Quote:
However, most of the excess risk appears to be mediated by substance abuse comorbidity.
Notice this part. It means that schizophrenia is not the directly associated factor; the increase can be predicted almost entirely by the increased number of people with schizophrenia who are also substance abusers. (This does not mean that drug use causes violent crime; it's a correlation. Perhaps the factor behind both drug use and violence is a personality trait like impulsivity, or the mere fact that most drug abuse is illegal. In any event, you can't tell from a simple correlational study.)
Anyway: Autism and violence--no relationship.
Pervasive developmental disorders and criminal behaviour: a case control studyQuote:
Abstract:
The prevalence and pattern of criminal behaviour in a population of 313 former child psychiatric in-patients with pervasive developmental disorders were studied. The patients were divided into three subgroups and compared with 933 matched controls from the general population. Age at follow-up was between 25 years and 59 years. An account of convictions in the nationwide Danish Register of Criminality was used as a measure of criminal behaviour. Among 113 cases with childhood autism, .9% had been convicted. In atypical autism (n=86) and Asperger's syndrome (n=114) the percentages were 8.1% and 18.4%, respectively. The corresponding rate of convictions in the comparison groups was 18.9%, 14.7%, and 19.6% respectively. Particular attention is given to arson in Asperger's syndrome (p= .0009).
(Note the much lower rates of criminal behavior in those with more severe autism, while crime rates for Asperger's are similar to the general population. The rate of arson in Asperger's, however, is elevated--meaning that we commit about the same number of crimes, but are more likely to choose arson than an NT would be. My speculation is that arson is a crime which does not involve other people, only their property, and so is not so socially demanding.)
No increase in criminal convictions in Hans Asperger's original cohort.Quote:
Abstract:
Hans Asperger originally used the term "autistic psychopathy" to describe his patients on the autism spectrum, leading to a possible confusion with psychopathic disorder and delinquent behaviour. We conducted a penal register search for 177 former patients of Asperger's clinic with a childhood diagnosis of "autistic psychopathy" or features of the disorder in Austria. The mean percentage of registered convictions was similar to that in the general male population of Austria over the studied time period. A qualitative assessment of offence types in Asperger's former patients suggests that the nature of offences does not differ from that in the general population. In this original cohort of Asperger's patients, convictions were no more common than in the general male population.
(Note that in this cohort there is not an increased risk of arson for Asperger's, since the nature of the offenses is not qualitatively different from the general population.)
Empathy, values, morality and Asperger's syndrome.Quote:
Abstract:
The aims of this study were, first, to re-address the issue of empathy among people with autism conditions; second, to explore the relationships between empathy and values among autistic populations and controls; and third, to explore the capacity for moral agency among those affected by autism. We compared responses of an Asperger group (N = 41) and a control group (N = 139) to measures of self-reported empathy (Davis's IRI) and value priorities (Schwartz's PVQ). Control group results were largely in line with previous studies, such that empathy subscales of perspective taking and empathic concern showed their strongest positive and negative relations to the Schwartz self-transcendence/self-enhancement dimensions. Results for the Asperger group showed that although on the one hand there were self-reported difficulties in perspective taking and the cognitive recognition of affect, and that on the other hand there were less connections between the empathy and value measures, there was nevertheless a comparable prioritization of moral values. Conclusions suggest that different people may acquire moral values through different mechanisms.
(This study shows the Asperger's subjects having about the same value system as their NT peers, despite their impairment in theory of mind and difficulty in understanding/detecting others' emotions. I agree with the authors' conclusions that there is more than one way to learn about morality, which is why Asperger's doesn't stop you from caring about others and having a firm set of morals.)
Moral and social reasoning in autism spectrum disorders.Quote:
Abstract:
This study compared moral and social reasoning in individuals with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Ten familiar schoolyard transgressions were shown to 18 participants with and 18 participants without ASD. They judged the appropriateness of the behavior and explained their judgments. Analysis of the rationales revealed that participants with typical development used significantly more abstract rules than participants with ASD, who provided more nonspecific condemnations of the behaviors. Both groups judged social conventional transgressions to be more context-bound than moral transgressions, with this distinction more pronounced in typically developing individuals, who also provided significantly more examples of situations in which the depicted behaviors would be acceptable. The educational implications of these findings for individuals with ASD are discussed.
(Here we see ASD subjects having more trouble with explaining abstract rules of morality and with hypothetical situations--a cognitive trait which leads the ASD subjects to apply rules more universally and strictly than their NT friends. In practice, this probably means that ASD people are less likely to "make excuses" for moral transgressions based on a person's circumstances--they may tend toward being very hard on themselves as well as on others.)
Moral judgment in adults with autism spectrum disorders.Quote:
Abstract:
The ability of a group of adults with high functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS) to distinguish moral, conventional and disgust transgressions was investigated using a set of six transgression scenarios, each of which was followed by questions about permissibility, seriousness, authority contingency and justification. The results showed that although individuals with HFA or AS (HFA/AS) were able to distinguish affect-backed norms from conventional affect-neutral norms along the dimensions of permissibility, seriousness and authority-dependence, they failed to distinguish moral and disgust transgressions along the seriousness dimension and were unable to provide appropriate welfare-based moral justifications. Moreover, they judged conventional and disgust transgressions to be more serious than did the comparison group, and the correlation analysis revealed that the seriousness rating was related to their ToM impairment. We concluded that difficulties providing appropriate moral justifications and evaluating the seriousness of transgressions in individuals with HFA/AS may be explained by an impaired cognitive appraisal system that, while responsive to rule violations, fails to use relevant information about the agent's intentions and the affective impact of the action outcome in conscious moral reasoning.
(Once again, here we have this group of ASD people judging morality based on concrete rules. With the typical autistic style, these people are using right/wrong distinctions rather than a sliding scale of different shades of gray--meaning that they judge some transgressions to be more severe, simply because the person in the scenario has broken a rule. The usual problem with multi-tasking and juggling complex semantics can be seen as well: In many moral scenarios, the mental states of many people must be taken into account simultaneously, which is difficult if you have trouble doing more than one thing at a time. To compensate, these autistics seem to have formed a system of rules to which they adhere, rather than having to constantly do the complex mental gymnastics of perspective-taking, and risk making a mistake which hurts someone.)
23 Dec 2012, 11:58 am
I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man ! 
