Examples of autism and psychosis as diametrical opposites

[Carl-Richard]

I was watching the ToE discussion with John Vervaeke and Donald Hoffman, and I heard John mention he was doing work on the "autism-psychosis continuum", and I was like "what?! Was Jreg actually not trolling with his autizmophrenia video?", and apparently yes, there does exist serious scientific research establishing diametrically opposite relationships between certain autism and psychosis symptoms. Here is a table from one such study:

 

https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/21571/1/Psychosis and autism as diametrical disorders of the social brain (LSERO).pdf

 

Does that mean they are mutually exclusive? No. There is still a high comorbidity rate between autism and schizophrenia (up to 34%). Still, I've always been fascinated by the potential connections between these two conditions, and I found this very interesting.

I couldn't find Vervaeke's study on it, and he was only slightly alluding to it, but I'm pretty sure it involved explaining the autism-psychosis continuum as a continuum of relevance realization.

And for you MBTI freaks out there: 

Quote

There is a cognitive continuum with more “mechanistic” thinking at one end – a preoccupation with the external physical environment – and more “mentalistic” thinking – a preoccupation with the internal mental environment – at the other.

https://jeffwarren.org/articles/twotribes/ (it talks about the study above).

...meaning that autism tilts towards sensor type cognition while psychosis tilts towards intuitive type cognition. This is of course evident in how autistics are more literal and only go with the information explicitly provided while psychotics can construct elaborate narratives out of thin air. The evolutionary background for this is also interesting:

 

Quote

Mentalistic cognition (or simply mentalism, otherwise know as theory of mind, folk psychology, or mentalizing) evolved for interaction with other people in a psychological environment, whereas mechanistic cognition (folk physics) evolved in parallel for interaction with the physical environment.

We interpret these features of psychosis as forms of hyper-mentalizing, such that theory of mind is dysregulated via impaired, inflexible, or extreme inferences regarding social cues and over-attribution of mental states and intentions. Indeed, the evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse noted that “those who have worked with schizophrenics know the eerie feeling of being with someone whose intuitions are acutely tuned to the subtlest unintentional cues, even while the person is incapable of accurate empathic understanding”, and Claridge et al. noted that “anyone who has interacted with psychotics will know of their uncanny capacity to respond to subtle social cues, believed to have been concealed from them.”

I certainly feel that I tilt towards the psychotic end, especially when I think back to the time I felt like one of my teachers (who I know without a doubt is a narcissist) was bullshitting an answer in front of the class with the fear of looking dumb if she couldn't answer. So there you can obviously see the connection between sensitivity to social cues and the abstract inferences based on those, and how it creates a more "mentalizing" style.

"Mentalizing" is also a term used in attachment theory, and it's been shown that mothers who score high on mentalizing correlate with having children with secure attachment styles (i.e. successful parenting), which also ties to the idea that femininity is more "psychotic" (given that parenting is mostly a maternal thing) . In that vein, I've heard autism being referred to as a form of "hyper-masculinity". Also, if mentalizing is associated with social perspective-taking and abstract inferences, then you can say that holistic big-picture thinkers (e.g. most of the Tier 2's in today's world) are essentially sub-clinical psychotics (which I've also heard about through the concept of decreased latent inhibition). Ahhh it's all coming together 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

21 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

And for you MBTI freaks out there: 

I'm speaking to you @thisintegrated >:)

[thisintegrated]

10 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I'm speaking to you @thisintegrated >:)

wth kind of dichotomy is mechanistic vs mentalistic cognition?‍??‍?

 

This is too Te for me. I need points, not just references.

Edited November 29, 2022 by thisintegrated

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

wth kind of dichotomy is mechanistic vs mentalistic cognition?‍??‍?

 

This is too Te for me. I need points, not just references.

You're just an uncultured swine ?

Edited November 29, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Matt23]

THanks!

Also... I'd highly recommend reading "The Essential Difference" by Simon Baron Cohen.  It's on Leo's book list under the "relationship" section. 

One phrase he uses to describe autism is as an "empathy-disorder" (cognitive, not emotional, empathy).

It basically says within each human mind there is one part systemic-thinking and one part empathic-thinking.  

Systemic thinking is all about understanding systems in order to control them (a system being anything from a kids systematically organized toy collection, a golf swing, or the economy: anything that follows If-Then rules).

Empathic thinking is about connection, intimacy, and being able to go into someone else's experience and care for them.  This is ideal for relationships since it's too much of a complex phenomena for the systemic-thinking mind to deal with (why you get people with autism who aren't socially adept, and they try to form logical rule-sets around socializing).

