pito on Apr 1 2009, 06:09 PM said:

I am very bad at eye contact. I have a real tendancy to look everywhere except your eyes if I am talking to you.
I find it difficult to maintain appororiate eye contact (looking not 'enough' by choice but can stare when I try to compensate).

HFA is AS-like but I think one of the diagnostic criteria is delay in language development. Language development is delayed in HFA whereas there is no delay in AS. Sure, they present similarly but that isn't to say that they are the same thing.

Astilius on Apr 1 2009, 07:38 PM said:

Ah I see, but has that anything to do with asperger? The eye contact thing? I know some one who has that too and he has no asperger or autism its simply hard for him to look at some body, he doenst even know why, but it is.

You say it is not the same, but still, some experts are not convinced... just another example on how difficult this all is.


And about

I think it is indeed a language issue, misinterprated or wrongly written by me.
Anyway, by real I ment someone who is really diagnosed with it, someone who really needs helps, therapy. (but even then, its hard to draw a line between someone who needs help or not ..or "in" how much they have autism)
and no it has nothing to do with fake autism.



And by saying that we all have autism again I wanted to feed the debate more or less by saying: we all have symptoms but that it is hard to draw a line somewhere.

But I do agree with you that :

I do not want to rediculise autism or any other form but I simply wanted to state that its not an easy matter to deal with.

pito on Apr 1 2009, 06:49 PM said:

Yes, the eye contact thing is extremely common with AS.

HFA and AS present similarly but have different progressions. I would say that that alone is enough to classify them as seperate, although allied, conditions.

Yes, there is a difficulty in "drawing a line". That's why diagnosis is locked down robustly to the diagnoistic criteria and the diagnosis process is a reasonably lengthy one.
Your friend could be an example of this. He may have an environmental cause for his poor eye contact that presents similarly to that of the AS individual, however he doesn't have any of the other diagnostic criteria and thus couldn't be diagnosed with an Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC).
This is also why self-diagnosis of such conditions is a poor idea.

Astilius on Apr 1 2009, 12:58 PM said:

Thanks. Would you say then that you've learned to how cope (to fit into the neurotypical world) without any help or some form of therapy? Are there any symptom/s which are present in all ASD patients which you can say as the hallmark of the condition? And how prevalent is comorbidity..really high..eg, if you're socially impaired, this would lead to depression; the repetitive behavior patterns with OCDs, clumsiness and difficulties with coordination and motor skills with Tourette syndrome etc. and this would definitely complicate even further a definitive diagnosis. And while I was reading up on Asperger's, it was mentioned that people affected by this syndrome have basically no theory of the mind...it was very interesting how this is tested clinically..the doll-play paradigm and imagination test. And yet most people with AS has average or above average intelligence. So how do you explain that?

As an aside, I suppose that possessing a sense of humour is part of the battery of tests too, eh? Btw...what happened to your sig Astilius? The one with the spit, smite and cast Thee out... . It's one of the best sigs in the old forum....

regards,

casandra

casandra on Apr 2 2009, 04:49 AM said:

No, I've definitely had help. I'm married and my wife has a background in psychology specializing in ASC's (it was her that first flagged that I probably was on the spectrum). She's been a big help .
As for comorbidity: OCD behaviours go hand in hand with AS as does depressive illness - I was diagnosed with depressive illness long before I had a diagnosis of AS. Also dyspraxia et cetera are associated with AS.
We also, commonly, seem to have information processing problems. I, for instance, can't make out single conversation in noisy rooms (eg in a pub) as my brain wants to process everything and fails to process anything - I can hear that someone is saying something but not what they are saying. The selective processing that neurotypicals can do isn't something that I can do and I can't learn it either.
And yes, I do have impaired Theory of Mind. Even now I will fail more complex versions of the Sally-Anne test (often amusing my wife in the process). But I wouldn't say that this impairs intellectual ability but it certainly impairs social ability.
I have learned ToM but it's not innate in me and, as I say, I will fail more complex versions of the Sally-Anne test.

