Published on 12, July, 2020
I watched a Horizon programme about Autism.
What I liked about the programme was it made clear that most people do the things that Autistic people do. It is just that Autistic people do those things more than so called NT people. I do not know what NT means.
There are plenty of people with Social problems who are not Autistic.
There are Mentally Ill people.
If one is blind or deaf it must be more difficult to have Social Skills.
It also said that one gets diagnosed if the clinic you goes to agrees that you are Autistic. It is a question of chance. I got my diagnoses as when I was nineteen a Consultant Psychiatrist visited us and said that I was Mildly Autistic. That was in 1976 and that was the equivalent to Asperger Syndrome.
David
Apologies, as I had overlooked the other dialogue about the Horizon programme, so we have two threads directly on this (but the other one has moved on to other things).
What puzzles me about Cohen's contribution, in addition to what I said above, is that his profile is impressive, but beneath that he has very specific research goals concerned with Theory of Mind and Empathy.
I understand the validity of exploring scientific concepts, but there is a need for caution when linking it back to real lives of people.
Many contributors here have issues with whether they totally lack empathy or theory of mind. But more importantly I'm unclear about its relevance to living with autism and resolving day to day issues. It is, as I suggested above regarding the marble and the boat, science "stuck in a rut".
Take the Cambridge Unit's project on empathy www.autismresearchcentre.com/project_1_empathy This explains Theory of Mind as "Cognitive Empathy", and identifies a second strand "affective empathy". This is being pursued by experimental psychology measuring hormones and polymorphisms in relation to brain activity. Such research is self-perpetuating as long as there's money around. But it has been going on an awful long time now. Where's it getting us?
Then there's "systemizing" - technical term for unusual skills or talents, but also narrow interests. Important area to study BUT how is it being studied - experimental psychology measuring etc.......
It goes on - hypersensitivity can be studied in this way too. I'm not knocking this kind of research in principle, it seems to help in a lot of researchers on the behaviour of the brain, and it was illustrated in the Horizon programme with the headpiece with electrodes being placed over a boy's head.
But we need better understanding of autism now. These studies have gone on for years. I'm worried that this is eternal funding for the kind of research we do here, like the recent poster telling us about experiments on animals.
Please NAS, could you focus some attention on whether research centres are directly helping autism, or autism is justifying everlasting research programmes to bank roll researchers.