Do you feel envious and compare yourself to others?

[FayetheAspie]

me and lots of people wonder why autism hasn't been bred out of the gene pool through natural selection.

Why do you think noticing details and excellent pattern recognition capabilities are such a negative thing automatically?

 

[Hypnalis]

@Neonatal RRT

That sounds like you are describing the "uncanny valley" effect...

I had to look that one up, but yes, I would agree.

I think they're both results of the same mechanism.
( i.e. something like a "confounding factor" in causal inference:
Confounding - Wikipedia

IMO people (including ASDs) are "hard-wired" by evolution to look for differences from their own set of "human-centric" norms.

Which, if true, implies there's a question that's highly relevant for ASD: why don't those of us brought up together with NT peers in a culturally straightforward environment "pass the first-impression tests"?

Whatever it takes to "pass" has to be learned quite young, but it's not explicitly taught, so it seems likely it's a result of the set of imitation behaviors that young children use to learn language, behavioral rules and guidelines, "body language", social interaction, etc.

My personal theory is that there's a gap in our "innate imitation instincts", and that it mirrors (or is mirrored by) the empathy deficit that I'm starting to think is our only common trait.

 

[Crossbreed]

I would agree about missing instincts, but not necessarily missing empathy. I believe the missing instincts obscure our empathy to a degree.

...I'm starting to think is our only common trait.

"Lack of social instinct" was our key trait according to Lorna Wing.

 

[Hypnalis]

I would agree about missing instincts, but not necessarily missing empathy. I believe the missing instincts obscure our empathy to a degree.

"Lack of social instinct" was our key trait according to Lorna Wing.

I could live with "Lack of social instinct" as being more-or-less the same thing.

FWIW I'm more interested in the underlying causes than the best explanation for NTs and ASDs who are trying to figure things out. It's a "Russian Doll" of course, probably leading to more information about the genetics in one direction, and the cultural responses (e.g. from parents, family, and daycare/school group members) in another.

This isn't a "mass market" approach of course, even here, so I'm happy to learn (and use IRL) the mainstream terminology.

Calling it an instinct is a good choice I think, and will work better for me in conversations with NTs - if they want more they'll ask "what do you mean by "instinct?", which leads where I'd like to go. And if they don't ask it's a signal that they don't want (or aren't ready for) more details.

As to which is the cause - again, I think there's a common factor in whatever it is that makes very young children imitate and learn from the world they're brought up in.

I looked at this quite long ago in the context of a (then) new discovery in linguistics: that there's a kind of "hardware assist" in human brains that makes it natural and easy for young children to learn language(s).

(BTW I don't know whether this has been proven and become the standard explanation, or been disproven since then. The "skill" it explained is well known though: for the first 10-12 years or so, humans learn languages in a different way to what (almost all) adults do.

Anyway I'm hoping for someone to come up with evidence for a "wetware assist" for learning "social instincts". It would explain a lot.

But I don't think it would be easy to test for it - it's much harder to get solid data when you must not interfere with what would otherwise be the best experimental subjects

Economists face this problem, and their progress is very slow and difficult because of it.
They'd love to be allowed to experiment to entire economies: trying to make some better, trying to make some worse, and trying out out speculative theories with others. This would would certainly speed up their progress ... but it would rightly get them jailed of course

 

[Misty Avich]

Lack of social instinct is a much better term to use than lack of empathy, because lack of empathy sounds too misleading.

I have always been aware of other people's body language and all that, but when I was younger I wasn't the best at responding correctly to the social cues that I recognised naturally. I seemed too hyper, eccentric, goofy. You know, said and did things in a way that made others think I was weird. Then when I finally did get better at responding the "correct" way (around age 15) I didn't help myself by not being interested in the same sort of things as the others. For example I'd rather draw cartoon lions than put make-up on, or I'd rather do boyish things than sit around gossiping, or I'd rather obsess over older men than take any notice of boys my age, or I'd rather listen to 1970s music than the latest pop music. That sort of thing. So basically I identified more as a boy, a child, and an older adult, more than a teenage girl, which made my teenage years so difficult.

