Language and Aspergers
Jul. 28th, 2009 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This very much sums up how I feel, on a semi-regular basis. It's an article about how people with Aserpgers interpret language differently to people without, and how they find it difficult to deal with the subtleties that many people strew into language quite happily.
It's not a problem I have nearly as often as I used to - but I do run into people reading more into my language than I put there, or putting things into language that I don't spot.
It also sums up the sense of kinship and familiarity I felt on reading The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time - not that I'm anywhere near that bad - but it reminded me quite a lot of how I felt as a child.
cheers to
randomchris for the link.
It's not a problem I have nearly as often as I used to - but I do run into people reading more into my language than I put there, or putting things into language that I don't spot.
It also sums up the sense of kinship and familiarity I felt on reading The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time - not that I'm anywhere near that bad - but it reminded me quite a lot of how I felt as a child.
cheers to
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Date: 2009-07-28 01:55 pm (UTC)Aspies unite!
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Date: 2009-07-28 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 05:15 pm (UTC)Thanks. :)
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Date: 2009-07-28 02:20 pm (UTC)Dunno whether I 'naturally' think them the same and initially tried 'correcting' as a coping mechanism, or whether I 'naturally' thought the 'typical' way but the logical inconsistency bugged me enough to change my mind.
I actually cannot tell.
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Date: 2009-07-28 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 06:14 pm (UTC)What is so difficult about (a) "everything" and (b) "except tomatoes"? GAH!
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Date: 2009-07-29 09:58 am (UTC)And me too with the views expressed in the top post.
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Date: 2009-07-29 12:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 02:50 pm (UTC)Hmmm; the first one works the same way, too. He didn't "intend" to get the commemorative cup as I understand the term, but he was not surprised that he got the commemorative cup.
Actually, what I was thinking reading both those cases was "Wait, is the Mega-Sized Smoothie actually the biggest? Nothing has said so yet."
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Date: 2009-07-28 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 03:22 pm (UTC)It wasn't. He wasn't told explicitly he would be getting the Mega-Sized Smoothie when he ordered "the biggest smoothie you have". He might have guessed that was likely, but there was no certainty based on the information we're fed in the script. There could have been a super-mega sized smoothie.
Now if the script had said "the biggest smoothies we have are now a dollar more/come with a commemorative cup" then my answer for both would have been "what do you mean by intentionally?" I'd probably still answer no for both but it would be a much softer no.
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Date: 2009-07-28 07:55 pm (UTC)Certainly the article is correct in pointing out that obviously the two groups measured differed in how they percieved the statements.
However language alone isn't really the key thing here peoples reactions to it are. Ergo in order to understand the differences its perhaps inappropriate to try and explain them in terms of the understanding of words.
As the words experienced are the same for those with Aspergers and "NT's" I would contend that unless you can show that folk with aspergers have a different meaning for "intentionality" from "NT's" then yeah red herring.
Which could be done by getting a random sample of folk with ASD and randomised controls and asking for their definition of the term intentionality.
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Date: 2009-07-28 08:18 pm (UTC)By looking at how the vignettes are constructed it's clear they are designed to be answered in the same way. However "NT's" could invoke a schema of actions in the situation of buying a smoothie and those on the ASD spectrum might not. By which I mean those on the ASD spectrum could treat the situation as a novel example and answer it as it is presented and the NT's could be invoking experience and ignoring the bit where Joe says he doesn't care about paying a dollar more. As experience (or their schema) will tell them that if someone is going to buy something they will intend to pay for it...
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Date: 2009-07-28 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 08:32 pm (UTC)Mind Disintuition doesn't have the same ring to it though :->
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Date: 2009-07-28 08:58 pm (UTC)I agree the terms may not be the best, in that they are somewhat loaded and imply some sort of correctness, but I do think the theory (and most of the research that backs it up) is fairly sound.
"Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own."
That said I think it would probably be reasonable to interpret a theory of mind and mindblindness as being on a continuum. Afterall I'm sure anyone can think of masses of fiction which relies on keeping the audience "mind blind" in order to build suspense (or if not to keep the audience mind blind then to misdirect their theory of mind if you like) I'm thinking of crime fiction in particular.
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Date: 2009-07-28 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 09:44 pm (UTC)But that definition indicates that AS people have no ability to recognise that others have beliefs - rather than what seems (from my experience) to be the case - that they are capable of understanding, but that understanding what those beliefs are is not intuitive to them.
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Date: 2009-07-28 10:11 pm (UTC)Thus in summation I would say having a theory of mind based on logic isn't literally the same as having no theory of mind but, conversely, I'd argue it does fit with the end of the definition "to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own.". Of course I have always taken the idea that this doesn't mean that folk on the AS believe everyone thinks the same as them at any given moment but that they believe people act in a logical fashion.
I think I should blog this (if I can actually put it through the babble filter and make it readable!) ;)
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Date: 2009-07-28 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-28 11:51 pm (UTC)The scenario also doesn't allow for distraction: "okay, yea, I'll pay a dollar extra" in the same way as if I, a regular customer, walked into the coffee shop and ordered the same hot chocolate I always get there, and they said "by the way, the price has gone up fifty cents" so I won't yell at them once they make it and charge me the higher price. "I don't care, I want the hot chocolate" is as plausible a response, for me, as "That's okay, I still want it" or "Never mind, that's too much."
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Date: 2009-07-29 01:17 am (UTC)That said, my first response on the 2nd example was that it was intentional... he is told how much it costs, and he hands over the money, intending to pay the amount which happens to include the extra dollar. Giving something of known quality away seems like it has to be intentional, whereas receiving something of unknown quality is not...
Yet his intention is not really to pay the extra dollar, it is to get the drink.
Both answers seem to have merit to me.
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Date: 2009-07-29 10:33 am (UTC)I've been thinking a lot recently about some epicly bad consequences that have followed in my life from things being read into things I've said (usually without my realising this at the time) or me failing to understand things that haven't been explicitly stated. It's truly remarkable how badly these things can screw you over.
As a side note, without having read the original paper through, interpreting it as a failure of mind-reading without even considering questions of definition and literality (which they don't seem to have - certainly the word 'literal' appears nowhere) strikes me as really remarkably silly.
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Date: 2009-07-29 11:30 am (UTC)