posted
Hi, ak. You raise a good point about the data--I'll try to find the original reference, and we can puzzle it through to see if the conclusions follow.
On first score, I got a 34. Second time, I could bring it down to 29 if I stretched my envelope a bit. Don't know how validated the scoring is, but trust me -- you aren't on the extreme here.
*goes back to lining up pencils by height, subdivided by eraser shade
quote:Well, I don't specifically remember doing that with M&Ms, but I did sort my Lucky Charms by shape and color (I would then pretend to be a god/black hole, and draw each piece inexorably to my gaping maw. My wife god/black hole would plead their case, and I would judge them. The pieces I deemed innocent were allowed to escape my gravity well, but the guilty were sucked right through the event horizon and consumed. Surprisingly, almost all of the guilty were marshmallows.)
Okay, that's it. You ever decide to let your life story be known, and I'll write it.
(I have to ask -- was that your pretend childhood wife god, or are you and Mrs. Noemon just really, really well suited to each other? )
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posted
Link is via Newsweek magazine picture in left border, about halfway down, overlaid with "Where do you fit in? Take this test."
(Ah, but I bet you could talk Mrs. Noemon into a quick game of "judge the sinning cereals" if you tried. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that the marshmallows are still being the really naughty ones.)
I think it was the social questions - I love social occasions, I love people, I love long conversations, and I like hearing people's stories.
It is an effort for me (I have to think about what I'm saying), but it is an effort with a definite payoff, so I like doing it.
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I missed it the first go-round too, Noemon. (extra points to ak!)
The thing is, I think I score pretty high on reading others' body language/facial expressions and interpreting intentions, too. At least, in the original Newsweek magazine version, there was an interpretation of eye expressions exam that I aced, and I've always tested well on those.
But the Aspergery symptoms have more driven my life, ever since I was tiny. Social situations used to be agony for me, and I was really reclusive up through high school. But when I realized that practicing medicine well meant being able to read between the lines and make friends fast in order to get patients to trust you with emotional and physical intimacies, I made a concerted effort to study how people interacted and teach myself how to do it. This was overlaid, though, on top of the compulsion to count the number of steps from the bus stop to my front door.
(I still do this, but I've added a little variety to spice it up: now I count by little running patterns of the form (1, 2, ... n-1, n) to the "nth" power. I really like limiting n to the set of even numbers, as this sets up a nice walking rhythm. 1,2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2 ...)
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posted
Of course, I've only recently realized that this is a little weird.
Noemon, we now have scientific proof that you and I are not the same person. Apparently you are a girl and I am a boy. Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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quote: I made a concerted effort to study how people interacted and teach myself how to do it.
Exactly. I'm fine now (at least I think so ), but it took effort to overcome what I thought was shyness and to try and figure out what people are like. To do THAT, I needed to be humbled enough to be willing to maybe learn from people whose strengths were very different from my own.
It's one of the reasons I loved my mission - I HAD to learn to figure out people to be a good missionary, and that's one of the reasons I love Hatrack. Easy access to brilliant, passionate people with real stories who are introspective enough that they like to talk about themselves. It's like a crash course in civilization. I love it.
posted
katharina, I think you're "fine" regardless, I really do. (But I know what you mean, too. ) It seems to make more sense to look at this as "different."
However -- the great big kahuna of howevers -- that raises the question of how appropriately to assign the concept of "disorder" or "disease" to begin with. For example, is deafness really a disability (or rather, what do we mean by that)? We broached this topic here at Hatrack in the ambiguous genitalia thread, skirted around the edges with the deafness controversy, but never really worried down the bone of it together. Now that we have sndrake here, we might have a shot at a really interesting discussion (he seems to bring a very fresh and thoughtful perspective to this issue).
But I've got to go be a grownup, and so that'll wait for another time.
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Oooh, this sounds like a fun discussion (the new topic that CT is bringing up). CT, I can't wait until you have more time, and can start it properly. What perspective does sndrake bring to this one? I must have missed some relevant posts.
It seems to me that whether something is a disorder or not--whether almost anything is positive or negative, in fact--depends almost entirely on the perspective of the individual experiencing it.
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Oh, CT! I'm so relieved I'm not the highest. I got saved by my sociability too. I LOVE parties and making friends and stuff like that. There is a lot of social stuff that I had to learn by rote, but my mom actually made a pretty good effort to teach me.
I would love to write a series of textbooks with diagrams and pictures that would train people like me in all the things that one really really needs to know that nobody will tell you about because they assume it's instinctual in you as it is in themselves. There was mention made of a facial expression training tool. I'd love to get a copy of that.
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CT, did you say there was a facial expression interpretation test too? I can't find it. Where is the link?
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You know ak, just a few days ago I was looking at a site that sold software that is supposed to help in recognizing subtle facial expressions. It wasn't on this computer, so it isn't stored in my history, but I can try to retrace my steps and find it for you if you'd like.
