At the end of Casablanca, when Humphrey Bogart finally tells Ingrid Bergman to get on the plane back to her husband, the young mother watching the afternoon TV movie sheds a tear. Instinctively, her two-year-old tries to comfort her by offering his teddy bear to her. Both the mother and child are displaying intuitive awareness of others’ mental states and emotions.
Social intuition comes naturally to most of us, but not all. Autism is a developmental disorder that affects around one in 500 individuals (although this figure appears to be on the rise and depends largely on how you define it). In general, autism can be thought of as a disorder with three major disabilities: a profound lack of social skills, poor communication and repetitive behaviors. It is regarded as a spectrum disorder because it covers a broad range and individuals vary in the extent to which they are affected. All those with the disorder share problems with social intuition, however.
Individuals with autism have a problem with socializing because they lack a repertoire of developmental social skills that enable humans to become expert mind readers. Not mind reading in the way Spock from Star Trek could do, but rather the capacity to infer what others are thinking in different circumstances. Over the course of early childhood typical youngsters increasingly become more sophisticated at understanding that other people have mental states that motivate their behavior. For example, if you leave your bag in the office, then I know that you believe it to be there even though the cleaner has handed it in to lost and found. I can understand you hold a false belief. This ability is called having a “theory of mind,” and it is a natural ability in typical children. By the time the average child is around four years old, he or she interprets other people as being goal-directed and purposeful and as having preferences, desires, beliefs and even misconceptions. Without this repertoire of social skills, a human is effectively mind blind—unable to understand what others are thinking and why they do the things they do.
Not only do typical children become intuitive mind readers, but they also become agony aunts as well. They begin to understand others’ sadness, joy, disappointment and jealousy as emotional correlates of the behaviors that make humans do the things they do. Again, by four years of age, children have become expert at working the social arena. They will copy, imitate, mimic and generally empathize with others, thereby signaling that they, too, are part of the social circles that we all must join to become members of the tribe. They share the same socially contagious behaviors of crying, yawning, smiling, laughing and pulling disgusted faces that signal they share the same emotional experiences of those around them.
Baffled by Behavior
No wonder individuals with autism find direct social interaction frightening. If you cannot figure out other people, then such interaction must be intensely baffling and stressful. They often do not like direct eye contact, do not prefer to look at faces compared with other things, do not copy, do not mimic, do not yawn when others yawn or retch when others retch, or laugh or join in with the rich tapestry of social signals we share as a species. This inability may be why individuals with autism generally withdraw into activities that do not involve other people.
The incidence of autism is higher in identical twins, who share nearly 100 percent of their genes, compared with fraternal twins, who share only 50 percent, which indicates that there is a genetic component to the disorder. Also, the greater incidence in males compared with females strongly implicates a biological basis. To date, tantalizing evidence exists based on brain-imaging studies that regions in the prefrontal cortex—most notably the frontoinsular and the anterior cingulate cortex, which are activated by social interaction in normal individuals—are relatively inactive in individuals with autism. Autopsy data also indicate that the frontoinsular and the anterior cingulate cortex structures are abnormal in autism disorder.
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5 Comments
Add CommentWhile the "Von Economo neurons" may come in to play and differences may be shown, let's be careful about our science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe know that un-fired connections in the brain will leave weaker connection, so any work in the future to confirm brain differences in this area still wouldn't identify a cause.
Knowing a child with high functioning autism who used to be more comforted by the letters on cnn news when his mother picked him up as he cried, makes me suspect other areas in the brain are being rewarded. The mother noticed the boy didn't cry when we was facing the screen and he only stopped crying when it was a show with letters like the shopping channel or had subtitles.
This autistic boy was reading in two languages Japanese and English and to this day is reinforced primarily by written words.
Social intuition is an extremely useful skill. However, none of the animals cited in this article can read. I do wonder, as the parent of this child, if autism is intellectual evolution gone somewhat awry.
Perhaps we still haven't evolved into social theory of mind, where we understand what other tribes, cultures, beliefs, sexes are thinking, whatever social thinking is. I'd hate to think what the analog in individual thinking Lady Gaga corresponds to. Or Libyans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis still leaves the serious question of what causes the lack of development of the missing neurons. Then there is the question of what to do about them. Is there a way to cause more of these neurons to form? Is a possible correction of the deficit dependent on early detection or would it work at any age?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for posting this. My son is very high functioning. His language and vocabulary are amazing! He is the "little professor" type. He does struggle in the social skills area but what was fascinating about your post was about the child being comforted by the letters on the t.v. screen. My son drives us all crazy by putting the captions on the t.v.! I will have to find out more about this!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother thing I have thought was weird and wondered if there was any connection was when my son was about 3 his arches fell. One day he had beautiful high arches on his feet and then the next he was flat footed. I was so upset I took him to the doctor but they had no idea why it happened. This was long before I found out he had Asperger's.
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