ian stuart-hamilton

All I can report on this subject is that after his first sex lesson, my son announced that he'd understood what it was about, but felt sure there must be a more efficient way of breeding.

There are probably a few reasons why people with ASD also have anxiety, some of which have already been mentioned. Probably the key reason is because people with ASD are 'hard wired' to notice details and think about them, this means that various things in the environment that a NT person would overlook are fretted over. It should also be remembered that anxiety is typically strongly associated with depression (hence why treatments for anxiety and depression are often one and the same). The good news is that there are a host of treatments available (it isn't just a question of being dosed with drugs, though for some that is the optimal solution). It's thus worth discussing things with a sympathetic GP.

My apologies if you think we're sitting in judgement, but that isn't the intent. The issue is a very serious one for many folks here - namely, how far does possession of an atypical behaviour pattern that is 'hard wired' excuse a person's actions? Given that people with ASD are almost certainly over-represented in the prison population (I say 'almost certainly' because more work is urgently needed in this area) this debate goes beyond this specific case in the question of legal culpability. And more generally, it affects a great many people here in 'milder' examples (e.g. to what extent should NT 'outsiders' be expected to tolerate the behaviour of people with ASD?). FWIW, I've occasionally lectured on the issue of legal responsibility in cases of people with mental illness/atypical behaviour in general, and to cut an hour's lecture down to one phrase - there are no easy answers.

My apologies if you think we're sitting in judgement, but that isn't the intent. The issue is a very serious one for many folks here - namely, how far does possession of an atypical behaviour pattern that is 'hard wired' excuse a person's actions? Given that people with ASD are almost certainly over-represented in the prison population (I say 'almost certainly' because more work is urgently needed in this area) this debate goes beyond this specific case in the question of legal culpability. And more generally, it affects a great many people here in 'milder' examples (e.g. to what extent should NT 'outsiders' be expected to tolerate the behaviour of people with ASD?). FWIW, I've occasionally lectured on the issue of legal responsibility in cases of people with mental illness/atypical behaviour in general, and to cut an hour's lecture down to one phrase - there are no easy answers.

Conspiracy theorists are in a win-win situation with this case. If things had been resolved very quickly, people would be saying 'extradition normally takes years and years - this got resolved so quickly there's something sinister about it'. But when it does take years, conspiracy theorists have the chance to speculate on why the USA is so anxious to get hold of this guy. And anything that doesn't agree with a conspiracy theory can be attributed to govt suppression of the 'real facts'. I believe it's safe to say that if there was a clear and present threat to security, you'd never have heard a whisper of this case in the media. This doesn't mean that the law wouldn't be obeyed in dealing with the matter, simply that a DA notice would have been slapped on it preventing any media coverage. As a minor example of this, several times over my life I've seen/heard an item on the lunchtime news about an explosion or arrest connected with terrorism that by the evening news has disappeared, never to appear again. As for the rights and wrongs of this case, I would like to see a full unbiased collection of the facts, but I fear that the media reporting I've encountered has been rather partisan and I for one cannot fathom what is really at the heart of this.

Sorry, I'd be failing in my duty as a psychologist if I didn't say this - be VERY VERY careful in interpreting test results. They are only used as a guide, even by clinicians. I know this is teaching everyone to suck eggs, but I had to say it! There, I feel better now ... Now I've stopped being nanny, perhaps I could add a little something. People often suppose that standardised tests somehow magically tell you everything about a person. In reality, 'all' they say is how exceptional the person is relative to the rest of the population. For example, in an intelligence test, if you get a score of x%, 'all' this means is that by looking up in some tables, you can find out what percentage of the population scored worse (or better) than x% in the original test sample (which is taken as representative of the population as a whole). The same applies to most other tests - they simply tell you what percentage of the population score differently from the score you're interested in. But muddying the waters is the question of how accurate the test is. It could be, for example, that on the day of the test, the person being tested was in a bad mood, was coming down with a cold, was distracted, etc, etc. So the test in and of itself may not be a particularly accurate gauge. It should therefore only ever be one tool in the diagnostic armoury. Before anyone leaps to the wrong conclusion, I'm not saying that tests are useless or they shouldn't be given. They are useful and nearly always should be given. But don't think that in themselves they are automatically infallible.

Perhaps mention it to one of your colleagues (not the one doing the impersonation)? With any luck, they'll have a word with her.

Genetic causes of ASD are being identified every few months at the moment, it seems. This is not knocking the work of these research teams (finding common genetic links is a lot harder than it probably appears on paper), but each only seems to account for some cases, and often a smallish proportion. I think we've quite a while to wait before there is any chance of a 'cure' being a realistic possibility. Whether people will want this if it's offered is an entirely different matter. I personally would not want to be 'cured' because I think in my case the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages, but equally I would never countenance denying others that possibility.

I find it interesting that if someone had an equally strong fixation about football, it would probably never be even thought of as a problem. Personally, I think that an interest in graveyards and old churches is far more rational and cerebral than slavering over a team of obscenely over-paid Neanderthals whose sole skill is being able to kick a ball.

Impaired facial recognition/ prosopagnosia is very common in ASD and not particularly rare in the rest of the population. Like a lot of such things, there are degrees of impairment. Full blown prosopagnosia - i.e. total inability to recognise faces - is very rare (and usually results from brain damage such as a stroke). What we are talking about here is a relative impairment. If it's of any consolation, I am utterly hopeless at recognising people by their faces. For the record, I have very often passed students and even colleagues by in the streets or in a shop without recognising them. On one very embarrassing occasion, I went to meet my girlfriend of the time off a train and then walked right past her. On the other hand, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, so I definitely don't have a poor memory per se. Piece of trivia for you - there is a famous (well, famous in Psychology, anyway) case study of a sheep farmer who following a stroke became totally incapable of recognising human faces. On the other hand, he could still recognise his sheep by their facial markings. Before anyone asks what use this is, this proves that mental storage of human and animal faces takes place in different parts of the brain, which, believe it or not, is an important finding in working out how the brain works.

Incidentally, am I the only one mildly disturbed that the rabbit only does one hop to the right but two to the left?

Many thanks for all the replies, folks and sorry I haven't come back to this thread sooner, but I've been somewhat busy over the past few days. Ah well, it looks as even if I'm the only one to have had a thing about rabbits wearing trousers, other folks were in the same conceptual ballpark. Robbie and his chums can thus hop around unmolested. :robbie:

Alas, some folks have to be told what to do next. E.g. the man I saw at IKEA who had bought a wardrobe. When last I saw him in the car park, he was still working out how he could get it onto his bicycle.

Does anyone else find the relentlessly cheerful voices on those automated machines irritating? There's something about 'scan next item please' being spoken as if it's the happiest thing that's ever happened to the speaker that grates on the nerves after a while (as in, after hearing it once).

Just out of curiosity, can anyone else report a similar experience to the following? When I was about three, my parents decorated my bedroom with Beatrix Potter wallpaper. A couple of hours later, my mum found me in my bedroom removing the trousers from each picture of Peter Rabbit that I could find. Probably wondering if she had a latent sex maniac on her hands, my mother asked why I was doing this (aside from the issue of wrecking the decorating). I supposedly replied 'rabbits don't wear trousers' and the sight of an animal wearing human apparel bothered me. Apparently I had a thing about cute representations of animals doing human things (e.g. I also got really upset by Disney cartoons). I must have grown out of this trait fairly quickly because I can't recall it being an issue later on and the Roadrunner cartoons were a huge favourite of mine when I was six or seven. Anyone else have a similar thing?