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Moral Behavior and Autism

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millie
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24 Feb 2010, 2:53 pm

whitetiger wrote:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24602/page1/

This article shows an example of autistics not judging moral behavior by intention. I wonder if it isn't because we have been judged all our lives by our behavior, not intention? They are assuming it's a "brain thing" when it could be a socialized thing.


Couldn't it still be a brain thing? I fail to grasp how others will view my intention... but because I have THAT particular attention, I assume others will also undertand it. (This is the lacking in ToM. in me personally..... the inability to see how others will view or grasp my behaviour and my intended meanings.)
We can learn it........eventually. But it remains a cognitive task that requires work.

One of the most important things I have learned intellectually, is that behaviour and intention do not necessarily match up in me, or in others. It means I can let go of a "reversed" cause-effect relationship between the two. (e.g. Individual "A" did that, and that MEANS they intended THAT. If I can let go of this cognitively, it means I am less reductionist in m summations of others. Every behaviour has mutiple meanings and even multiple intentions.) That is why humans are so darned confusing for us ASD people who struggle to multi task and have more static and detail oriented brains. But whereas this issue is more innately understood by NT's, I have to constantly WORK at it. I have to compensate cognitively on a daily basis in order to understand this, whereas non-ASD people glide through with this in a far easier manner. (that is why they do not get so tired by life with others. LOL.)


My understanding of the article is that they were saying we do not make the links between action and intention as others do. We just read "the action," which is a focusing in on an action detail (as opposed to ALL the information seen and unseen.) That is why we struggle. What it means is our summations of a situation can sometimes be a little skewed compared to the broader assumptions or summations upheld by the majority of the group.
Sometimes that can mean we really see things more clearly. And sometimes we do not.

But mostly, in my view, we just view things DIFFERENTLY. :)


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Last edited by millie on 24 Feb 2010, 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

memesplice
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24 Feb 2010, 3:15 pm

Millie

You know when someone's looking at your work and they come up to you and go

"that's really great,

I like that,

I can see it in my living room,

how much is it ? etc". ... get cards out to pay

then add :

" what is it meant to be exactly?"

Is that a reversed NT into spectrum style questioning, maybe.



millie
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24 Feb 2010, 3:28 pm

I don't know. I am already confused. and I would be totally confused by that much information in a conversation coming at me. I could work out eventually they want to buy something, but all the peripheral information would get me really flustered as I would have to process it all. :lol:

I think i would prefer it if they just said, " I want to buy that. Here is the cash." End of story! :lol:
All that extraneous stuff to be comprehended....ugh.

and that probably answers your question!


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alana
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24 Feb 2010, 3:46 pm

Nightsun wrote:
Quote:
Gabrieli and Saxe have demonstrated this in a study of teenagers with and without Asperger syndrome, a disorder on the mild end of the autism spectrum. (Children with severe autism generally can't handle the MRI process, which involves lying still in a large tube for the duration of the scan.) The researchers concocted moral scenarios and asked the subjects to judge the characters involved. In one, person A passes person B some sugar, and B puts it in his coffee. It turns out there is arsenic in the sugar bowl, and B dies.

Everyone confronted with this scenario agrees that if A knew about the arsenic in the sugar bowl, he has done something morally wrong. If A unknowingly passed the arsenic, however, control subjects do not say A acted immorally, but Asperger patients do.

"For most people, intentions are more important than the outcome," says Gabrieli. But Asperger patients seem to have difficulty separating the two. He and Saxe are using functional magnetic resonance imaging to search for the neural basis of that impairment. (See technologyreview.com/asperger for some sample images.) In previous studies, Saxe has shown that theory of mind appears to be seated in a brain region called the temporoparietal junction.


It would be interesting with another question like: "suppose there is no law and you are the one that make laws, would you kill guy A in that situation?"

I think that the question asked doesn't remove the effect of social conditioning. I think that Aspergers tend to link moral with outcome, but the problem is that the concept of moral could be different in AS and NT so actually you need to remove the need for that concempt from the test.
I know for sure that when I was young I would have replyied like the Aspie in the test. But I already know the difference between the two situation, what I didn't know is what others call "moral".


this is confusing to me because I'm surrounded by knuckle draggers who for instance don't get that Andrea Yates was in fact insane when she killed her kids...and stuff like that, it is constant so I don't know why I understand subtle distinction and they can't.

Here is the thing:

I strongly suspect they are mistaking literal interpretation of the question in the above example for something else.

Did A act immorally? yes, if you interpret it literally, A did. Did A *intend* to act immorally? No A did not,. Would an aspie need the distinction between those two questions? possibly, whereas an NT probably wouldn't.



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24 Feb 2010, 3:59 pm

It irritates me too !



Unfortunately Nt's have to go through this process/ritual before paying you for it. It takes then so much time and all the while they are describing each stage of their thought processes.

If often think they are describing their inner turmoil between wanting your work and justifying having it.

Its their orbit of multiple questions. ( If we really wanted to make money we should produce art that is designed for them to quickly overcome this resistance and structure their thoughts in such a way they don't feel bad about owning something they really want. :) )

Do you ever speak to them when someone is " contemplating" buying anything?

I leave them well alone and watch for the hand going into the inside pocket for the visa cards
or cash.