Social anhedonia and autism

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Hello all. We all know that there are similarities between schizophrenia and autism.

For example, see http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 114746.htm.

Also, from reading the WAIS-III and WMT-III technical manual, I found that hippocampal lesions may be responsible for a large segment of the schizophrenic population. Also, there have been found to be asymmetric hippocampuses in autistic populations. So, both have been linked to differences in the hippocampus.

One thing I found during my schizophrenic research was that there were a couple of scales that were fairly predictive of future schizophrenic risk, namely the Chapman Scales. A particularly significant scale thereof being the Revised Social Anhedonia scale. It was found those who scored at the 50th percentile had a 1% likelihood of developing schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in the future, while those who scored at least 2 SD away from the mean (Above the 97.8 percentile, I think) had a 24% chance of developing schizophrenia in the future. This was from a population of college students whose average age was 18 years old.

Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9830243

For those who don't know, "Social Anhedonia" is the anticipatory pleasure one derives from social interaction. That is, the 'social drive' or 'social desire' to interact with others.

What I'm wondering is what kind of social anhedonia score distribution there is for aspergers populations? I'm gaining access to the test in about a few days (I hope so anyways), and I'll be taking it because I'm mainly interested in my schizophrenia risk, but I kind of wonder what percentage of those highly socially anhedonic individuals were actually autistic or possessed aspergers?

How 'socially anhedonic' do you feel? Do you feel a drive to interact with others but it's difficult to do so due to difficulties with interaction? If so, you'd likely possess relatively low social anhedonia.

I could put up the test online so that other people could take it, if anyone else is interested.

Last edited by swbluto on 07 Mar 2011, 12:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'd like to see the tests.

Mine's high.

"Low social anhedonia" except my desire was often blocked by fear of things going wrong. Lately that fear has evaporated, because I stopped caring if things went wrong.

It isn't easy, but once I stopped treating socializing like it's a performance I've opened up. I socialize to unwind, have fun, and as a conduit to pursue mutual interests with people, not to perform for other people.

I know it sounds Machiavellian but I think we'd all be better if the focus in social skills training wasn't "how to come off as nice" but instead "how to turn the social situation in your favor", because let's be honest that's what EVERYONE is doing even if most NTs aren't even aware they're doing it. Not saying people shouldn't be nice, just that there are times(and extents) where it's not socially advantageous.

Extremely high now. But, most of my life, I had a high motivation to be around people, although, I lacked the keen skills that most of those that surrounded me had. My interaction was mostly listening rather than talking.

Every time I try to interact with people, my social anhedonia seems to increase. I would much rather people pretend I don't exist unless we have some purpose to interact.

I would say that I have low social anhedonia. I'm just really, really bad at social interactions, so interacting is painful to me. Also, some people are just boring.

I'm relatively high on the social anhedonia scale as compared to some other people I know. Other people are energized by a lot of contact with other people but it makes me tired. I guess it's a difference in the way people are wired. I don't have anhedonia in other areas like eating and exercise and work.

I'm not sure if you are really describing anhedonia. I enjoy social interactions, but I avoid them because they require a lot of work from me, because I am not very successful at them, and because I have to take a lot of time to recover afterward.

I have not taken the test (though I would love to do so), but subjectively I would say that I have moderately high social anhedonia. I can look forward to socializing and I can enjoy it, but the vast majority of the time, I do neither, and this isn't a result of anxiety.

Yeah, social anhedonia characterizes how much you "don't want to" socialize, and thus it's a part of your drive to socialize. However, there are other factors that characterize your 'social drive' including anxiety, past performance, expected work, etc.

It's much like ... candy. Let's make it a really expensive and rare one, like, carefully cured Belgian chocolate.

Those who really desire candy are said to have low candy anhedonia. Those who don't have high candy anhedonia.

Among those who really desire candy, but are demoralized by the amount of work required to obtain one or by the amount of cash that is required to be forked over, may have low drive to obtain the candy because of the amount of work required. But, they still have low candy anhedonia because they desire it.

With social anhedonia, a person with 'low anhedonia' *wants* to interact with others, but might not be motivated to do so because of anxiety, past results and other difficulties. If they don't have interactional difficulties, then they'll probably both have low anhedonia and high social drive!

Social anhedonia may often be correlated with being able to socialize easily but it's not always the case.

I've always been bad at small talk though I've learned to perform adequately. But I think for me the source of the difficulty was/is the lack of initial impulse to share most thoughts with others. In other words, which came first? I prefer directing my own thoughts to interaction.I doubt I'm completely alone in this. I can also go a little bonkers from hearing the human voice for too long.

I also wonder about the study that found that 25% of 18yo women without that social impulse became schizophrenic. Wouldn't it then follow that schizoid people have a 25% chance of developing schizophrenia? Seems high to me.

Schizoid is said to have elevated risk of developing schizophrenia.

I just googled this quickly out of curiosity.

On the medical sites I looked at (Medline, Mayo Clinic...) the majority opinion seemed to be that, though there is a genetic relationship between schizoid pd and schizophrenia, it's unlikely that a schizoid person will develop hallucinations, etc. One site did mention an increased likelihood for short, transient hallucinatory episodes but didn't say how much of an increased likelihood. The only statistics I found was that schizophrenia is found in 1% of the general population, goes up to 10% if one parent is schizophrenic, 30% for both parents, etc. So a 25% increased incidence in a schizoid just seems high to me.

About to go to bed. Can edit with citations tomorrow, maybe when I'm on a real computer and can copy/paste.

Okay, so I went to the university to find an article that dealt with the scales, and it turns out it was a research article on testing of the scales, and not the scales themselves! Haha.

So, where would one find these?

According to this article at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ssw/projects ... hapman.pdf, it appears this little line abuts the reference for the scales in the references section:

So do I need to call the University of Wisconsin up and ask them nicely for the scales?

Wait... I found his information.

LO REN J CHAP MAN
E-mail ljcha pm1 @fac staff .wi sc.edu
Phone (608) 2 62-43 33

(I introduced spaces so that this particular information wasn't google-able / collectable-from-email-spam bots.)

Now I wonder what the best approach would be for acquiring the scale? If I couldn't acquire the scale, then what would the best approach be for being assessed by it? An agreement with UW to take the test at some scheduled time in exchange for some dinero, and then a plane ticket there? hahahahahaha...

So what's the difference between intrinsic anhedonia and acquired anhedonia.

I sort of gave up on social stuff. I for a long time wanted it. But it never worked out so well. So now I don't really look for it nor look forward to it.