In addition to the conclusion you note (which seems very consistent
with what I have been reading from many on-line Autistic bloggers for
years), I also noticed this quote from the researcher:
"Schwarz notes that nonautistic people, too, “are rather lousy at
understanding the inner state of minds too different from their own—but
the nonautistic majority gets a free pass because if they assume that
the other person's mind works like their own, they have a much better
chance of being right.”"
I'm not autistic, but after reading on-line what autistic people say
about themselves and their experiences, and saying pretty much the same
thing Schwarz says here, this makes a lot of sense to me. In some ways
Autistic people (at least adults, if not children) might even have a
certain edge in extrapolating to the experience of people whose brains
are wired differently from their own simply because they already live
in a world surrounded by people whose neuro-configuration is so
different from theirs, and thus have had more practice at it. If
nothing else, they may at least manage to do better than many
non-autistic people I know at avoiding the assumption that everyone
else's perception of the world is more or less the same as their own.
And given the diversity in how all of our brains are wired, even in
quite trivial aspects such as as quickly we learn math or how easily we
learn to navigate from point A to point B or how well we notice minor
changes in shades of color, that's a pretty good place to start.
It's good to see a researcher finally say in an academic context what
many Autistic adults (and people who try to listen to them) have
already, as you note, been saying for years. I think this is a good
example of why disabled people should be more proactively included in
research, both as researchers and as consultants who set the direction
of research. I bet we could have gotten results like this many years
ago if more researchers had been listening to Autistic adults about
their own experiences.
Andrea
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On Jul 18, 2009, at 4:34 PM, Colin REvell wrote:
> A groundbreaking study suggests people with autism-spectrum disorders
> such as Asperger’s do not lack empathy—rather they feel others’
> emotions too intensely to cope.
>
> http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-11/a-radical-
> new-autism-theory/full/
>
> (***I have been saying this for years!!!)
>
> Colin Revell
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