Autism for psychologists

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Hi,
if this is against your rules for promoting a site, just bust it, but i don't feel like i'm spamming...

After reading Uta Frith's 'Explaining the enigma' I got furious. So I wrote an article about how autism works for me. If anyone would like to read it, here it is:

http://naja.nitewinds.org/autism

This is a version for the visual impaired and other people that use text to speech software... http://naja.nitewinds.org/autism?visual=1

Last edited by naja on 01 Jun 2006, 2:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

you certainly caught my attention here. I have already taken great intrest in reading your theories about autism. Just started on the back to the brain paragraph.

Wanted to let you know that I agree with most of your opinions, and that I've experienced great [...] (have to finish my post later on)

Since I was primed or sensitised to this, by noticing an odd turn of phrase by a scientist, I've spotted it quite frequently: unobjectionable scientific or medical findings skewed or supplemented by a less or un-justified attitude or stance.

Try for example...

"When healthy people watch a film of moving triangles and a circle, they often imagine that the objects have social relationships ("The big triangle is helping the little triangle out of the square."). When people with autism look at the same clip, they see independent objects. ("The small triangle and the large triangle are moving to the right. The square isn't moving."). "

And separate out the observations from the attitude.

(from http://whyfiles.org/209autism/3.html )

Naja's paper makes the same mistakes. It is obvious in the examples included in the paper, that Naja believes that NT's are lesser than autistics.



For reference, "SWODIN" represents NTs, and "XUNI" represents autistics.

They say WE have trouble reading body language!! !
Honestly, am I the only one that would think that if a child was standing in front of a toy, it would seem logical to assume that the child wanted the toy?
Gah... neurotypicals... sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry at them.

There are factors, and yes I do have trouble in this area, but one factor is definitely connected to the quiet tyranny of the majority, and often the blithe assumption that what most do, all do.
Or worse, "if they don't then they should."

Yesterday I was talking to a lady who spent many days at school with her left hand tied behind her in order to "teach her the proper way"... That was only 35 years ago. Acceptance of difference is not the default setting of the majority.

Why on earth would NTs imagine simple polygons as having social relationships with each other? That makes no sense at all.

By the way, I can understand the frustration of reading what well-meaning but presumptuous psychologists researching autism assume wrong about us. I don't know if that makes Frith's theories completely inaccurate, though. I think there's something to a narrow focus of interest and detail orientation.

Hi danlo, this is intentional and explained in the last two paragraphs of the about the author section:


The reference to women is because just before I compare it with the situation where once men dominated science and where trying to proof women more stupid than men. I aim the text also mainly at psychologists with the hope of giving them a similar feeling as what i get from reading their texts. Further please read this also:



In hope of better understanding... sometimes the small sentences are just as important as the big chapters

Last edited by naja on 01 Jun 2006, 3:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Actually,
if you know any psychologists you think should read this paper, send me their email adress at najamelan at gmail dot com, or just send them a mail. Of course I already notified uta frith.
Wonder what they would think of autists having forums with emoticons hahaha....

Last edited by naja on 01 Jun 2006, 2:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

The context is experiments aimed at separating cues to intention that come from motion from all other cues. Think of wildlife docuumentaries in which sometimes hyenas or lions stroll along a herd of zebras or wildebeest, who don't seem to be particularly bothered, while at other times they would run when the distance to the predator is less. I remember reading of this in a book on cognition ("Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart"; nothing whatsoever to do with autism). The experimenters let people control the movement of icons of ants on a computer screen, telling them to move as if they were playing, courting, fighting, chasing, and a few other things I don't remember. The dynamics of the motion were quite distinct. I guess the bit with the geometrical figures is a follow up, using those motion dynamics, making the things that move even more abstract than the original insect shapes, and seeing whether just the dynamics of motion are enough for new subjects to infer some intention, despite the absence of things like facial expression, posture, vocalisation, pheromones and so on.

I stayed up way to late to read that.

It has a strange sort of beauty which can only be described as 'a strange sort of beauty'.


Thanks. I feel both enlighted and depressed! hah! Pattern updated!


If there was one thing i'd like to see changed, it would be the removal of the lols, F words and slang. You would greatly strengthen your case by doing so.

Did Uta Frith ever contact you back? Did she read it? Details man! Details!

Hi fuzzy,

I am glad you find it at least fascinating, that makes it really worth the time i spent. I only made it public yesterday, so no ms frith didn't get back to me yet.

About the slang and so on, I write like that because i want people that read it to feel like there is a person behind all that, and not just a dry professional theory. I write like i speak i assume. Anyway, you are not the only one to give that remark, so i keep it in consideration and will have a look through my text with that in mind. Thanks a lot for the feedback....

Naja

When my daughter was between 2 and 3 she had language delays due to microcephaly (not autisitic though) and in one of the initial evaluations I was surprised to read that the therapist observed that my daughter and I had developed our own sort of sign language. Of course they felt that was inhibitive to her developing spoken language but in reality if the language was there why would we have even developed these signals and why would my daughter be responsive to them if she was incapable if understanding language. I think communication is an area that is very misunderstood by NTs because they only see it from their perspective. I have since read where some even encourage teaching true sign language to kids with language disorders because it helps them to develop and understand spoken language. But at the time (13 years ago) it was discouraged and I was told that it might be inhibiting her from needing or wanting to speak since I was acknowledging her needs without words.

Naja, I haven't been able to get my computer to access what you wrote. I will keep trying, I would definitely like to read it. I've been reading some articles on Asperger's and Autism and some of them disturb me very much, especially because they were written by NTs who are supposedly authorities on the subject. I saw a few good ones, especially from the UK, but some others were very negative and I wondered about them. They described us in very narrow terms, and I thought we were the ones notorious for being narrow in our judgements. Made us sound like highly unpleasant people, and I know that not all of us are. I wonder where they come up with this stuff. There was also a scathing website by people who had autistic parents, making us sound like demons, and another one that was quite positive. I'm puzzled and a little sad about the negative stuff I read though. Why do some of these experts talk about us like we are a walking disease?

(edited as quotation attributions have changed)

To Naja:

There are definite points in your article, but I'm not sure I buy the whole package.

For one example, while I do not see Uta Frith coping well with autism as a spectrum, I'm not sure you acknowledge how handicapping the more extreme part or the spectrum is.
Yes there are problems over social acceptance, and the tyranny of the majority, but not all autistic difficultes can be laid at this door by any means.

As you yourself quote:

“Assumptions are like tigers, they will attack you without warning in the back, but never from the front. Beautifully inspiring, but only if kept an eye on at all times”

I'm not sure you've kept a close enough eye on your own. It's always tricky.

One of the problems of knowledge comes from the insider/outsider problem.
It is exceedingly difficult to see many situations from both perspectives at the same time, and both stances have their own insights (and blind spots)

From what I've read so far, and I've been diagnosed somewhat under a year, the Baron-Cohen view seems to have a lot to recommend it.

Last edited by Emettman on 01 Jun 2006, 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[quote="NeantHumain"]
Why on earth would NTs imagine simple polygons as having social relationships with each other? That makes no sense at all.

I think it's about being (relatively) hard wired for social relationships.

So used to seeing patterns that this extends to imposing them even it's not an appropriate mode of thinking.

Seeing pictures in clouds, or patterns in random dots would be another aspect of this, along with anthropomorphising the behaviour of animals.

Shortcuts in thinking, prejudices and assumptions save time and thought in many circumstances, and set up traps and problems in others.