Men in general (across age and culturally) = systemic > empathic 

*in general; obviously there are edge cases

Women in general = systemic < empathic

Of course there are edge cases.

Basically his theory is that autism is an extreme male brain (i.e. systemic > empathic mind).  With either average to above average (but even below average sometimes) systemic thinking, but the key being lower than average empathizing.  

Also, empathizing being two parts: A) cognitive empathy (accurately imagining what another is thinking and feeling; psychopaths are good at this), and B) emotional empathy (caring for the other person).  People with autism do care, sometimes a great deal and can be very sensitive, but they lack the cognitive empathy piece.  This is what separates them from psychopaths and sociopaths.

 

 

Well... pretty sure we can consider this issue solved.  

Nobel prizes anyone? 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Matt23

[Oeaohoo]

When I was at University a student gave a talk on this subject. I don’t remember much except that she related it to the neurological theory of “predictive processing”: autism being a kind of “over-prediction” and schizophrenia “under-prediction”. In other words, the autist struggles to relate to the world because they are stuck inside their own mental model of it, whereas the schizophrenic suffers from the lack of a coherent mental model. This would also explain the over-sensitivity of schizophrenics to external cues, as someone who lacks a coherent mental model of how the world ought to be will be much more sensitive to how it actually is at any given moment.

The thing you point out about femininity being more “psychotic” is interesting. At the time, I remember interpreting this autism-schizophrenia relationship as a gendered phenomenon: autism as the extreme male brain and schizophrenia as the extreme female brain. However, while it is true that men are much more prone to autism, it seems that men and women are more or less equally prone to schizophrenia. Regardless, my limited experience is that most women are a bit crazy..!

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

When I was at University a student gave a talk on this subject. I don’t remember much except that she related it to the neurological theory of “predictive processing”: autism being a kind of “over-prediction” and schizophrenia “under-prediction”. In other words, the autist struggles to relate to the world because they are stuck inside their own mental model of it, whereas the schizophrenic suffers from the lack of a coherent mental model. This would also explain the over-sensitivity of schizophrenics to external cues, as someone who lacks a coherent mental model of how the world ought to be will be much more sensitive to how it actually is at any given moment.

 

I think it's the other way around:

Quote

Autistic children have a harder time catching a ball than non-autistic children do, possibly because they are less able to predict its trajectory, according to a new unpublished study. Researchers presented the findings virtually this week at the 2021 Society for Neuroscience Global Connectome.

 

The results align with the ‘predictive coding’ theory of autism, which proposes that an inability to predict what comes next — be it where a ball is likely to travel or how another person might respond to a gesture — underlies core autism traits.

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/autistic-children-may-have-trouble-predicting-movements/

 

This might be an overgeneralization, but predictive processing seems like it relies on top-down processing (signals originating from the neocortex and moving downwards through the hierarchies), while bottom-up processing originates from the sense organs. So if the autist mostly relies on the raw sense perceptions of the ball as it stands in mid-air as opposed to drawing on relevant internal models, they won't be able predict its trajectory. The schizophrenic on the other hand may be relying on a completely wacky internal model and also miss the ball. The pathology happens at the extremes.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Oeaohoo]

35 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think it's the other way around:

This might be an overgeneralization, but predictive processing seems like it relies on top-down processing (signals originating from the neocortex and moving downwards through the hierarchies), while bottom-up processing originates from the sense organs. So if the autist mostly relies on the raw sense perceptions of the ball as it stands in mid-air as opposed to drawing on relevant internal models, they won't be able predict its trajectory. The schizophrenic on the other hand may be relying on a completely wacky internal model and also miss the ball. The pathology happens at the extremes.

You’re probably right. Honestly, this isn’t something I know much about. I remember her speaking about a feedback mechanism between the brain and the external world, whereby the brain is continually (more specifically, recursively) updating its model of the external world. Autism, then, would occur when the brain is not able to update its predictive model quickly enough, perhaps because of an overly intense focus on analysing each particular frame, whereas schizophrenia would occur if the predictive model became extremely sensitive to external input.

I think by “over-prediction” she meant more a rigidity in predictive processing, rather than being particularly good at predicting things. This rigidity would also inhibit the capacity to predict things in the material world, just for the opposite reasons as that of a schizophrenic.

[Carl-Richard]

MrGirl of all people just had an interview with Temple Grandin about autism. Interesting :>

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[AtheisticNonduality]

Autism = fascism, psychosis = anarchism.

