Zia Cobalt, All Skulls Herselfhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6056680/
#Alexithymia and #Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Complex Relationship
Excerpts and commentary follow.
"Interestingly, moral decision-making, which generally incorporates rational and emotional insights, is less subject to emotional biases in individuals w ASD due to the presence of alexithymia. This was corroborated by a study which found no differences in moral decision-making in individuals w both ASD and alexithymia – while ASD reduced utilitarian bias due to elevated distress in social situation, alexithymia increased utilitarian bias due to reduced empathic concern."
This fits with the experiences of a lot of #ActuallyAutistic people I know. Once we know what's going on and what the actual impact of our behavior will be, and how others will respond, we can behave consistently and in line with our ethics. And we do.
We are consistently freaked out by allistics whose ethics are subject to a sudden emotional thumb on the scales at any time, and deeply disturbed when we find it in ourselves. So we lock things down as hard as possible to prevent The Scariest Trait: having ethics except when angry/sad/etc. AKA having ethics except when it's important.
Also useful: the study emphasizes repeatedly that alexithymic ppl are still experiencing emotions. It's just hard to Words them, and therefore to make assumptions about how others are probably Wordsing their own emotions (which is required to run their Words backward through the Words Process filter to picture the experiences and needs being described).
This felt to me like a direct response both to #Lovaas and many #ABA style #behaviorist #autism parents/teachers/whatever. Despite commonly singling out autistic ppl's theory of mind as pathologically deficient, allistic people are kind of notorious for assuming anyone they aren't effectively communicating with must have nothing going on inside them at all.
(Lovaas talked about #autistic kids as literal blank slates who weren't human people yet until he crafted them into something actual. For all this piece's flaws, responding to that persistent bullshit is important.)
verity@Cobalt oh gosh
this isn't really related to psychology, but it kinda starts to explain some interactions I've been having lately