Asperger's And Self Awareness

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I apologise before I even write this for it's probable incoherence. I've got these thoughts and confusions going round and round my head at the moment and getting them down in writing may be a problem.

I'm wondering about Asperger's and self awareness and how much the 2 come together. This is part of my journey to understanding myself. You see, my daughter is diagnosed Asperger's and there are times when I believe that I am too because of a particular problem she has and because I am exactly the same.

Then there are times when I am absolutely sure I'm not because there are problems that she has that I don't. Problems that I know are an integral part of being Asperger's. But now I'm not so sure and wonder if my constant confusion and constant yes I am/no I'm not is down to a problem with self awareness or something.

Arrrrrh I can't form the words right in my head. I'll try another way. An example of what I'm trying to express.

A few weeks a go a group of people, me and daughter included, took part in some proper research into personality types. Nothing at all to do with Asperger's. One of the tests was looking at measuring empathy. I thought my daughter would struggle with this, because of her Asperger's, but that I would have no problem. In my opionion I am fine with empathy. I know when someone is sad, happy, angry, irrated etc and respond to it. Part of the reason I don't think I am Asperger's.

The test consisted of being shown pictures of people's eyes. Just their eyes, and you had to say what emotion they were feeling from the picture. I had no problem with this at all. I could tell straight away what they were feeling and answered every one. My daughter on the other hand answered 'don't know' to pretty much every picture. Just as expected.

What wasn't expected was the results. The others in the group got most of the answers correct. I got every single one wrong. Just like my daughter. I've looked back at the pictures, knowing the right answers, and I just cannot see it. They look like what I said they looked like.

This has knocked me for 6, so much so that writing this is making me cry. I feel like I can't trust myself or my responses. Are people looking as bored when I talk to them as they do when she does? Am I responding to people in a way that makes them think I'm weird? So many confusions.

Arrrh!

Your name is ironic.

I get confused too. We all do. *hug*

A free hug. Next one will cost you.

lol. That's seriosly funny.

Sounds like you may have ti too, OP. Many AS women have an easier time with empathy than AS men do. I doubt you are as clueless IRL as you were on the test. I've seen that test and it's pictures of people's eyes. Much different than looking at a whole face in real life.

The test is BS. It ain't nothing but circumstantial things that most likely mislead a bunch loads of NTs.

Welcome.

First of all, on the subject of empathy, the test is flawed. The reaserchers who designed the test have made the biased assumption that upon viewing the images, a person should be able to identify them via empathy, and if the person cannot identify them they lack the ability to feel empathy. A sociapath, a person who can truly not feel empathy, would score very high on this type of test, because being able to identify facial expressions really has nothing to do with whether you have an aptitude for empathy or not. The only way it relates to empathy is, if I cannot identify that one is sad, I will not express the right empathy.

For your other question, I am quite self aware and have actually been self aware longer than most people, as I developed this ability around 9 months old.

However being self aware and being socially aware are two entirely different things. I was aware of myself. I was not aware of much of anything having to do with socialization.

I've actually done fairly well on the type of test you've mentioned above, because they're photos and I've had enough time to process them, but in real time there is a good bit of information I miss, usually because the person is being vague or going too fast, or there are too many people in the conversation, or just because the concept is a bit alien to me.

It's more just like a different culture I think.

For example, in a lot of Asian countries they laugh when they are angry, annoyed or embarrassed. Americans, on the other hand, tend to interpret laughter as an indication of a light hearted situation where all is well.

That is a good analogy between NT and AS.

I shouldn't rely too much on those test results. I wonder if there is somethink alike, but then with whole faces. If there is one, I suggest trying that, the test results might be more accurate and say more about your facial recognition abilities.

How did they match up the eyes to the feelings in the first place? It sounds quite interesting. Presumably they found several hundred angry people (NOT people pretending to be angry), several hundred sad people, several hundred happy people etc, and took pictures of their faces.

In the end, though, it doesn't matter, since recognising what emotions someone's feeling from their facial expression is not what empathy is.

Yes, I remember going through a phase of self awareness much like the one you describe, MKB. After my sons' were diagnosed as being on the spectrum I was pulled into the world of autism. As I went on with the fervent research, I too came across the reading the mind in the eye test. I also took a few others, and the results were surprising, in that I failed. epically. What I thought that I knew, I didn't. The first few times that I took the AQ, and RDOS my scores weren't too high. High for an NT, but not enough for AS. This was because I was scoring myself, and my own self awareness at that time was minimal. I remember during a team meeting for one of my sons where they were discussing his lack of eye contact I blurted out (rather irritably) that I couldn't understand what the big deal was about eye contact anyway. I was met with silent stares. They didn't answer my question, even though I genuinely wanted to know why they all made such a big deal out of eye contact.

I'm sorry that you're going through such a rough phase, MKB. Please don't be so hard on yourself. Life is journey, and awareness is the light that illuminates the path.

Yeah...that was one test I didn't like and didn't TRUST. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

That particular test has been discredited for use as a diagnostic criteria for AS/Autism. The results are HIGHLY variable for people on the spectrum.

I think they used pictures of actors and had a group of NT's decide which emotion each was supposed to be portraying. The fact that they are pictures of actors is problematic in my mind as people in real life don't always have the same expressions that actors do. Actors tend to portray stereotypes to some degree. They also use makeup to exaggerate certain features. Real people are much more complicated and can be much harder to read. Just the eyes is never enough, at least from my experience.

