Talk:Asperger syndrome/Archive 12

message: Page takes forever to load and much above is less than polite.  Sometimes it helps people cool down when prior heated exchanges are hidden away in an archive - just an suggestion per my limited point of view, not being a contributor to these pages Kiwi 18:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Archived, per seeming consensus. Poindexter Propellerhead 00:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Time to Archive?

message: All the relevant beginning points are here - Talk:Sociological and cultural aspects of autism
On this topic talk page, there is also the recently deleted list of 24 traits commonly found among the population of those with autism/Asperger.   The list is also waiting on the above talk page to be prepared for insertion into the article page of Sociological and cultural aspects of autism.   
Kiwi 08:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: To write subtopic on autism/asperger in females

message: As has been pointed out before (see archive of prior talk page), this article is really, really long. As has been pointed out before, filling three or four screens with a list is not very consistent with a concise article. And then there were some questions about the quality of the list in the "Social" heading, as well. Anyway, that list is gone now. I believe that consensus favors my action, but if anyone thinks I totally blew it, feel free to revert it. Poindexter Propellerhead 01:14, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure myself either way (except that the article IS long...as is the discussion, which is easily fixed). It's not so much about whether the list should be deleted as whether other things should be retained MORE, because SOMETHING had to go. --Zeraeph 02:04, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I am with Zeraeph: I liked the list but I am not sure if it was appropriate to the article.  I am flirting with making a proposal to split the article but I am so against article proliferation and can't quite lock down what would be split so, unless genius strikes me, I am reluctantly in agreement. Alex Jackl 17:25, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi All.  Pardon me for butting in.  I am certainly no expert, but I looked at the list and feel that it would have a perfect home here - Sociological and cultural aspects of autism.   Just today, the external link to the NYTimes article was moved to this WP topic page (one I hadn't been aware of previously).  Anyone care to take a look and perhaps import the list or at least import to the Talk page to discuss whether it should be there?   Just a thought.  Like people have said, the list is a good one, it is just that the article is too long and something had to go.  (note: the NYTimes article was imported there despite the fact that high functioning (ie, Asperger) girls were the subjects of the research discussed) Kiwi 21:12, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Um ... what list was that ? CeilingCrash 04:19, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

