978-1572305441

Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.com
www.Ebook777.com
Sharon 65
in response to theirs. She could not see into other people’s minds. She
could see their facial expressions, their eyes, their smiles, yes—but not
their minds.
To make up for this difficulty, Sharon visualized her own emotions;
for example, anger was a whirlpool that she placed in a steel box, on top
of which she planted a tree. It was not that she did not feel emotion. On
the contrary, she felt things deeply and experienced a whole range of
emotions. It was putting those emotions into language quickly and efficiently
that was so difficult. Just like Temple Grandin, if she thought of
emotions in pictures, they were easier to understand.
Sharon paused and looked down at her hands. This was obviously
very difficult for her. I put away my pen and looked out the window. I
distinctly remember seeing a lilac tree on the hospital grounds at the
end of its bloom. The petals were strewn on the lawn like painful memories.
My skepticism was slowly dissolving and was replaced with a
growing sense of wonder and admiration. Sharon seemed to be describing
the real-life experience of not having a theory of other people’s
minds, of being “mindblind” as Simon Baron-Cohen, a psychologist at
Cambridge who has done a lot of the research in this area, calls it.
The idea that people with any form of ASD are “mindblind” is one
of the most persuasive theories proposed to explain the kinds of social
difficulties that people with autism experience. They find it very difficult
to accurately understand other people—their motivations, beliefs,
aspirations, and emotions. It is a difficulty in intuitive understanding,
an inability to put themselves in another person’s shoes and see their
world from a social perspective. Our understanding of the minds of
other people occurs because we carry an implicit awareness that lies
just beneath conscious experience. These concepts are available to us
almost by intuition; it is like an automatic way of knowing. We don’t
have to think about what to say after someone says hello to us; we know
without thinking. Neither are we taught these concepts in a formal way
by our parents but seem preprogrammed to learn them, in much the
same way as children learn to use language. Our behavior, and the
behavior of others, is interpreted in terms of inferred mental states that
involve motivation, desire, and emotion. For example, if my spouse’s
eyebrows are raised, I infer surprise. If the corners of your brother’s
mouth are turned down, you infer sadness. We intuitively use our own
set of psychological concepts to understand which motives, desires, perceptions,
and emotions that are part of the experiences of another person
are coming into play in any given social situation.