I don't think sense of humour is part of the diagnostic criteria. Certainly language is, it's use and the tendancy to be very literal (which can impair understanding of jokes and the like). This is something that I have invested a lot of time in understanding (having no innate understanding of turns of phrase and have had to learn the meaning of them all by rote) and my sense of humour, I don't think, is distinguisable from anyone elses.

Ah, my old sig. I love it too and it's back along with my old avatar. The sig is from Moby Dick.
I'm a little surprised (and a bit pleased) that you remembered it!

Astilius on Apr 3 2009, 06:13 AM said:

And I couldn't believe that I got only one out of the three verbs (spit i.e.)..my apologies to Captain Ahab. I'd probably not remember the avatars but I would the sigs esp those which are funny, weird, different or unique. It makes me always wonder (perhaps the better term is speculate) why people make such choices. And I like this one from Captain Ahab’s, it’s all about obsession, tho his is the extreme kind “chase the white whale on both sides of land and all sides of the earth”..

I’d to read up very fast about these more sophisticated Sally-Anne tests or false belief tasks…the higher orders ToM tests which usually involve stories with more characters and let’s just say better plots..…I only read a few of the test stories so I could be so off (and you have to correct me) but I have to say esp with the “Bill believes that Mark thinks that John said..." …..even I would get lost in this complicated scenario. I think that this is more of a linguistic test than ToM which involve reading others’ minds/intentions or predicting others’ actions or even pretending to be the other person. Is this the reason why it’s theorised that ToM is dependent largely on language ability and not on intellectual capacity? But people with AS usually have normal language development but would still have impaired ToM, or did I interpret this wrongly? Anyways, thanks once again for sharing and I'm glad that your sig is back... ...

casandra

casandra on Apr 6 2009, 04:39 AM said:

I think your criticism of some ToM tests being largely linguistic convolutions is a very valid one. It's something that has bothered me about some of the tests. You can see what they are trying to do but the convolutions of the test itself gets in the way.
Yes, AS folk don't have language difficulties as such. They can be hyperlexic but where we begin to fall down is in our literalness. Unless language is very literal we can get confused. This can have one of several outcomes.
Say we're asked a question. It could have effects such as (but not restricted to):
1. We can either try piece together what we think has been asked.
2. We can ignore the question.
3. We can put together something that we are interested in (often in conjunction with 1.), as if we're interested in it then you must be too, or if I'm not interested in it then you won't be either so your question wouldn't be about that. (I can fail here - I often assume that if I am interested in something then you are too and I don't understend why you aren't - for this reason written questions can be useful at times.)

While formal language development is not retarded it can be very formal in usage. Reading between the lines can be difficult and its something I have had to conciously work at. But in doing so I seem to have learned it very well. I don't get confused with body language and other deceits and rely on what the person is saying and reference it to other times. This can give me a clear idea of motive as I see how people piece together their language for whatever purpose they want.
(Also, not related, our prosody can be very stilted. Mine is fine (I think) but when I get stressed I can begin to sound like a robot.)

But to get back to ToM and language. I think that the theory that ToM developed via language makes good sense. With the linguistic boom would have come a strong necessity for people to understand what people mean and understanding their mind-state is a fantastically useful tool. Some of what neurotypicals can do seems like magic to me because I can't see what you see but on the other hand my reliance on the use of language can give me an insight that others don't have. Often I'll say, "he's lying", about someone and people ask me how I know and it may be because of how someone will avoid a line of questioning or deflect certain lines of enquiry or the timing of what they say. If I'm not involved in a conversation I can see it very well. If I am involved then it's only some time after I can pick apart what has happened.
Because I can't read faces very well I have invested a lot of effort in understanding language.