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“Consider the child who can spend hours watching how a glass bottle rotates in the sunlight”
That's me, though I can obviously talk and make eye contact too. I have spent hours watching the way water behaves in a sink or tub, watching the patterns a drop makes when it hits the surface, and the propagation of the resulting wave. Or watching the way sunlight filters through tree leaves in a breeze, and noticing the little overlapping sun images that form on the ground. They are particularly cool looking during solar eclipses. God does live in the details. I understand lots of things about how things work because of all these observations. To me stuff like that is endlessly fascinating. I just become transfixed.
Also I can't tune out music. The musical part of my brain is always very active. I usually have a song playing in my head, even if there's no music going on in the world right then. When people leave their radios on some godawful classic rock station at work, for instance, I can't tune it out. I have to pay attention to my 107,618th listen of Stairway to Heaven, or something, of which only the first 50,000 were enjoyable. Most people don't even seem to hear it, yet I can't tune it out. Muzak is horrible painful excruciating torture to me.
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Wow, I suck at facial recognition, apparently.
quote: You correctly identified 61% of the expressions. For each emotion expressed, your score is as follows:
Joy: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Fear: you correcly identified 0 of 4 Disgust: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Surprise: you correcly identified 4 of 4 Anger: you correcly identified 2 of 4 Sadness: you correcly identified 2 of 4 Contempt: you correcly identified 3 of 4
posted
I'm actually thinking about buying the CDs myself. They're only $30 each, and they look like they'd be really useful.
I'm the same way you are about details. I can sit and look at a sculpture, or a bug, or winter sunlight reflecting off a bale of hay for hours. At the same time, like you, I'm fairly adept around people.
I am able to tune pretty much anything out at will though, whether it's scent, sound, or what have you, which is a good thing considering some of my coworker's taste in music.
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You correctly identified 50% of the expressions. For each emotion expressed, your score is as follows:
Joy: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Fear: you correcly identified 0 of 4 Disgust: you correcly identified 2 of 4 Surprise: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Anger: you correcly identified 2 of 4 Sadness: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Contempt: you correcly identified 1 of 4
Did it confuse you that they seem to be feigning these emotions and not actually experiencing them? I mean their eyes often seemed to have amusement in them, even if their mouths were showing disgust or something. I honestly had no idea, though, on many of them, and just took wild guesses. That's bad enough but what's worse is I think sometimes I was positive that one thing was being conveyed and actually it was something very different!
Sheesh, no wonder I'm so clueless about people!
[ September 04, 2003, 02:44 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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You correctly identified 50% of the expressions. For each emotion expressed, your score is as follows:
Joy: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Fear: you correcly identified 1 of 4 Disgust: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Surprise: you correcly identified 2 of 4 Anger: you correcly identified 1 of 4 Sadness: you correcly identified 2 of 4 Contempt: you correcly identified 2 of 4
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posted
Noemon and Kayla, we all three seem to be worst as figuring out the negative ones. Maybe that's because there was really only one positive one to choose from, though. Maybe if there had been more nuances we would have fared even more poorly!
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Whoa - I scored a six on the first one. Does that mean I suck the autism from others like a anti-autism black hole?
The facial expression test thingy: RESULTS:
"You correctly identified 61% of the expressions."
It's difficult guessing the correct facial expression if you haven't seen them at neutral. You don't know where their eyebrows normally are on their face, or the tilt of their mouth. Some of them it was like basic guesswork. The more I saw a specific face, the easier it was to guess their emotion.
(Noemen - I agree. "That wasn't disgust, that was dismissive!")
posted
Hey, I did pretty good on disgust and contempt. (Wonder what that says about me, huh? ) Anne Kate, yeah, I had a problem with the "faking" the emotions. How are supposed to actually figure out what they are feeling, if they aren't actually feeling it?
Oh, and I once took a big old long series of test (psychological profile stuff) and one of the tests was to look at these pictures (that had people in them) and tell the story of what they were doing. It was easy enough. Right up until we got to the two pictures where you could see the people, but you couldn't see their faces. For some reason, I could come up with a story for all the other pictures, but not the ones where you could only see the back of their heads. The shrink kept telling me that it didn't matter what their faces looked like, I should make up a story about what they were doing. How is that possible? I wonder what that says about me. Anyone know? Weird.
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Yeah Ralphie, I agree completely! On one person I saw an emotion that I thought was joy, until I saw the expression that was actually joy for that person. My mistake was imagining her neutral expression incorrectly. I suspect that if I were actually watching these people instead of viewing still photos of them, I'd do better.
Then again, I could be deluding myself.
"That wasn't surprise, that was bemused indifference!"
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Of course, Kayla, now I'm curious as to what you decided to edit out, while still leaving the post itself.
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Noeman, Ralphie originally had up the "Joy: you correcly identified 3 of 4" part, but didn't have the numbers filled in. Everthing was "identified of 4." I was making fun of her, but she edited it all out, making me look like a moron. She enjoys doing that way too much.
