The Exact Mind: An Artist With Asperger Syndrome by Baron-Cohen Simon & Myers Peter & Wheelwright Sally

Author:Baron-Cohen, Simon & Myers, Peter & Wheelwright, Sally [Baron-Cohen, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley
Published: 2010-07-13T16:00:00+00:00

How have different psychological theories attempted to explain Peter Myers’s artwork and Sanjay’s sensitivity to drumming?

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF AUTISM

I. THE MINDBLINDNESS OR EMPATHIZING THEORY

The mindblindness theory of autism proposes that people with autism spectrum conditions have problems in empathizing.15 Empathizing is something that most “normal” people do with ease without thinking about it, most of the time, in interacting with others. It’s what we do when we imagine what someone else is experiencing, or what it would be like to “be in her shoes”. You could say empathizing is the bedrock of social interaction. Empathizing involves two major steps, which both happen at lightening speed: (a) the ability to attribute mental states (such as beliefs, desires, intentions, thoughts, and emotions) to other people, as a natural way of understanding them; and (b) having an automatic appropriate emotional reaction to other people’s mental states, which typically makes you care about their feelings. In this sense, empathizing includes what is normally meant by the terms “theory of mind”, or “mind-reading”16 which are used in the autism literature to refer to the capacity to assign motivations, inner feelings etc. to other people than oneself, but it goes beyond these notions, to include having an emotional reaction or response (such as sympathy).

Empathizing essentially allows one to make sense of the behaviour of another person or animal. It allows you to predict what the other person might do next, and it gives you a rapid way into imagining how she might feel. Empathizing allows us to feel connected to another person’s experience, and respond appropriately to that person.

Experimental studies of many different types reveal that people with autism spectrum conditions have diffculties in the development of empathizing. They cannot easily picture that someone else may have a different view of a situtation, for example, or may be delayed in their appreciation of this. They may pick up the more extreme emotions, but miss the subtle emotions on another’s face or in his voice. They may be relatively blind to the “language of the eyes”, sometimes even oblivious of how people are communicating non-verbally through their glances and their exchange of looks.

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