First off, I know this an old thread....

...but, to the OP: based on everything that I have read on the subject, it seems that in every case when a child is diagnosed with Aspergers one or both of the parents, or another close relative, will also be diagnosed with Aspergers if tested.

For that "eye" test and empathy...I took that same test and got every single one wrong, too, if I remember correctly. I most certainly do have empathy, mind you, perhaps a little too much. In regards to that test, I believe for me it goes something like this:

If I heard of a plane crash, I would more-than-likely respond with Wow, that is crazy!. This is because the first thoughts that run through my head be along the lines of what caused the plane to crash followed by what kind of plane it may have been. Just because I do not immediately "feel their pain" is because I do not immediately assume that it was a large passenger plane that crashed with the resulting deaths of hundreds of passengers. I mean, what if it were a cargo plane and the crew all survived? If it has been revealed that it was in fact a passenger plane and that many people did die, then yes, I would feel sad; in particular for the families of the "victims".

Now, if the news of the plane crash was immediately followed with an image of the crash scene, my empathy would have kicked in almost as quick as the image was shown. And if I were a witness to this event, my empathy would have went into overdrive. I remember when the Gulf War was going down and the nightly news was showing images of SCUD missiles and Patriot missiles and explosions happening all over Baghdad. I know there were some people who were like Yeah! Kill the enemy!, but for me, when as I watched all of the explosions, I started to cry. I knew there were people down there dying. A lack of empathy? Get the f out of here with that!

Heck, even a recent episode of Bones made me weepy. Bones.

As for your daughter having "problems" that you do not, keep in mind that Aspergers is not only on the autism spectrum, but that Aspergers itself is a spectrum disorder, too. That means that particular symptoms and traits are going to vary in degree from one person with Aspergers to another person Aspergers from nonexistent to severely debilitating.

I actually started a topic about this a little bit ago (died almost at once) called Autism and Self Concept, where I discussed a few findings of mine from a peer-reviwed article that discussed the fndings of a study that studied the concept of self between autistic individuals and individuals with mental retardation in contrast, to further explore social deficiencies (im study social psychology in my curricuum atm, working on a MBA in psych).

Here is the information I posted on that thread since it is relevant:

Quote:

In the ``theory of mind'' tradition,
for example, a major theoretical perspective has postu-
lated that individuals with autism have an innate inability
to represent the mental representations of others

Quote:

Empirical work inspired by this approach has
mainly focused upon the speciÆc limitations in autistic
individuals' concepts of mental states per se–states such
as those of thinking and believing (e.g. Baron-Cohen,
Leslie, & Frith, 1985), desiring and pretending (e.g.
Baron-Cohen, 1991c), and feeling (e.g. Capps, Yirmiya,
& Sigman, 1992; Hobson & Lee, 1989; Jaedicke,
Storoschuk, & Lord, 1994; Yirmiya, Kasari, Sigman, &
Mundy, 1992). It would seem very likely that autistic
individuals' difficulties in attending to, recognising, and
conceptualising psychological states, and in predicting
and explaining behaviour in psychological terms (e.g.
Tager-Flusberg & Sullivan, 1994), will have a marked
infuence on their conceptions of themselves specically
in relation to others,


And this is one of the ideas that struck me of most interest:

Quote:
On the basis of our hypothesis that people with
autism have impairments in responding to, identifying
with, and understanding other people (and especially,
others' attitudes), we predicted that individuals with
autism would be less prone to integrate
other people into their self-characterisations;


This is an idea I can get behind. I can say from personal experience that my actions thoughts and prefferences, even as a small child, had very little to do with the influence of other people. I did not like the same stuff, other little girls liked, nor did I see a need for me to try to find an interest in them so that I may play a more socially acceptable role among them, though these are not the exact terms I thought in at the time, smaller vocabulary I must ad mit.

reference to the article: Also keep in mind the age of the article, which also gives it grounds for debate, considering its age.
Lee, A., & Hobson, R. (1998). On developing self-concepts: a controlled study of children and adolescents with autism. Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry, And Allied Disciplines, 39( , 1131-1144.

On those eye tests I got practically all of them right, but I had a very systemized approach how to get the right answers. First, I would be able to eliminate two of the answers straight away. The final two were always a toss-up. So, I would then have to ask myself of the two choices, what would a person actually be THINKING with this emotion? If the two remaining choices were "sad" or "guilty", I would run a "sad" thought sentence in my head while looking at the photo and then run a "guilty" thought sentence while looking at the photo, and then I would determine which one best matched the expression in the picture. I'm not sure if that is what NT people do or AS people do. It was just my way of getting the answers right.

I remember the test with the eyes from years ago and I got about three quarters of them wrong. As for empathy, I've worked very VERY hard over the years to get the body language thing right most of the time but I have zero empathy when it comes to most situations.

A few years ago I met up with an ex-girlfriend and she was telling me about the death of her daughter. I had absolutely no idea how she felt or how I could comfort her and it's probably the most awkward situation I've ever faced in my life. What did I do? I carried on eating my meal before it got cold.

I wish Aspies would stop believing about the empathy thing. Some of us have it more than others, empathy is not black and white - there are lots of grey areas too. Empathy can depend on the context of the matter and also an individual's personality. Not whether you have Asperger's or not. So one Aspie may pass an empathy test, another may not. One NT may pass an empathy test, another may not. One person (whichever neurology) may pass one empathy test but surprise themselves at another type of empathy test, and vice versa.