A hypothesis that those on spectrum are not socially blind

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I can't agree more.

I think it has more to do with the way someone has adapted to life, using autistic strategies, rather than necessarily severity.

The way I see it, autistic people have a limited amount of abilities to choose from. And while this is rarely a conscious choice, our brains end up somehow "choosing" to forfeit some skills, and to allow others to exist. Which pattern of things has been forfeited, versus which pattern of abilities is still there, determines a lot of how autistic people vary in how we appear to people and how we function. Another part of it has to do with whether we make permanent forfeits, or whether we are constantly shifting between various abilities that we can have one at a time but not all at once (and we don't necessarily have control over these shifts). And other things like that.

This is why a particular person most people would call severely autistic may be able to read people better than a particular person most people would call very mildly autistic. Mild vs. severe tends more to be about the appearance of a small set of skills, and there are meanwhile dozens of possible patterns underneath it, maybe hundreds, that are ignored when we look at what gets called severity alone.

Personally, my brain seems to have elected to have a baseline set of skills that stays roughly the same, but then to allow some shifting around in temporary ways (but that always fall back to the baseline in the end). This includes things like:

* Having a terrible time with receptive language (in my baseline state, language doesn't exist, period)
* Having a terrible time understanding the identity and nature of objects around me, and otherwise interpreting sensory information
* Having a terrible time with conceptual thinking
* Being very good at unconsciously picking up on the 'feel' and 'flow' and 'tonality' and 'movement' of people and things around me
* Being very good at 'sensing' things in general, through very heavily sensory patterns

That's just a few of the things, but that results in intense empathy without even knowing where it's coming from. Around people, I get bombarded with emotions so much that they can be just as hard to disentangle as any other sensory information is for me.

Meanwhile, there are people who opt for a totally different pattern: They focus in on language, logic, and conceptual thinking, and they lose the 'sensing' that I excel at, and cannot pick up on the feel and pattern of people's movements and tonality and rhythms. They are not necessarily "more autistic" than me, nor am I necessarily "more autistic" than them, it's just that we have opted (well, our brains have opted for us...) for totally different configurations of abilities. It's hard to compare severity in two sets of people who are configured so differently. And yet we're both autistic, because the reasons that our brains have had to opt for these particular patterns are very similar (having to probably do with something like limited multitasking ability, information bombardment, and other more underlying things that even very different autistic people may have in common beneath all the differences elsewhere).

Thanks for posting that anbuend, I've never thought of it that way, but it sounds logical to me. It would explain the huge differences between two different autistic people.'
I always keep thinking about things in myself that don't seem to be stereotypical autistic, and wondering if I got a wrong diagnosis (though I already got a second opinion...), though I do recognise a lot of other things.
I find it difficult to understand what autism exactly is, because it seems to be so different in people, though there also is always 'something' thesame...

Maybe this is influenced by early reward? Does the family of origin look for and encourage intelligence or warmth? I am sure mine would have encouraged any intelligence I showed and ignored any warmth, however small. I'm not saying that I wasn't autistic at birth, just that we know that the infant mind is much more versatile and is just waiting for clues as to which way to grow. Hence children learning a 2nd language so much faster.

It could be influenced by that. Or by a lot of other things, including possibly internal factors in terms of a slight brain-preference for one over another. I don't think it can be entirely family, as my brother and I are are as totally opposite as two autistic people can get and still be autistic. And I think my family encouraged some things in me that were not my strengths. I suspect there's also other aspects of environment (like, just what experiences a person is exposed to, for instance) that are factors as well.

I once read a theory of autism that basically suggested that there was sort of some really deep-down-level traits that are similar in all autistic people but that the way those traits manifest in terms of outward skills and stuff can be so different from each other that many people would have a hard time believing the things in common existed. I don't know if it's true or not but it's interesting.

Well look at how different neurotypical people are from each other. I think the reason I get on with odd people in real life is not because we have so much in common, but because we have both faced how hard it is to connect with anyone. We are on a similar level of need. I know my new friend says she annoys everyone, but she doesn't annoy me.

Anyway in response to the OP again, I was going to say, if you can't process all the social and emotional information you are receiving, then you are effectively blind. Too much is maybe as bad as too little.

But then I thought, yes there is more hope in seeing too much, because if you can find a way to filter it - such as only talking to one person at a time when rested - then you are ahead. And I do find this to be so.

Yes, this. For me, at least. To the point of being debilitating.

I may be misunderstanding a bit, but I don't personally feel that I'm attuned to social cues and the emotions of others at all. (That doesn't mean that I don't care, however, which people tend to assume.) I've spent too much of my life trying really hard to do the right thing in social situations and having it always be totally the wrong thing. But I don't assume that everyone else on the spectrum is the same as me. I like anbuend's theory.