My way of thinking had lead to me being very successful as a scientist but where I gain in some spheres I lose in others.

very interesting topic indeed. so many things to say about it. i'll start on the eye contact issue. when i first got to england i realized there is a lot of people that don't like eye contact and feel uncomfortable when talking to me, it is almost as if it was some kind of intromission in their head, which is not what i want at all but that is the way i grew up. some people have suggested it is due to environmental conditions, e.g. photoperiod and light intensity. since i've been here i have become a bit more self-reserved, ie don't interact as much with people as i did before, and to use headphones most of the time, i don't like all the "background" noise that surrounds me. i believe it is also correlated to the decrease in sleeping hours i've had as well.
and being "away" from reality (even temporarily) is particularly dangerous in this country where the cars come from the opposite direction to which i was used to

edit: @ BB, the video embedding function is not available anymore, it used to be an icon next to the "insert image" icon, but it's gone.

Astilius on Apr 6 2009, 06:59 AM said:

Thanks for more insight into AS. I would've thought that AS-affected people have problems more with pragmatics rather than ascribing this "failure" in communication to your "literalness"....i.e. what, when, how to say things, that conversation is a give and take activity, that you have to wait for your turn esp within a group etc. And this tendency to be more focused on (or obsessed with) a certain topic which the other person might not be interested in, I guess is a real conversation killer, this one is quite understandable...I can't imagine how you "train" yourself to stop or change the topic or not get stressed out when you realise that the discussion is not working out.

And with the non-verbal cues (body language, tone of voice, posture etc), they could be different for each person, so how do you asimilate all these differences and come up with certain interpretations? I guess you watch out for groups of signals and not just one in "reading" people. But still, even the neurotypicals would have a hard time esp when trying to detect deception bec isn't that what deceiving and/or lying is all about (to mislead, hide the truth) esp when it's perfected to a skill by certain people. So it's really amazing I think, all the efforts and the work you have to invest in developing social skills that many neurotypicals wouldn't even think or be so conscious or concerned about.

To go back to language and literalness, I guess it's difficult to detect subtleties such as ironies, metaphors, analogies or other figures of speech...and what about reading poetry....I suppose this one you can teach yourself or still learn, it's just that it would take more time or double the effort that the neurotypicals would take or invest in. And see....you like Captain Ahab's rants ....

casandra

casandra on Apr 7 2009, 10:14 AM said:

Ah, sometimes I don't realize a conversation isn't working out. Sometimes I miss that the person I'm talking to is bored.
Sometimes it's more important to me, or more interesting to me to talk about something than it is for someone to listen.
It's something that I need to work on along with talking about the same things over and over again.
My wife could probably tell you more about being a victim of this than I can.

Yeah, there are an awful lot of non-verbal body language that I cannot read. Much of the idiocyncratic stuff I don't know what's happening. I try just ignore it or see if I can understand what it means for that person.
It can lead to little insights about individuals or it can lead to being confused.
But, yeah, I've spent a lot of time watching people and how they interact so that I can function in these relationships. That said, get me in a group of more than two people and I rapidly start drowning as it all happens too fast and simultaneously. That processing and selectivity that NT's can unconsciously achieve is quite impressive from the outside.
People have said that I would make a bad manager because of this but I think (and have experience of) the opposite. Management is in a very controlled environment and largely in groups of small numbers. I can analyze things very specifically and carefully then.

Language I love. Short poetry I love. I have had to learn by rote metaphors and analogies and turns of phrase (and sometimes badly. I do attempt them on my own but people say that my analogies are terrible but I can't see why). I have had to learn to try be comfortable with ambiguity which can make a lot of language difficult (e.g. poetry). As a child I wanted to be a scientist because that was (to my young mind) about facts and proof and evidence.
Two out of three aint bad but that there are no "facts" was a real struggle for me. Realizing that we cannot know everything and what we do know if purely on an evidence based system was an enormous salve to my perception. Godel's work showing that we cannot know everything was enormously distressing to me.

I like to think that AS folk have a lot to offer, that we're different but not better or worse than NT's. Where we're good at something and you are bad you'll be good at another thing and we'll be bad. Certainly we look at the world in different ways and all the BIG problems are only solved by new perspectives and new ways of thinking.


But yeah, Ahab's obsession, determination and bloody minded perseverance is very glamourous to me. I understand a man like that...I am a man like that. ...