Not being able to program the video, change a plug, or read a map is one thing, but failing to understand other people’s motives, actions, and intentions is quite another – and much more damaging
from a social point of view. Hyper-mentalistic tendencies of the kind seen in psychotic savants might normally promote a person’s social adjustment because of the skill these consummate mentalists have in manipulating others and exploiting them thanks to their natural empathic understanding – particularly of other people’s weaknesses. Consequently, psychotic savants are likely to be identified at worst as cranks or charlatans rather than psychopaths, and at best we should not expect psychotic savants to be as noticeable as autistic ones usually are, or as readily diagnosed as such.

Again, the areas of expertise involved in psychotic savantism might not be so obviously striking as calendar-calculation, photographic memory, or computer-like maths skills are. By contrast, hyper-mentalistic savantism might be expected in skills and areas of expertise that are much closer to normal social life and everyday concerns.
Examples might be outstanding achievement in religious and political evangelism; literary and theatrical culture; litigation and the law; hypnosis, faith-healing, and psychotherapy; fashion, advertising, and public relations; and commerce, confidence-trickery, and fraud of all kinds.



ladyrain
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03 Sep 2010, 3:00 pm

anbuend wrote:
And autism is not an extreme male brain. That's just one guy's method of selling books. He force-fits his theories. Parts that don't fit are dismissed. His idea even of what a male brain looks like is not all that scientific. One scientist told me that some autistic traits are more characteristic neurologically of females. But even that is talking averages, not absolutes. (And that part is about actual cognitive science. Not how people answer a bunch of biased surveys.). The extreme male brain theory is pop science, the worst of the "science for nonscientists" that autism research represents. Most autism research seems to involve pulling something out of your butt and manipulating your data (whether consciously or unconsciously) to fit. Schizophrenia can't possibly be an extreme female brain because it's not a thing, it's a collection of unrelated things bound together by sloppy thinking.

I think this is two more guys looking to sell books, and using autism to do it.

This hypothesis doesn't seem to be about autism at all, despite the title. If it wasn't being used to validate a connection between 'male' and 'female' brain-models, and the fact that referencing autism probably increases readership, I doubt it would have been mentioned.
In fact I'm not sure what their stated goal actually is.
Quote:
we are thus not proposing that these conditions are caused in any exclusive sense by alterations to genomic imprinting ... Our main goal instead is to integrate predictions from evolutionary theory and genetics with psychology, neuroscience, and psychiatry, to further our understanding of the major disorders of human cognition, affect, and behavior.



Dnuos
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03 Sep 2010, 3:25 pm

As for the poll, I swear, don't pull the "Religion = Schizophrenia" card.

It's a poorly-founded insult, and while most mental illnesses have a spectrum of some sort, religious beliefs can't even be considered mild schizophrenia.