A South African friend of my dad's said it had a similar effect there.
a collection of small trees
Heh, speaking of autistic representation in fiction and how it may influence the way the public sees us, this article in the New York Post
got published today.
Headline? The Good Doctor is Will and Grace for People with Autism
Twenty years ago, a TV show helped the gay cause. In 1991, 76.9 percent of Americans believed that being gay was at least somewhat wrong, according to an International Social Survey Program study. Seven years later “Will & Grace” aired on NBC, featuring two gay men and their best friends having wacky, funny adventures — in a recognizable, sitcom format. It became a massive hit with 17 million viewers at its height.
By the end of its run in 2006, 64.1 percent of Americans polled by the same study felt that being gay was wrong, and that number has continued to plummet. Two years ago, gay marriage became legal in all 50 states. Today, 62 percent of Americans are actually in favor of gay marriage, according to Pew.
I swear it's a coincidence that this article got posted the very day after I talked about The Cosby Show!
edited 25th Nov '17 6:33:14 AM by BonsaiForest
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!
Who Am I?
I have a question. Anyone know of any resources, discussion, or treatment of any relationship there might be between being on the spectrum and religiosity/atheism?
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
a collection of small trees
I just had to share this:
It is impossible to accurately convey how traumatizing — and yes, the word "traumatizing" is not only appropriate here, but necessary — this is for individuals in the autistic community.
When you try your hardest to hold down a job but are unable to do so due to factors beyond your control, the impact is profoundly demoralizing. When I spoke with other autistic friends and acquaintances for this article, all of them told stories about how they've grown terrified of being fired — some to a degree they admit is unhealthy and neurotic — because of all the previous occasions when something they said or did, but did not understand, caused them to lose a job.
Note that I didn't say "most." I said "all."
Even worse, because our culture insists that being unable to hold down a job indicates a deeper character flaw, many autistic people develop self-loathing as a result of their experiences. I know autistic men and women who are brilliant and hard-working but constantly refer to themselves as "bums" or "losers" because society has told them that, well, their inability to hold down a job proves that those things are true about them. If they dare trying to dispel those misconceptions with the facts about their situation, they're accused of coming up with excuses.
edited 26th Nov '17 7:52:11 AM by BonsaiForest
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
This is second hand, but when I was going to a therapist (who specialized in working with adults on the spectrum), he mentioned that people on the spectrum tend to be less religious, at least in Christian terms. He said that people lower on the spectrum tend to not really care either way and people higher on the spectrum are more likely to find the common disconnect between words and actions to be really offputting.
Bear in mind, the therapist works in Toronto, which is really cosmopolitan most of the time and the religious culture is pretty minor.
Personally, I’m finding myself increasingly uncomfortable with Christianity. The hypocrisy and ignorance of their own tenents that so many members show makes me extremely uncomfortable.
Not Three Laws compliant.
I'm an Aspie but I consider myself a very staunch believer in Christianity. So there's one statistic.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
One thing that I notice is that some vegan groups are saying going on vegan diets can cure autism. I am really livid about this, because of the fact that a lot of it has to do with pseudo-science and how it can give a lot of parents false hope for their children.
a collection of small trees
My online friend is both liberal and Christian, and she was diagnosed with Aspergers around the age of 8.
Her sister, who is not autistic, is both conservative and atheist.
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!
Who Am I?
My own personal hypothesis (based on nothing but anecdotal experience) is that, unless you become a fundementalist, Christianity places an emphasis on being able to interprete abstract principles in a metaphorical manner—something people on the spectrum might find esp challenging.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
so i made a new avatar
I'm gonna go ahead and doubt any sort of significant relation between faith or lack thereof and whether or not someone lands somewhere on the autism spectrum.
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
Studious Girl
As for me I was raised Catholic and am now agnostic, but enjoy philosophizing about grander concepts in religion, like the philosophical idea of "God" and the facets of human nature that make us religious and give religions from all over the world so many similarities (the rituals and appearance of different religions may make it seem like they have nothing in common, but a lot the underlying meaning is the same) I also like to treat the Biblical stories I grew up with as literature, which are very interesting and have multi-layered meanings even if you don't believe in God
Who Am I?
There are a few studies that show a relationship, like this one
which suggest that there is a relationship between autism and religious belief, but otherwise not very many. It seems an understudied aspect of the whole experience.
edited 26th Nov '17 11:51:44 PM by DeMarquis
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
a collection of small trees
An Entrepreneur With Autism Finds His Own Path.
He has degrees in chemistry, environmental studies and French. He has a passion for agriculture. He also fits a very rare profile for an entrepreneur. He has autism.
The 30-year-old created the company in 2013 with his mother—and co-owner— Jan Pilarski, after a promising job as an environmental researcher ended abruptly because he had difficulties communicating. That left him with the choice of either trying to find a more suitable job or, with the help of his family, creating a business that would capitalize on his skills.
It of course also at one point goes through the whole "autistics with great degrees and extreme skills still can't get jobs because of the social stuff" thing that we've been through a million times. So I'll move on to other things.
Often, it’s a parent or sibling. When Matt Cottle, 28, of Phoenix learned that he couldn’t be a Marine like his father and brother because he was on the spectrum, he took culinary classes and began working with a pastry chef. Many people on the spectrum, in fact, are chefs, along with craftsmen, locksmiths and candle makers.
Mr. Cottle found his vocation in baking and started Stuttering King Bakery, which supplies muffins and scones to local coffee shops, corporate events and farmers markets. He is licensed and works out of a large kitchen in the home he shares with his parents. His mother, Peg, handles orders and marketing.
