This just in! (sarcasm warning)

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People with autism can read emotions, feel empathy
https://spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/people-with-autism-can-read-emotions-feel-empathy/

On a quick peruse it looks like they got it right. I'm just amazed that it's 2016 and the NT researchers are just now figuring some of this stuff out. It's like none of them have ever actually *known* any of the lab rats they study and profess to have expertise in.

Thank you for that link Edenthiel.

The harm done by this stereotype, and promoters of it (sadly still numerous) is incalculable, so these kinds of links are important, refreshing, and hopefully another piece of healing for some.

I am posting this link, as a contextual companion piece, which is a thoughtful exploration of the why and how of stereotypes and stereotypers:

http://philpapers.org/archive/LAWSAS-2.pdf

Taken together, I hope links like these two may possibly be a useful resource (now or in the future) for people interested in contributing to the gradually developing area of study which can be termed the "sociology of autism".

I saw this on reddit two days ago. Apart from the horrible title of the article, it made me wonder if some people with autism are actually good at interpreting facial expressions and reading people's emotions. I've always been horrible at this kind of thing, but I wonder if autistic people without alexithymia are much better at socializing than those who have alexithymia.

Well, that explained a lot to me, as someone who is still learning about this. I really liked how the study was made really simple, and how they presented their findings in a clear and understandable way. No academic hedging, very clear result that made a lot of sense.

I was particularly interested in the group that had alexithymia but not autism. It explains a lot about some people I know.

I remember reading about how some group of researchers that wanted to use eye tracking for early identification of autism in toddlers; if what they are identifying is actually alexithymia, they'll miss about half of the autistic kids and add a bunch of aspiring schizophrenics, ODC'ers and miscellany to the pool. It boggles the mind why some people have so much faith in the medical professions.

^ Eye tracking helps identify social deficits, not necessarily alexithymia.

and a allegorious fable,
once the so called jesus was an empathic autistic who took the help-mission litteraly,
unaware (tom) that giving realhelp for free isn't tolerated, it upsets the whole society and the patriarchs must act on the sight of such contagious rebellion, hence get the designed executioneers to execute the high-flying black sheep, (everything high is seen as black from underneath)

> helping, taking that litteraly, and without priotorizing self-help in the first line of action, let's call that a handicap
and make a statement to nail that down
forever

there was an earlier record of disturbing respectfull bankers,
so it wasn't very difficult to get this moving in the right direction

My guess is that they have studied children all the time and are now realising that either:

1) They grow up.
or
2) There are millions of diagnosed adults that have no research associated with them.


Big D'UH!! !

Interesting piece of research, to me it comes over as a refreshing counterbalance to the claims that Aspies simply have a reduced degree of empathy. At first I was concerned about the apparent lack of numbers, but the citations take care of that.........

..........Of particular interest to me is the idea that it's alexithymia rather than ASD as such that screws around with "cognitive empathy,".........

.........and that even people with alexithymia may show more distress in response to witnessing others’ pain than individuals without alexithymia. So it seems, as I've long thought, that the whole empathy notion is a much more complicated issue than is often assumed.
Excuse split posting, CloudCrap is trying to spoil it for me, but it's not going to win.

Rebalanced this thread to return it to OP's topic focus and to remove malicious cross-posting.

I find all of this so interesting. So, do any therapists have any clue how to handle alexithymia? So much of therapy is based on getting in touch with emotions, so how is alexithymia treated?

Also, from the other side, how do you empathize with someone who has alexithymia if even they don't know what they're feeling?

Yes we can read emotions and experience empathy (to a degree), the problem I think the majority of us have is that we misread or misjudge body language entirely and can find accurate perspective taking extremely difficult.

There's also things like blunted effect, a lack of facial expressions and lack of emotional reciprocity.