Wow, wow, wow!! !! !

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Wow, wow and wow!
I went to a GREAT workshop during the last 2 days....given by Dr Peter Vermeulen from Belgium!
He does research on Autism and published several books....
Ok....the new buzz that REALY MADE SENSE is his research and theory on Context Blindness in people with ASD!
So he told us....and it makes sense, that yes mind blindness does exist, but that thats not really what causes social inappropriate behaviour, rather that they found that people with ASD has Context Blindness. Roughly this means that a person with ASD can not read info from the environment to create a context to help him understand for example facial expressions, emotions...and so forth.
He went on telling about research that showed that social skill training doesn't really improve sosial skills within the person with ASD, because the contexts where these skills needs to be applied is changing all the time....and because people with ASD struggles with transfering info into new situations, cant adjust and apply the learned skills...
He also spoke about the ineffectiveness of teaching for example identification of emotions through pictures....because for example....crying can be because of sadness or happiness!! !! And what is social inappropriate behaviour!! !??? Because the appropriateness depends on the context....That we rather need to explain and teach these kids how to interpret contexts.....exct!
And because context cant be understood...people with ASD struggles with predicting the outcome or what will happen in a given situation and this increases their anxiety....this then can lead to anger, crying, exct!
The penny really dropped for me!
He published a book called "Autism as context blindness".... I am really going to order it for me!

I just bought his book. I have not started it yet, but now I REALLY can't wait to read it. Sounds awesome !

Interesting. That definitely makes sense to me.

Thanks for this info. It really makes sense to me. It really seems to cover the situation of trying to comprehend social situations, and the trouble we on the spectrum have doing that. No two social situations are the same. Different people, or the same people, but different circumstances--topic, mood, time of day, weather, etc. Any, and everything can effect the specific social "event." With our neurological processing problems, reading social situations takes too much mental processing "power" and is too complex for our limited capacity to handle. Some of us are higher functioning in the social areas, or have worked hard over many years on learning social stuff, so they are better able to handle it, but many of us are not that well off.

Unfortunately, understanding the problem doesn't fix the problem, but it does ease some of my stress, because it clears up my confusion over not knowing why I have social problems.

Questor....yes....He went on explaining that many reasons for ASD behaviour are looked for inthe frontal cognitive cortex.....But says that reading context exct happens 90% in the subconsious....Context blindness cant be cured BUT we can try and use our consious frontal lobes to try and get information to help us understand these contex....So maybe you can try and ask more information regarding a situation to try and understand it better....for example, asking, why do you say that, or....tell me more.....orhow does that make you feel....exct?

Thanks for sharing that. It surely makes A LOT of sense from where we stand. Little things that trip DS up could very well be described as things that are out of the context that he knows.

So along these lines, what is it about video games that seems to cause the context related anxiety to completely disappear? When DS is out of his comfort zone and in obvious distress, I can hand him my phone to play a game and he is fine. He will often seek out new games on the computer, I think he has played practically every game on coolmath.com and only rarely gets frustrated when he can't get a new game. I guess what I find curious is that unfamiliar context in real life throws him for a loop but unfamiliar context in a computer or video game does not appear to be distressing at all.

Bombaloo......remember this context that is referred to here, is more in the sense of social interaction also.....It's about interptreting other peoples behaviour and surcomstances within a context so that it makes sense to them, why things happens the way it is happening and what to expect to happen next....thus causing the anxiety....and social anxiety. The computer game gives him control over things.....he knows when its going to start and if he doesnt like what is happening, he can decide to switch it of or change the games....so its predictable in some way....it has a beginning and end. Its sometimes also repetitive and it helps him put his mind on something else....maybe helping him to escape from a social threatening situation?

My son is exactly the same.....its difficult because during dr appointments he can only sit still and behave if he has something electronickly to play with.....But unfortunately some adults think its rude....Lol....they will see what is rude if he doesnt play on his gadgets!! !! ! He uses it not to have to interact with the adults and bordom makes him irritated, so it helps him to relax.....

In this situation we as parents needs to read the context to understand the reasons WHY our kids behave sertain ways.....Dr Vermeulen said that often parents or adults just critisize ASD peoples behaviour...that WE dont look at the context of the behaviour to help us understand why they sometimes behave the way they do,! !! !! ! He calls it " to try and understand ASD peoples behaviour from WITHIN"......To try and understand THEIR context, because it often differs from NT......and then the behaviour will have a goal and meaning that makes sense!! !! !! !

I too read some of the online articles on Peter Vermeulen's book "Autism as Context Blindness". I'd always found that I had troubles with spontaneous processing of situational context, or SPSC This is why, before my diagnosis 11 years ago, I got really frustrated with BS psychiatrists putting on facial expressions for me asking what they were, and when I correctly identified them, he said, "well, you don't appear to have any problem reading body language!! !" However, as we know, there could be some situational elements that I'm expected to know, then I gave an unwittingly inappropriate response, and the other person may make a face that I can't interpret in that context, but would otherwise know its general meaning.

This, I believe, is also the key to dispel one of the myths of Aspergers, that we are inherently inflexible and get overly worried about unpredictable situations. The truth is, we get no more worried about unpredictable situations than an NT would, like waiting for the results of a test or an important phone call or a switch of residence or career. As one of the summaries for the article read: "Contextual sensitivity works at a subconscious level to: help us focus on the essential; make the world around us more predictable; and help us to find the right meaning in vague situations when multiple meanings are possible." This says it all, that we don't have the inherent, intuitive faculties to make the world more predictable. An unpredictable situation to one of us, would be much more predictable to an NT. At least, it would present as more predictable in much less time. By the time we've gone through our rhythms of consternation, the opportunity may have passed. And that's the core struggle.

Great summaries of the concept are in the URLs below:
http://www.aapcpublishing.net/book/view ... -blindness

http://www.autism.net/services/services ... dness.html