Why autism is the key to the mind

Post Reply New Topic

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... -take-note

"Gaze-monitoring is critical in social interaction, and WS children have been described as 'hyper-social' and over-gifted with 'cocktail party skills' by contrast to autistic ones, who have symptomatic social deficits."

I hate cocktail parties, so where's the problem?

if you hate them, there isn't one. i guess that's both safe (and fair) to say. i think i'm a repressed extrovert in some ways, and i sometimes think a little theory of mind would be helpful in keeping my foot out of my mouth---which, among other things, limits my sociability factor. (that, an ability to censor my thoughts... ) i haven't found a solution yet.

(although i doubt there are many cocktail parties on my horizon, regardless... i can't imagine anything more uninteresting.)

sad, was reading the linked article within the linked article.... Sick and tired of those of us on the spectrum being treated as subhuman, even if the other person doesnt necessarily mean it, It has been sorta implied in my books. Now as for my response to the points he has made, will be the following...

We can read emotions and stuff somewhat from what ive gathered from my experiences as well as from what others have posted. Its thaty some of us tend to maybe think to much on things and try to evaluate EVERY PERCIEVABLE OUTCOME. I swear, maybe they should ask US how we process things instead of using a totally incompatable understanding of the mind. They view everything from their own mentally structural view, most likely NT. Maybe they should just ask instead of purely going by the neurons and such, ASK those who live on the spectrum.

I agree! I'm not sure how they feel so confident coming to conclusions based on lab experiments. Haven't they ever heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?

So, wait a minute, they never tell us what's really happening in the picture. Is the chimp attacking the boy?

I couldn't tell if it was an attack or if they were both laughing. How are we supposed to tell with a line drawing?

To be honest My interpreting of the picture is as follows.

Me Monkey had poo in his hand and rubbed it in the kids face. The Kid recoils in obvious disgust and horror XD.

No really, I took it as the monkey trying to be funny but the kid didnt find it funny.

from the article:

Ummm... so they're saying that non-autistic people do not look at someone's face, see the expression, and figure out the mental state? I had always assumed that's what everyone was doing, just that non-autistic people do it instantly, as if by instinct, while we have to take at least a moment to observe and actively analyze the facial expression.

So if non-autistic people aren't predicting others' mental states by interpreting the facial expressions . . . . how the hell do they do it???? Don't tell me that non-autistic people are psychically intuiting it because a character like Deanna Troi on Star Trek (TNG) who can perceive mental states empathically would not be such a big deal if that's what non-autistic people all do. The entire crew of the Enterprise would be like that.

So how do non-autistic people predict others' mental states if not by observing facial expressions????????

In NTs, the facial expression is sent directly to the amygdala for "empathy-processing" at the same time as it's being sent to the visual area for conscious perception. In Auties and Aspies, there's a glitch in that first process, so it's processed first like any other visual stimulus, without the preferential treatment normally accorded to faces. From there, it's possible to draw conscious conclusions about the face-- "the zygomatic major muscle is contracted but the orbicularis oculi is relaxed; that's a fake smile." It's also possible to recognize the face (NTs have a savant-like ability to immediately memorize the precise appearance of anything that registers as a face).

Further, theoretically, it should be possible to develop a reaction similar to what NTs have, through classical conditioning. ("Eyes are narrowed-- AAAAH! STOP YELLING!! ...Eyes narrowed-- AAAAAH!! ! STOP IT!! ! Eyes narrowed again... no, make the eyes not be narrow! ...Oh, no yelling this time. Huh.")

The only thing is, why do people keep saying eyes are important in social interaction? I just completely don't get it.

I just don't get why eyes seem to be viewed as more important than the rest of the face. You can learn a lot from someone's mouth & voice (if you can judge tone & inflection).