I was reading an article the other day by a special education counselor who works with many Autistic children,
many of them high-functioning,
and she raised an important point:

Are (all) Aspies really disabled when it comes to understanding and mimicking NT customs,
or do they understand them, and simply do not see the point?

I know that for me, EVERYTHING has to be something I can understand as rational/logical-
I have an EXTREMELY difficult time doing *anything* that I simply don't see the point in,
and as someone who's spent two decades observing the behavior of NT peers,
many of their practices fall under that category.

I'll try to find that article.



EDIT: Bwahaha!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pos ... ty-imitate

"I started to wonder if this child, and perhaps other children with Autism, really don't know how to imitate others' actions, or if they just don't understand the point of it. This child was able to imitate my actions perfectly when it mattered to him (playing with really fun toys), but did not do so without a lot of help when we were doing actions that were not so meaningful to him. If you think about it, what exactly is the point of imitating someone clapping their hands while just sitting at the table, other than to get your snack reward?"

I can sometimes understand NT customs, but I have no ability at all to mimic them. If I try, it just comes across as very fake.

I do see the point of mimicking these customs. Even if it's just to attempt to fit in better.

I identify strongly with this part-
for me, I feel as if it comes off somewhat...melodramatically?

It IS an act.

Usually, I'm quite reclusive, and then once in a while (when a maiden's teardrops fall on a unicorn's hoof under a full moon )
I find myself in a social situation, and I'm so animated and OVERLY-engaging I think I still come off as...weird.

I find this very disturbing, and have trouble thinking of someone as having Asperger's if they were really of this disposition. If that is Asperger's, I do not have Asperger's.

Asperger's is something in the brain. To say that it is partly individuals with some holier-than-thou sounding view is ridiculous to me. Even if one can mimic and understand these things, it would not come naturally and it would be very stressful or would not come with much understanding if one were autistic.

Because, if one does not see the point, they are NOT REALLY UNDERSTANDING THESE CUSTOMS. These customs have a PURPOSE.

It was just a hypothetical about the actual causative mechanism,
as opposed to a speculative one,
of an obvious NT/Autism difference.

That difference is Aspie difficulty in navigating NT social customs,
as opposed to moral customs such as,
for instance, the general principle of not harming others,
so I don't know why it would be "disturbing".

She wasn't discussing personality traits or "disposition", but a type of PROCESSING that might be different when it comes to Autistic neurology:



I really do think you're misconstruing this woman's (very casual) opining.

As an example, I have a hard time washing clothes after I wear them.
A speculative explanation is that I am too low-functioning to accomplish the act itself,
or that I either don't understand the concept of cleanliness or that I don't value that concept,
but the ACTUAL explanation is that most of the time,
my clothes when I take them off are no LESS-clean than when I put them on,
unless I've been exerting myself or gotten into a paint project.
So the most seemingly-obvious mechanism at work is not actually correct.

It's not a "view" at all, but a fundamental difference (yes, in the brain)
between myself and most people and their learned customs
when it comes to the logic -> motivation to act pathway.



Right. But that purpose isn't necessarily one that all people will find rational.

To posit that you can't "really understand" the customs of others without "seeing the point" of them enough to undertake those customs yourself is a bit fallacious, especially considering a holistic view of intercultural understanding, for instance.

Last edited by Bethie on 22 Mar 2011, 12:49 am, edited 3 times in total.

that makes absolute sense. i know exactly what you mean.

but i don't understand the "common currency." it seems a put on and i am always imagining people are patronizing each other. i cannot make sense of people's immediate communication at all. i am always being left behind in conversation. i am always trying different metaphors for this and i can't seem to properly explain it. something like x-ray vision while being blind. i subscribe to both the intense world theory and the idea that i cannot read social cues. i am both completely overwhelmed and completely lost. i spent my whole life trying to understand other people - both "why do they act this way? - what does it mean?" and "why don't they understand this on this other level?" and would talk about it all the time. it probably exasperated everyone. no one ever understood what i was on about. it never occurred to me that anyone could interact without constant analysis and make sense of each other. i thought conversation was unnatural and everyone was equally fearful of interaction but out of embarrassment did not talk about it.

I can relate to the "not seeing the point" and rationalizing thing. When I was a child my teachers always said I was very bright but that I lacked motivation. I think I felt like everything seemed so competitive and I had a feeling that it would always be like running a race you'd never complete or win. I remember wondering when the topic came came up what I was supposed to be motivated towards. I already always tried to get the best grades I could so I was very confused about what more they wanted from me.

All my life I have failed to embody this competitive spirit that I feel rules the day. Most things look like they will result in a net loss from where I'm at.

I think that this is one of the basic differences between my mind and the mind of the "average" individual. In many cases, the purpose of a custom is simply to fit in with everybody else or to fit in with a particular social group. There is no deeper purpose. This is particularly true with customs involving clothing. Such things are pretty much incomprehensible to me, and it is really difficult for me to do them correctly.