Sense of humor = theory of mind

Post Reply New Topic

Last night I was in chat with some acquaintances, and one of them said somewhat out of the blue that I didn't sound autistic at all: That I had a way with storytelling and a sense of humor. He went on to say that humor requires theory of mind, and that I was an excellent writer.

This file is rather cumbersome and difficult to get through, as it's the full article:

http://ethesis.unifr.ch/theses/download ... msonAC.pdf

But in the abstract, it says:

LM = Logical Mechanism.

In any event, this mostly came down to "You don't communicate like a stereotypical 10-year old boy with Asperger's Syndrome," but the indication that any theory of mind at all somehow means "not autistic," or that humor always requires theory of mind, or that autistic people are not funny bothered me. I've seen plenty of humor here.

As for my writing, that is perhaps the thing I do best. It's my primary and favored means of communication and was a source of income for several years (and I hope it can be again).

I have never felt indicted for having a sense of humor before. It's strange. I do tend to say a lot of things that I find funny, although I have to admit that often other people do not find them funny. And often they do. But I was unaware that being autistic required one to not have a sense of humor, and my interactions on this forum have not borne out such a restriction as factual.

My main thing, though, is: Why do people feel compelled to comment on "how autistic" one appears to be? What are they trying to achieve?

From everything I have experienced and read, I've come to conclude that whole notion of aspies lacking "theory of mind" is really a load of rubbish foisted on us by Simon Baron-Cohen and fellow researchers who focus solely on specific sets of attributes (like difficulty with cognitive empathy) rather than attempting a holistic understanding of the condition. This is where the intense world theory seems to surpass all other current descriptions of the autism spectrum, including those of SB Cohen. And as the originators of intense world theory have asserted, most of the MRI/PET scan studies on people on the spectrum have been interpreted through a far too myopic lens, starting with an incomplete understanding of our condition which led to flawed analysis of the preliminary data.

Actually, not even Simon Baron-Cohen promotes the whole notion that we lack Theory of Mind any more. He has instead shifted to promote his empathizing–systemizing theory, which I find to be a step forward but still quite narrow-minded and incomplete. He seems to keep making the rather critical error of conflating cognitive empathy (which we lack) with emotional empathy and compassionate empathy (which are commonly lumped together as "affective empathy "), both of which we can experience almost too intensely, IF we get past the problem of our deficient cognitive empathy and actually come to understand the emotional state of another.

So do we really lack Theory of Mind - the ability to understand that other people also have beliefs, desires and intentions separate from our own - or do we just have a hard time SENSING AND INTERPRETING those beliefs, desires and intentions? I am very confident it is the latter.

And yeah, we can be funny. So don't listen to those acquaintances, they are simply working with outdated information.

I think that laughing with no reason during a converasation is more related to ToM than sense of humor itself. Just listen to people. They laugh at about everything they say, but not too much, as it could be considered weird.

Typical NT conversation:
- hahahaha, herp derp, hahahaha
- yea, hahahaha, durr hurr, hahahaha

where "hurr durr herp derp" is stuff that is not funny at all, even for NTs. Well, not funny to laugh it out loud at least.

Oh, and I got so wrapped up in my diatribe on Theory of Mind that I forgot to add that I'm not entirely sure why people are so quick to judge us on "how autistic" we are or aren't. If I had to guess, it has something to do with them trying to determine how free they are to criticize us for our eccentricities, since if we truly have a "condition" of sufficient severity, they would not feel right criticizing us, whereas if they can explain away our condition, they feel free to be annoyed by our behavior and call us out on it.

I've actually had the opposite too - people who tried to get me to tell them what was "wrong" with me, telling me that if I could just admit I had some sort of "condition", they would stop complaining about my odd behavior. For some reason that made me determined never to tell them.

I also think many of us make great writers because we have a very different perspective on the world, and as we are far less likely to be joiners or followers, we have things to say that NTs often find to be revelations - because they have been so busy following and conforming that they never stopped to think about an issue from a different point of view.

Very true in my experience. A lot of the random crap that I say shocks my friends because they simply never thought of it that way before, but it makes perfect sense.

I don't believe them. What bothers me is that they feel entitled to measure how autistic I am.

The funny part was he fingered a friend of mine as definitely autistic and she's been through tons of neuropsych testing her entire life, and never been diagnosed. Online she does come across as somewhat autistic (she misses a lot of jokes that rely on multiple word meanings and tends to take things more literally), but in real life she is pretty much the opposite of me in terms of demonstrativeness and behavior. She also has ADHD but nothing else.

As far as whether or not we have theory of mind, I don't know. I do know I often tend to forget people have their own thoughts, and often can't imagine or work out how people will react to me. This gets worse under pressure and in face to face conversation.

The most interesting part of this thread is under the surface. Both NT and ASD groups naturally stereotype and generalize. Is that a function of ToM? People don't come out of an assembly line, there's as much variation is the ASD population as there is in the NT population. The ignorance about AS is annoying but then I have to sift through piles of "aspie vs. NT" garbage on this forum to find a few meaningful threads. I don't know which is more annoying.

I never said NT in my post. In fact, the person who said this has ADHD, and thus I wouldn't consider him NT.

Well, I think you've answered your question, at least partly. Some humor requires more ToM, some less, or even none.

In real life I painfully lack a sense of humor. When in good mood I'd make people laugh at me rather than laugh about my humor. On the internet, I don't know. You have more time to think in written form. I avoid chat rooms, though, because I'm slow and like to overthink matters.

I think those autistic people who's strengths is in writing may find more humor in language, not only puns. Similarly, those who speak better may have better skills at spoken humor. Unevenness can be expected, though, as usual.

I think you misunderstood the point of my post. It's irrelevant that the person was NT or ADHD. The point was that stereotyping suggests a working ToM, maybe not perfect but still functioning. That's why I was pointing to some of the threads on this forum.

I would think that someone who lacks TOM would tell a joke thinking the other person would find it funny just because they did.

I am better at making jokes than I am at understanding them. I often need them explained.

I agree about strengths reflecting such things - writing making written humor easier.



I did misunderstand. I am not sure how stereotyping and ToM interact, but I am sure if you ask Simon Baron-Cohen, he can explain how either those who stereotype are not fully autistic or how stereotyping by autistic people doesn't reflect ToM even if stereotyping by others does.

That's sarcasm.

Is it possible that people are trying to reassure themselves of commonality existing between them and the austistic person, or even to reassure the autistic person? I think it might depend a lot on who is doing the commenting.

That's usually why I make jokes. I find them funny.



Maybe? I have no idea.

I think maybe a lot of (nonautistic?) people need to believe they understand things, like there's a short circuit between finding a new object in their world and interpreting the world with the new object in it. This makes sense when thinking about nonautistic versus autistic learning styles and the paths taken to assimilate new data - http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... space.html . It makes me wonder a lot about how they see things, subjectively. I also wonder about the smart nonautistics who arrive at rationality - how different are they from us? I've suspected for a while that language, cultural habits and sex are patching over subjective views of the world that would be completely unrecognisable to each other.

I've always been hilarious, and I understand all jokes. When I was young I would obsessively read joke books - I didn't remember them but I think I learned the underlying forms very well. I know that nonautistics hate it when you 'systemise' a better understanding than they have of things like that.

When I ask myself what others are trying to achieve there is much uncertainty. The possibility I wrote of would seem unlikely if the person who brought up your autism was overtly rude or aggressive in their other communications, but, I think, not impossible. To be certain of why people do what they do seems impossible, at least for me, but I do consider what motivates others, just not very effectively, in a way that is biased by my own motivations, and handicapped by my lack of social versatility.