Then when I left school and finally did respond to social cues better, I developed RSD, which seems to be my most biggest problem (I just didn't know about RSD back then and I didn't know I had ADHD either). If I feel accepted by a group I can feel great and relaxed and even feel just like them, but once I feel disliked or excluded I become very depressed and anxious and overthink everything I do. I think RSD is my main social problem and maybe my only social problem, in adulthood. Though looking back I think I did get RSD a bit as a child but I didn't sweat the small stuff back then. I just lived in the moment. But as an adult I seem to worry and fret and wonder about the past, present and future, and how others perceive me.

 

[QueenOfFrance87]

To be honest, I used to do this a lot, starting with my older cousin from North Carolina getting married back in 2010. About a year later, it amplified while my brother was doing illegal drugs and taking his anger and frustration on me and our mother; he actually even fat-shamed me and called me a "virgin for life" I would compare myself to famous people who shouldn't even matter in my life, namely socialites and royals, and struggled to find someone as a result. I also would make insulting remarks about my brother's girlfriend (now his wife), and have ended a friendship with a former co-worker (who is female and had a boyfriend at the time) over this.

I did eventually meet someone, and thought those feelings went away, but came back during the divorce process; I was hospitalized for my resulting meltdowns over the fear of being alone for the rest of my life. and resented one of my roommates for having a boyfriend to the point of yelling at her. I even wanted to lash out at another cousin (who just turned 14). The story here is that she was visiting my late grandmother, so were me and my mother, as Mother and I were supposed to have lunch with her. I hung on long enough to not lash out at my cousin, and as soon as she left, I had a meltdown that has landed me in the hospital again.

I have not had these types of meltdowns relating to envy in five years, as I was put on Abilify to help with them. There was one setback last year, but I was able to talk through it with my mother. There were some actions related to envy that I have regretted, but I try to see it as a learning experience for the most part and move on.

 

[Outdated]

IMO people (including ASDs) are "hard-wired" by evolution to look for differences from their own set of "human-centric" norms.

There's a couple of different "hard wired" instincts going on here.

The first is as you mentioned, spotting differences. Noticing strangers to your tribe, people who don't belong and may be a security threat.

The other instinct is The Hen Pecking Order. This is the basis of how feudal societies are born, and it's exactly what most societies turn in to when other types of government fail.

A feudal type of governance is the most practical for a primitive society living a tribal existence, and even in large modern societies it has a lot of advantages over democracies. Feudal societies are much more decisive and can respond to threats and disasters much more quickly than any other type of government, this is an area in which democracy often completely fails. The EU is a current classic example of this, they've been facing war since 2014 and they're still dithering over how to respond to this. Agressors know how easy it is to keep them dithering and prevent them from ever deciding how to defend themselves until it's way too late.

Most people will automatically slot themselves in to the correct rank in the pecking order without even realising they're doing so, and they will instinctively support the leader of that order. Most autistic people are unable to see or understand the social cues of how this pecking order ranking works so we don't fit in. And when we feel we're being pushed around unnecessarily we retaliate, this doesn't just upset the leader of the group, it upsets the entire group. So we retaliate to what we perceive as bullying and all of a sudden everyone turns against us as if we have done something wrong.

 

[thejuice]

me and lots of people wonder why autism hasn't been bred out of the gene pool through natural selection, yeah over the years and still at times, i feel i let myself and my folks down, because my parents, my mom especially, had high expectations for me in regards to education, both of my parents have their masters degrees, and they naturally or wanted me to graduate college as well, i never did, my brother, my only sibling, is the only one who has a college degree, bachelors, however, he has not worked in the field he got his degree in, studio arts.

But my 2 first cousins, the daughters of my moms sister, they never graduated college either.

But yeah, i do worry about my future a lot if i will be able to support myself independently when my folks are gone.