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Yeah, true, the test seems to have many problems. Some of them being lack of ability to specify exactly what you see the expression as indicating, and the fact that you don't ever see the neutral expression for the person, and the fact that they were faking. I don't think people's fake expressions (unless they are very good actors) are anything at all like their real ones for given emotions.
I would love to find a way to overcome these problems, though, and also to have something to learn by. The test told you what exact thing was being conveyed and what you guessed, but when I pulled the pictures back up to look at what I did wrong, they were being presented in a different order so I couldn't tell. I want to be able to guess, then have it tell me the right answer, then look back at the face and see what they mean. Otherwise how can I learn?
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posted
I consider myself pretty good at reading expressions -- real ones, anyway. But that first test (sorry, Kayla) was awful! I'll bet money someone took each of those people and said, "Ok, now show joy. Now show fear," etc. They're not showing the feelings, but what they THINK the feelings are like. So they look dreadfully fake, and hard to read, because some of the visual cues are wrong.
I did pretty well with the other one, tho. Trouble with both is, there are so many degrees that are being ignored.
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posted
Well CT I scored exactly 34 on my first go round too. I think I'm inconsistent on the social questions. I like being in social settings but I don't have normal social "graces" and I end up being informed that I was rude when I had no clue that I was.
I also love cross-stiching and needle point. One of my best non-jatrquero friends started crocheting. I don't like it as much. I like cross-stitching better because it is like graph paper. My best masterpiece to date is this at 10" by 14" which took me two years to finish. (I can't get the imbedded link to work so I'm doing it the old fashioned way) http://www.dimensions-crafts.com/showproduct.asp?reqtype=1&colID=1&onPage=2&onItem=22&prodID=03830
I'm working on this needlepoint now with Killer Whales. It is almost finished and I should have about a year ago, but I got stalled and haven't gotten back to it.
One of these days I have to meet you!
AJ
Edit to fix URL, oh yes and I like quilting too because of the geometric designs, and the neurotic repetitive activity of hand quilting.
posted
the first emotional reading test I got 34% the only ones I got right at all were joy and saddness.
Joy: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Fear: you correcly identified 0 of 4 Disgust: you correcly identified 2 of 4 Surprise: you correcly identified 0 of 4 Anger: you correcly identified 0 of 4 Sadness: you correcly identified 3 of 4 Contempt: you correcly identified 1 of 4 AJ
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posted
I scored a 31 - high average. That's about right. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I was brain-injured at birth, resulting in some lasting neurological effects.
I've also had enough friends and acquaintances with formal labels of aspergers and autism to recognize there is some overlap in what I experience and what they experience.
I've come to view autism and asperger's as a "them" rather than an "it" - there's a huge diversity in what terms of what those labels encompass and I doubt that any one explanation or "pathology" explains everything.
Getting close to quitting time - gotta go home and do some cleaning for an apartment inspection tomorrow.
We're not being singled out, every apartment is being inspected and we received two days' notice that it would be done.
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I scored a 35 on the Newsweek autism test. I have long suspected I might have Asperger’s syndrome or at least some tendancies. But I don't have the OC-like traits discussed by CT. I just prefer thinking about stuff instead of people, and I lack social intelligence, though I've tried to improve my empathy. :sigh: Time to read up on Asperger’s syndrome, I guess. I wanted to anyway. I'll face the face test later.
posted
As far as the Burning Man festival, that Onion parody really sucked me in, thanks for that, CT. I would go just to see this mad pyro genius' 40' Fire Vortex.
quote: Using two industrial cooling tower fans, Nate Smith manufactured small tornadoes within a 40' wide cylindrical air chamber. He fed four 100# propane tanks into these twisters simultaneously to create spirals of fire up to 40 feet tall.
From the link. Fire art! Even more ephemeral than ice sculpture.
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I'm seriously considering going back to obsessive compulsive needlepointing. The problem is that our house needs obsessive compulsive painting and my compulsions are conflicting with each other...
posted
Yikes, I scored a 24 on the autism test and only got 46% on the facial expressions. Perhaps there is a good reason why I'm an engineering professor.
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I can sit for hours and watch a spinning bottle too. have you ever sat on the edge of a river and studied the patterns made by the pine needles that accumulate along the bank? Have you ever noticed how many different shades of white there are in an aspen grove on a sunny winter day? Do you see pictures of stange things in wood grains?
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posted
61% on the facial recognition. I found the girl with the glasses to be the most difficult and I didn't realize there was contempt, so I answered disgust too frequently.
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1,2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2 ...)
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), but it took effort to overcome what I thought was shyness and to try and figure out what people are like. To do THAT, I needed to be humbled enough to be willing to maybe learn from people whose strengths were very different from my own.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
) Anne Kate, yeah, I had a problem with the "faking" the emotions. How are supposed to actually figure out what they are feeling, if they aren't actually feeling it?![[Mad]](mad.gif)