text: This list - 
#Difficulty reading the social and emotional messages in the eyes: those with AS don't look at eyes often, and when they do, they can't read them.
#Making literal interpretation: Some AS individuals have trouble interpreting colloquialisms, sarcasm, and metaphors.
#Being considered disrespectful and rude: prone to egocentric behavior such as being constantly late for appointments or walking away when another person is speaking to them, individuals with Asperger's miss cues and warning signs that this behavior is inappropriate.
#Honesty and deception: children with Asperger's are often considered "too honest," and may even proclaim themselves to be "honest" or "frank" as a way of explaining their behavior. They have difficulty being deceptive, even at the expense of hurting someone's feelings.
#Inadequate nonverbal communication: their facial expressions, hand gestures, and other forms of body language, are sometimes limited.
#Becoming aware of making social errors: as children with Asperger's mature, and become aware of their inability to connect, their fear of making a social mistake, and their self-criticism when they do so, can lead to social phobia.
#Differences in speech: they display less speech intonation than neurotypical persons. Their speech may be perceived as "flat." However, those with AS also possess superficial fluency in day-to-day conversation.
#A sense of paranoia: because of their inability to connect, persons with Asperger's have trouble distinguishing the difference between the deliberate or accidental actions of others,feeling that other persons are perhaps smiling at them because of their actions, which can in turn lead to a feeling of paranoia.
#Managing conflict: being unable to understand other points of view can lead to inflexibility and an inability to negotiate conflict resolution. Once the conflict is resolved, remorse may not be evident.
#Sense of humor: although jokes can be grasped at an intellectual level, the emotional worth of humor, in some Asperger individuals, is not appreciated. Smiles and laughter may appear unnatural with some Aspergers.
#Awareness of hurting the feelings of others: some Aspergers exhibit a lack of empathy, which often leads to unintentionally offensive or insensitive behaviors.
#Repairing someone's feelings: lacking intutition about the feelings of others, people with AS have little understanding of how to console someone or how to make them feel better.
#Recognizing signs of boredom: inability to understand other people's interests can lead AS persons to be inattentive to others. Conversely, people with AS often fail to notice when others are uninterested.People with AS are capable of holding one way conversations for hours at a time and appear not to notice that the other person has not reciprocated in the conversation.
#Introspection and self-consciousness: individuals with AS have difficulty understanding their own feelings or their impact on the feelings of other people.
#Clothing and personal hygiene: people with AS tend to be less affected by peer pressure than others. As a result, they often do what is comfortable and are unconcerned about their impact on others.When they become aware of their shortcomings, they often become obsessive with ensuring that their method of dressing is meticulous or they may form an obsession with what they perceive as their body odour or perspiration by showering or bathing a number of times per day.
#Reciprocal love and grief: since people with AS have difficulty emotionally, their expressions of affection and grief are often short and weak.
#Lack of participation in chitchat: they are not generally interested in, and do not participate in idle chat and gossip especially if the subject is not one they are generally interested in.
#Preference of routine: they prefer routine work, and are not able to cope well to changes, even small ones. Such disruptions from routine can cause stress and anxiety.
#Coping with criticism: people with AS are compelled to correct mistakes, even when they are made by someone in a position of authority, such as a teacher. For this reason, they can be unwittingly offensive.
#Formal mannerisms and etiquette: their etiquette is formal, even within the family. Their speech may be interlaced with "thank you" or "please" or "good evening" more than necessary. Some persons with AS may even insist that other members of their family follow this ritual.
#Speed and quality of social processing: because they respond through reasoning and not intuition, AS individuals tend to process social information more slowly than the norm, leading to uncomfortable pauses or delays in response. This means that although the AS individual will tend to make a more reasoned and balanced understanding and/or decision, it can lead to the AS individual being told to use their 'common sense' to solve problems, a concept they cannot understand or use in the way a neurotypical person can.Typically,they cannot do relatively simple tasks such as connecting a stereo system without constant repeating of the instructions. 
#Faithfulness towards family: people with AS are staunchly faithful to their friends and/or immediate members of their family.
#Exhaustion: as people with AS begin to understand theory of mind, they must make a deliberate effort to process social information. This often leads to mental exhaustion.
#Financial imprudence: although some people with AS can manage their own finances, in many cases linear thinking impedes their ability to make larger financial decisions, where they require the assistance of others.
Kiwi 04:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Oh, that list !  Yes, it seems out of place in this article, tho perhaps will end up somewhere else.  CeilingCrash 05:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi CeilingCrash.  I just exported it to the Talk page of Sociological_and_cultural_aspects_of_autism where it seems appropriate. Kiwi 05:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The list was originally sourced to Attwood, Tony, Theory of Mind and Asperger's Syndrome, pp 11-42 in Baker, Linda and Welkowitz, Lawrence A.; eds. (2005). Asperger’s Syndrome: Intervening in Clinics, Schools, and Communities - People with Asperger's Syndrome Can Lead Productive Lives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.  which seemed to get lost after Poindexter deleted it  as above. It was just long and less pertinent than a lot of other things. --Zeraeph 22:07, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the ref; has any one laid eyes on that source to verify?  I've noticed that supposedly sourced text seems to grow after the fact in this article, and it's not always clear that new text additions come from the cited source.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Now you mention it, I am not aware of anyone verifying it yet, and my nasty suspicious mind is never entirely happy with text that continues to grow after citation. However, it is all rather moot. I would be inclined to feel that a combination of Eubulides concerns about copyright and SO MUCH TEXT on Talk:Sociological and cultural aspects of autism‎, Poindexter's concerns about SO MUCH TEXT, full stop, mean that the text is gone for good anyway? I was reading it today, and some of that list seems a little bit "left of field" EVEN to the casual glance. Ok, if it was IMMACULATELY verifiable, peer reviewed, etc and an editor or so felt strongly about it, even so it would need including, but at this point that is hardly the case is it? --Zeraeph 15:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: I killed the long, long list

message: There is no index box at the top of the page - you know, where there are shortcuts to discussion topics.  Who knows how to create one? Kiwi 05:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha!  Ask, and it shall be given you!!!  :o) But I wonder what it was I did that made it suddenly appear?  Curious.  Kiwi 05:06, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Where is the index Box?

message: A team of Autistic and NT doctors, physicians and researchers has just published a new study, "The Nature of Autistic Intelligence."   These researchers are hell-bent on revolution within the medical field and apparently (i haven't got the article yet) have - ahem! - scientific studies (remember those!?) indicating the autistic brain has been universally misunderstood in the past.
I want to be careful about advancing my own POV on this issue, i hope we can get an active discussion going once i can get hold of the paper (which i'll put here or something).  
Here's an article about the study anyway, it is quite a bombshell : 
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=28489
Still no word on shutting CeilingCrash the hell up, word has it the Volkmar group is working on that one ... CeilingCrash 17:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's the actual study:    Asperger's isn't mentioned; I believe this could be considered for the autism article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:37, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Not exactly news to all of us, but good to have reliable sources building up. Poindexter Propellerhead 22:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The abstract () says that the scores of subjects with autism on a particular test (Raven's) were higher than their WISC scores:  "Their scores were, on average, 30 percentile points, and in some cases more than 70 percentile points, higher than their scores on the Wechsler scales of intelligence."   That is not the same as saying they have superior intelligence; just that one test measures intelligence their intelligence differently than the WISC.  If you have the full text of the study, perhaps it says more, but the abstract (at least) doesn't reflect the commentary above.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The ABC link above mentions, "The average boost in score is 30 points, Mottron says, enough to put someone previously considered mentally retarded into the normal range and the average to gifted status," which again, doesn't say more intelligent than average, just a different measure of intelligence that shows better results than WISC.  I'm not sure there's anything earth-shattering here.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As the abstract points out, it was previously believed that unusually high scores on some tests were considered some sort of anomalous side effect of a disability. Now it appears that there is nothing anomalous about it, but rather that the IQ tests used may have been unsuited for the purpose. So test scores which had seemed freakishly high now make sense, without having to resort to some mysterious phenomenon to explain them. If this idea holds up through additional research, and becomes generally accepted, it will also mean a redefinition of AS, since pace of intellectual development is part of that definition. Lastly, because a number of studies have tested people with AS against control groups, groups with HFA, and so on, based on matching IQ test scores, several old research topics may require reexamination. Poindexter Propellerhead 06:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major new research released 

