“People without autism automatically interpret the social significance of the touch and start revving up the parts of the brain involved in processing social information,” says lead researcher Kevin Pelphrey, professor of psychology at the Yale Child Study Center. By contrast, he says, people with autism “perceive the non-social aspects of touch, but they don’t perceive the significance.”- from article
But how do non-autistics automatically do this? Isn't this a worthy topic for further research? Why did I get the impression when reading this that simply because the way the majority handles being touched is the way that the majority responds to it, it therefore should just be assumed there is nothing at all bizarre about it? How do these researchers account for what seems, at face value, to be an example of an ability on the part of neurotypicals to read minds?
“To test the idea that people with autism spectrum disorder are impaired in some way on social touch, [you] would need more behavioral data.” - from article
Impaired? A lazy assumption if ever there was one. Where is the actual evidence that a difference in response to tactile sensory stimuli actually constitutes an 'impairment' of some kind? I don't see any evidence here, so this claim is unwarranted.
"Touch may develop abnormally in autism, resulting in a hypersensitivity to tactile stimuli. Some children with the disorder dislike certain textures. Some hate Velcro whereas others can’t stand scratchy clothing tags". - article
Even if it is 'abnormal', so what? Why should this even matter? If the one who is 'abnormal' can live with it then there is no problem to speak of, now is there.
02 Jul 2015, 9:36 pm
