Opinions on Simon Baron-Cohen's response to critics

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A friend of mine has made a BLOG ENTRY on Simon Baron-Cohen's response to critics to his empathy research in regards to autism. I'm curious what others on the spectrum think. Do you think it's the term 'empathy' that is under attack? Would you be more willing to accept his findings if he changed the term he uses to describe our (apparent according to his data) lack of Theory of Mind skills? Or do you think he is just way off the mark completely? My opinion happens to differ quite a lot from what most others on the spectrum I've ran across so far. My quote is the first she uses about inferring into other people's emotional states. I'm just curious to hear as many opinions as possible on this really fascinating subject.

I am tired of people confusing our lack of empathy as the same as psychopath.

Maybe they need to quit saying lack of empathy period and focus on where are problem really is which is theory of mind.

The lack of theory of mind can also be enhanced as you grow. Just because you lack theory of mind as a child doesn't mean it will be exactly the same as an adult because autistics can develop and expand as long as they are allowed to live life and experience people.

Last edited by TheygoMew on 11 Sep 2011, 2:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have no problem with Simon Baren-Cohen's views on autism.

Though, I'm a big fan of his cousin.

i thought it was an outstanding exchange. and i was heartened to see he's changed his understanding of affective empathy for ASD.

here's how he describes cognitive and affective empathy in his book, this image is out of the book:



and here's how he shows it on the blog:



this is a change which must have happened very recently since the book was only recently published.

It was a very recent exchange. It was posted last night. Here's the entire exchange : Simon Baron-Cohen Replies to Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg So far, I'm in agreement with everyone who has posted so far, which is unexpected considering what I've ran into elsewhere.

I think that most of the theories out there which propose an inherent lack of ability to develop empathy or theory of mind skills in people with autism are fundamentally flawed in their simplicity. Not to say I think the theories are worthless--I don't disagree with everything those theories propose, but I don't whole-heartedly embrace any of them either.

You might find this article interesting:

http://psych.wisc.edu/lang/pdf/Gernsbacher_autistic_modules.pdf

I hope this link works:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b014kj65/ ... d_or_Evil/
I watched this programme a few nights ago and think it's relevant to this thread. Aspergers isn't mentioned in the programme; it's about psychopaths and empathy is mentioned quite a bit. Having watched it, I feel like the exact opposite of a psychopath. But, I'm totally confused by the suggestion in the programme that psychopaths don't have empathy. Simon Baron-Cohen appears to explain it a better. However, I still consider the empathy thing to be a big red herring.

I'm not sure if I understood this correctly:



I consider cognitive as based on knowledge and affective as based on emotions.
So if I know what to do in empathy-requiring situation, I know it, because I found this scheme in some books, articles or irl before. I added it to my database and therefore learned it. So it's cognitive, right? I don't feel sympathy or something, I just use an algorithm learned before. If I knew what to do, because I felt it, I would be affective.

Cognitive empathy is being able to determine what someone else is thinking or feeling.

I am impressed that SBC switched from the idea that autistic people have no empathy at all to autistic people have affective empathy. Unfortunately, his book is out there with the wrong information.

cognitive is reading body language correctly and guessing at intentions.

i posted a thread here showing incorrect reading of bodylanguage: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt174028.html

this shows the conflict required to get a person (i believe she had ASD) to pay attention. even if she didn't, this is very typical.

Can NTs read the body language of autistics correctly? What about guessing at intentions?

In my experience, NTs get it wrong pretty often.

NTs lack cognitive empathy.

At least for the NTs I know - almost never.

Indeed.

Do NTs have affective empathy?