message: It will be interesting to see how NT's react to this turning of the tables.
That article I mentioned above detected a cluster of supernormal intelligence 
(1/3 landing into "high" as opposed to 5% of the normal population)
across the autistic spectrum, and found rather amusingly that Auties are not stuck at the detail level, rather they can shift rapidly from details to the big picture, while it is NT's who are stuck at the "big picture" level.   It goes on to discuss a unique fluidity to autistic thought.
This may spawn a sea-change in the professional view that an Autistic is a defective NT.
One of the team members has gone on to state that Auties are not mind-blind, intention-blind, or anything-blind; they are simply using a different language.
Viva La Revolution.   
(CeilingCrash will be insufferable until further notice.)  CeilingCrash 21:28, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not exactly news to all of us, but good to have reliable sources building up. Poindexter Propellerhead 22:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The abstract () says that the scores of subjects with autism on a particular test (Raven's) were higher than their WISC scores:  "Their scores were, on average, 30 percentile points, and in some cases more than 70 percentile points, higher than their scores on the Wechsler scales of intelligence."   That is not the same as saying they have superior intelligence; just that one test measures intelligence their intelligence differently than the WISC.  If you have the full text of the study, perhaps it says more, but the abstract (at least) doesn't reflect the commentary above.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The ABC link above mentions, "The average boost in score is 30 points, Mottron says, enough to put someone previously considered mentally retarded into the normal range and the average to gifted status," which again, doesn't say more intelligent than average, just a different measure of intelligence that shows better results than WISC.  I'm not sure there's anything earth-shattering here.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As the abstract points out, it was previously believed that unusually high scores on some tests were considered some sort of anomalous side effect of a disability. Now it appears that there is nothing anomalous about it, but rather that the IQ tests used may have been unsuited for the purpose. So test scores which had seemed freakishly high now make sense, without having to resort to some mysterious phenomenon to explain them. If this idea holds up through additional research, and becomes generally accepted, it will also mean a redefinition of AS, since pace of intellectual development is part of that definition. Lastly, because a number of studies have tested people with AS against control groups, groups with HFA, and so on, based on matching IQ test scores, several old research topics may require reexamination. Poindexter Propellerhead 06:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  new research shows superior intelligence in autism 

message: Please note WP:CITE:  Scrolling reference lists should never be used, because of issues with readability, accessibility, printing, and site mirroring. Additionally, it cannot be guaranteed that such reference lists will display properly in all web browsers.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:51, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Scrolling ref box removed 

message: Another problem with using personal websites and other non-reliable self-published sources is that the links may go dead.  PubMed sources are not only peer-reviewed; they endure.  Does anyone know what became of AS-IF?  To begin with, it was a personal webpage, which should never have been used as a source, and now it appears to be dead.  Here's a link from the internet archive; can anyone access this site and does anyone know if it has been taken down?  It was used to source several statements, even though it is not a reliable source, and now it seems to be gone. 
* ^ a b c AS-IF.org. Asperger Syndrome Information and features: Definition. Retrieved June 29, 2006. 
*  ^ AS-IF.org. Asperger Syndrome Information and features: Overlap. Retrieved July 6, 2006. 
SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't care whether it is live or not, I just checked it, let's lose it...it isn't even CLOSE to WP:RS (have I been in a COMA or something?). --Zeraeph 10:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: PS The only appropriate use I can see for a ref like that is as a live link to text quoted from a print WP:RS, like using "behavenet" as a hyperlink under a citation to DSM. --Zeraeph 10:40, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-reliable sources

message: As of right now, there are no significant differences between the pre-revert form and the current form, other than the opening paragraphs. Poindexter Propellerhead 02:22, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not the case.  Yesterday, while you all were edit and revert warring, the text in question could have been moved, along with clean citations, back to the lead in one edit taking a few minutes.  Today, it will take longer to sort through the subsequent edits to clean up the refs for the second time. Your revert of ref cleanup was rude and inconsiderate when all you had to do was move the paragraphs you wanted from within the body of the article back to the lead, which would have preserved the ref cleanup.  I'll be putting the article in use to clean up the refs again; I hope another editor returns to you someday the courtesy you've shown here.  Your excuse that you couldn't be bothered to read the talk page during several hours in which you were editing and revert warring is flimsy at best.  SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:07, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit reconciliation