“For someone on the spectrum to be able to make it, they really have to have someone else who has a real high investment in their success, and usually that is going to be family,” says Ms. Cottle.
They really have to have someone else who has a real high investment in their success? I can easily see that. Not that self-motivated autistics who have the skills and knowledge of what exactly they need to do, don't exist. But often, at least some of that is missing. Many times, from what I've seen (and I'm only going on what I've seen here; I know this doesn't apply to everyone), a big part of the problem (job discrimination notwithstanding) is the lack of knowledge of what kinds of skills they can use or need to get or what they do with what they have. A mentor of some sort would be a big help there.
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!
Sorry if this seems strange, but I don't know much about the subject at hand:
Does having fixations for a certain period in time, enjoying routine/stability or piling things on top of each other put one in the autism spectrum? I could tell these are symptoms from the Wikipedia page, but almost everyone has some of these behaviours.
Or do they have to be accompained by difficulty in social interactions and understanding non-verbal gestures for someone to be in the spectrum?
Life is unfair...
a collection of small trees
Difficulty learning social skills is the main feature of autism. Without it, one is not considered to have autism.
Which is interesting, since other autism features, such as unusually sensitive senses (of touch, of hearing, of sight (to light for instance)) can exist on their own, but are given other names, such as Sensory Processing Disorder.
Since autism is defined by its symptoms, essentially we define autism on whether or not someone has enough of its characteristics (and to be fair, they do typically show up together in one big cluster). If someone has one or two of the traits, but their social understanding and social learning are average, then they are not considered to have autism.
(Interestingly, family members of autistics often fall into this; they have one or two of the traits but not autism itself. Yet more evidence that autism is genetic.)
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!
Now that I think about it, an interesting study would be finding incidence/suspected incidence of neurodiversity and mental health problems in the family members of Autistic people. I've always suspected that the families of Autistic people would often show higher incidence of Neurodiversity (even if it's not Autism) overall, and it would be interesting to test that.
edited 28th Nov '17 4:10:11 PM by megaeliz
I can attest to that at least anecdotally.
I think there is actually a lot of research pointing to that.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
a collection of small trees
Yup. I've heard of a few studies of that sort.
One asked a bunch of parents of autistics and parents of non-autistics what kinds of challenges they had growing up, if they had difficulties with social skills, if things ever felt too loud or too bright while other people didn't seem to have that problem, and things like that, which are associated with autism. The parents of autistics tended to report higher amounts of those problems compared to the parents of non-autistics.
A different study used a super slow-motion camera that recorded people, and they asked autistics, non-autistics, and their parents, to perform a simple physical task: hold their arm by their side, then raise it up to out in front of them. Then, footage of this movement was watched in super slow-motion, and the researchers looked for moments where the arm stuttered or moved a little erratically instead of completely straight. They found many such movements in autistics, quite a few in their parents, and none or very few in the non-autistics and their parents.
So those are the two studies I know of. I'd love to read more.
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!
a collection of small trees
Apparently, autistics can smell fear... and it calms us down. But smelling people who are not afraid? It makes us fearful. Wait, what???
This is where differences emerged: Although neither group reported detecting dissimilarities between the two smells, their bodies reacted to each in a different way. In the control group, smelling the fear-induced sweat produced measurable increases in the fear response, for example in skin conductivity, while the everyday sweat did not. In the autistic men, fear-induced sweat lowered their fear responses, while the odor of "calm sweat" did the opposite: It raised their measurable anxiety levels.
Next, the group created talking robotic mannequins that emitted different odors through their nostrils. These mannequins gave the volunteers, who were unaware of the olfactory aspect of the experiment, different tasks to conduct. Using mannequins enabled the researchers to have complete control over the social cues — odor-based or other — that the subjects received. The tasks were designed to evaluate the level of trust that the volunteers placed in the mannequins — and here, too, the behavior of autistic volunteers was the opposite of the control group: They displayed more trust in the mannequin that emitted the fear-induced odor and less in the one that smelled "calmer."
It says the study was done with only autistic men. If there are gender differences, they're not explored here. But... what could this mean? Autistics are more fearful around calm people, and more calm around fearful people?! And if so, how does that affect us?
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!
Oh, bother.
Yeesh, that article portrays autistic people as if they are Emotion Eaters that feed off of fear.
edited 30th Nov '17 5:44:39 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
so i made a new avatar
If I could smoke fear away, I'd roll that motherfucker up...
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
a collection of small trees
It seems to be more like we're afraid of most people to at least some degree, but when the people around us are scared, we're not. But... why?
In any population, you need a proportion of it able to function when things go belly-up. So, I'd guess nasal receptors and brains got together to ensure that a proportion of small furry things wouldn't smell social fear so easily. Some got an abundance of it, to the point of registering opposites day.
Tada!
Representation truly matters. For a couple reasons.
First off, self-esteem and motivation. Seeing positive portrayals of people like you tells you that you can accomplish things, that you can succeed, and that you deserve to be treated with respect by everyone.
Another is how it drives public perceptions. I remember reading that The Cosby Show did far more to help white people in the US who didn't know any black people personally to become more accepting of them, than many other efforts have. Likewise with, for better or worse, Rain Man. At a time when almost no-one had heard of autism, it suddenly caused a whole bunch of people to be familiar with one form of it.
We need our representation, and we're starting to get it. Shows like The Good Doctor tell people that autistics can be intelligent and accomplish things. That, and Atypical teach people about the difficulties many of us face with social skills and understanding the right way to act in many social situations. These things can drive understanding and acceptance. And let's face it; most people who don't know an autistic very well personally, are more likely to be influenced by these shows than by anything we say.
I'm up for joining Discord servers! PM me if you know any good ones!