Maybe it's an ability for autistics to fill gaps in skills that NTs lack, so able to accumulate resources, utility and status and start a family. Perhaps autism is a random mutation, a quirk of NT breeding that is adaptive enough to survive. I don't know the science. Maybe it's autistics breeding with other autistics keeping our classification going. Perhaps we're that good at masking as NT, we are able to start a family before they realise their terrible mistake

 

[Crossbreed]

The military runs on a similar premise.

Perhaps we're that good at masking as NT, before they realise their terrible mistake

I could not keep that closet door closed even if I wanted to...!

 

[Neonatal RRT]

@Neonatal RRT





I think they're both results of the same mechanism.
( i.e. something like a "confounding factor" in causal inference:
Confounding - Wikipedia

IMO people (including ASDs) are "hard-wired" by evolution to look for differences from their own set of "human-centric" norms.

Which, if true, implies there's a question that's highly relevant for ASD: why don't those of us brought up together with NT peers in a culturally straightforward environment "pass the first-impression tests"?

Whatever it takes to "pass" has to be learned quite young, but it's not explicitly taught, so it seems likely it's a result of the set of imitation behaviors that young children use to learn language, behavioral rules and guidelines, "body language", social interaction, etc.

My personal theory is that there's a gap in our "innate imitation instincts", and that it mirrors (or is mirrored by) the empathy deficit that I'm starting to think is our only common trait.

Well, it's not just your personal theory, and appears to be correct. Most psychologists on the topic have pretty much paraphrased this same idea that most NT children simply "pick up" these nuanced social and communication cues at a young age, often before the age of 5, especially little girls. Boys tend to have a delay in their frontal lobe development, and is why "boys can be little jerks" well into their teens. Many NT teen males will struggle with facial recognition of emotional states per PET scans and score low on the "faces test". Furthermore, females typically have a more pronounced communication between the right and left hemispheres than males, as most male communication in front to back. This has been demonstrated several times with PET scans. It's those frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex, development and functioning that is most important for socialization, picking up subtle communication cues, decision-making, and behaviors. It's the communication between the hemispheres where the typical female is often superior to the typical male in terms of accessing and recognizing emotional states.

It is for this reason that some psychologists once thought that autism was an example of the "extreme male brain". It also suggests reasons why female autism has been historically difficult to diagnose, as their brains are better suited to masking their condition. I have 2 female autistic co-workers and I had to be told by them they were autistic, because frankly, I would have never known. As opposed to my male co-workers who are autistic, where I can pick it up from a mile away.

Throw in an autism condition though, where the micro anatomy is associated with areas of too many and too little synaptic connections, abnormal conductive and connectivity patterns, abnormal layering of the neurons, abnormal concentrations of glial cells, pro inflammatory conditions (chronically elevated homocysteine), poor methylation of B vitamins, poor creatine metabolism, neurotransmitter imbalances, too few serotonin receptors, genetic abnormalities in the genes responsible for serotonin and dopamine binding, transport, and turnover, and a long list of other confounding factors. Obviously the autistic brain is working, but quite differently than a NT brain. Obviously, this accounts for the long list of things we might perform better than a NT, and things NTs perform better than us. In computer speak, our hardware and software is different. You can't run software that is specific to a Mac on a Microsoft machine and vice-versa.

With regards to imitation behaviors or mirroring, this is something that autistics and NTs do, or at least attempt to do. For example, in the case of empathy, I am very sensitive to another's strong feelings of grief (I will cry with them) or anger (I will match their energy). Music puts me into a matching "mood". Sad scenes in a movie (I will be the first to cry). The "mirror neurons" appear to be quite functional. However, it's the day-to-day situations where we may be speaking with each other and they are cueing in on all the subtle nuances of my body language, facial micro-expression, eye contact, voice inflection and tone, that frankly, I might not pick up on theirs very well, and two, my own non-verbal language/tone might not match my intent. Then it comes down to reciprocity. When one person does not mirror a specific "state of mind" or "tone" during a social interaction, it's then when the other person is going to sense that something is "off". Personally, I happen to be poor at this reciprocity unless the other person's emotional tone is rather extreme.