[Carl-Richard]

Temple Grandin talks about three types of thinkers: visual thinkers, visuospatial thinkers, and verbal thinkers. I just wanted to correlate visual to Se, visuospatial to Ti, and verbal to Te and probably never mention it again :>

[Leo Gura]

On 11/28/2022 at 8:10 PM, Carl-Richard said:

autism tilts towards sensor type cognition while psychosis tilts towards intuitive type cognition.

Def rings true.

P.S. So this explains why women are psychos? Jk

[Matt23]

I just did some wiki research on autism and also specifically the theory that was posted.  

It definitely seems to have a lot of flaws and holes in it.  Everything from the backgrounds of the two researchers (lack of expertise in the fields the theory is based in), the way they've handled criticisms of the theory, to the actual theory and data itself and contradictory information and findings from other studies that disprove or at the very least highly discredit their theory.  

One being that this theory sees autism and schizophrenia as being "opposites" and that schizophrenia is more about having "too much empathy" and autism too little.  Wiki (again, I know it's only wiki) cites how it actually seems like both schizophrenia and autism both suffer from theory of mind/empathy and socializing, and that many people with autism have higher probabilities of getting schizophrenia at some point.  Again, I'm writing this from memory, so not all details may be accurate.  But the basics of it was that autism and schizophrenia, contrary to this theory, seem to be more related and "together" than on opposite sides of some sort of psychological duality.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinted_brain_hypothesis

 

I wouldn't start treating personality theories as very credible either.  Especially not taking theories from actual neuroscience and correlate them to something that's more like pop-psychology.  imo.  They might have some validity and like usefulness, but I dunno... when it comes to actually tracking reality and neuroscience etc... I just don't think they pale in comparison.  I dunno, maybe there's something there.  But I'm just skeptical. 

 

It also seems like there's a lot of uncertainty about what autism is and what causes it in the first place.  

From the brief research I did today on autism, schizophrenia, and this theory here, it seems like the safest bet is saying that autism and schizophrenia are disorders of the social areas of our brains and minds; specifically deficits in theory of mind and cognitive (not emotional) empathy.

 

Not meaning to poo-poo this post...too much lol. 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Matt23

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Matt23 said:

It definitely seems to have a lot of flaws and holes in it.  Everything from the backgrounds of the two researchers (lack of expertise in the fields the theory is based in), the way they've handled criticisms of the theory, to the actual theory and data itself and contradictory information and findings from other studies that disprove or at the very least highly discredit their theory. 

Well, that could be possible. However, it just seems weird that esteemed researchers like John Vervaeke would do work on it.

 

1 hour ago, Matt23 said:

One being that this theory sees autism and schizophrenia as being "opposites" and that schizophrenia is more about having "too much empathy" and autism too little.

Yes, it's indeed a mistake to think of autism and schizophrenia as consistent entities which are mutually exclusive. They're statistical constructs based on how many symptoms you have. However, if you then look at the individual symptoms, even from an intuitive laymen standpoint, you can certainly find opposites, and that is what the table I presented is trying to show. 

 

1 hour ago, Matt23 said:

Wiki (again, I know it's only wiki) cites how it actually seems like both schizophrenia and autism both suffer from theory of mind/empathy and socializing, and that many people with autism have higher probabilities of getting schizophrenia at some point.  

This could still be explained by the mechanism for social cues and abstract inferences being pathologized at the extremes. If in the case of schizophrenia, the mechanism becomes over-activated as opposed to under-activated, you could indeed end up with similar problems displaying normative levels of empathy or theory of mind just like with autism. I don't know about the exact empirical validity of this claim, but it's at least a plausible explanation.

 

1 hour ago, Matt23 said:

and that many people with autism have higher probabilities of getting schizophrenia at some point.

I already said this. The comorbidity rate is about 35%.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Matt23]

17 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Well, that could be possible. However, it just seems weird that esteemed researchers like John Vervaeke would do work on it.

I didn't know Vervaeke was doing research on this particular theory.  I thought it was just autism in general.  

Do you know what time-stamp Vervaeke spoke about his work on it, even if roughly?

[Carl-Richard]

8 minutes ago, Matt23 said:

I didn't know Vervaeke was doing research on this particular theory.  I thought it was just autism in general.  

Do you know what time-stamp Vervaeke spoke about his work on it, even if roughly?

 

On 29.11.2022 at 5:10 AM, Carl-Richard said:

I was watching the ToE discussion with John Vervaeke and Donald Hoffman, and I heard John mention he was doing work on the "autism-psychosis continuum"

Somewhere before or around the 1 hr mark. I don't remember.

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Carl-Richard