Mentioned this on another thread—I don’t know if you are all already familiar with this, but this is probably a good place to point out that there’s now prettygood evidence that autism has an “opposite” in schizophrenia; neurotypicality is then in the middle of the resulting spectrum.
(Clarification: This isn’t something I actually have much knowledge about at all; this is just something I saw some time ago and the CNV evidence seems pretty compelling.)
I get the idea we should probably be trying to account for this somehow? I’ll admit it seems unlikely that we get so many people from that end of the spectrum here, but scales that don’t account for that do seem like a good way to end running into a fallacy of compression.
Another neuroatypicality that I find interesting to compare with autism is Williams syndrome. The behavioural symptoms (unlike autism, there are also a lot of physical ones) are a sort of opposite of autism/Asperger’s. People with Williams syndrome talk readily—too readily, in children—to strangers, and appear usually adept at social conversation. On first meeting unawares someone with the syndrome, one may see nothing amiss. If it is a child, one may be impressed by their apparently mature behaviour beyond their years, but eventually, one realises that there’s nothing behind it. They have a facility with the forms but not the function, a “party” personality that can do nothing else.
Williams syndrome isn’t an all or nothing condition, there are degrees. A colleague of mine told me of meeting the headmaster of his daughter’s school, and when he met the headmaster’s wife, he immediately recognised the characteristic physiognomy of Williams syndrome. Sure enough, when he spoke with her, she was unusually affable and charming, but he could see that there was actually a real person there, a competent, intelligent woman.
Since discovering Williams syndrome, whenever I meet someone with a “party personality” my immediate thought is, “can they do anything else”?
Mentioned this on another thread—I don’t know if you are all already familiar with this, but this is probably a good place to point out that there’s now pretty good evidence that autism has an “opposite” in schizophrenia; neurotypicality is then in the middle of the resulting spectrum.
(Clarification: This isn’t something I actually have much knowledge about at all; this is just something I saw some time ago and the CNV evidence seems pretty compelling.)
I get the idea we should probably be trying to account for this somehow? I’ll admit it seems unlikely that we get so many people from that end of the spectrum here, but scales that don’t account for that do seem like a good way to end running into a fallacy of compression.
Another neuroatypicality that I find interesting to compare with autism is Williams syndrome. The behavioural symptoms (unlike autism, there are also a lot of physical ones) are a sort of opposite of autism/Asperger’s. People with Williams syndrome talk readily—too readily, in children—to strangers, and appear usually adept at social conversation. On first meeting unawares someone with the syndrome, one may see nothing amiss. If it is a child, one may be impressed by their apparently mature behaviour beyond their years, but eventually, one realises that there’s nothing behind it. They have a facility with the forms but not the function, a “party” personality that can do nothing else.
Williams syndrome isn’t an all or nothing condition, there are degrees. A colleague of mine told me of meeting the headmaster of his daughter’s school, and when he met the headmaster’s wife, he immediately recognised the characteristic physiognomy of Williams syndrome. Sure enough, when he spoke with her, she was unusually affable and charming, but he could see that there was actually a real person there, a competent, intelligent woman.
Since discovering Williams syndrome, whenever I meet someone with a “party personality” my immediate thought is, “can they do anything else”?