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Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
11–20 of 116 posts
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#12I had this to a significant degree as a child, back in the world where "autism" only meant "profoundly non verbal" and such a diagnosis had nothing to do with me (and yes it could be distressing. Even to this day I sometimes feel sad about deleting text in documents and replacing it with similar text, experiencing the desperation of a perfectly fine word about to no longer exist. I told a therapist about this like ten years ago and she looked me blankly. I guess I still have this). I wrote a whole essay called "The Floor's Opinion" in grade school and I was hailed as a creative genius.
In that recent story in the NYT about dating agencies for people on the spectrum, so many of the comments (in the NYT, not here) were very angry at how the definition of autism has been so greatly expanded in recent decades to include people who are high functioning. The commenters felt it took away from their own children's diagnoses, not just in name but also in terms of competition for resources, and didnt see what the point was for people who were low on the spectrum.
But I will say when they identify specific traits that I've always wondered about and even told clueless therapists about, it feels way better to know a little bit of the reasoning for why you have some freakish habit.
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#13I'll stop personifying objects when they stop having personalities! The abstract seems to suggest that object personification is common with people who don't have autism too, perhaps less common than with people that have autism. This more or less tracks with my intuition that object personification is normal. People do it all the time with ships, cars, guns, computers, or whatever other machines they work with, what…
There's definitely some bias around personification. Several religions and cultures place importance on personification and/or anthropomorphism.
Perhaps like auditory hallucinations, the experience can be distressing _or not_ and we can observe that between different cultures.
I appreciate that the abstract highlighted where personification is unhelpful.
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#14I always thought this was something I got from watching The Brave Little Toaster and similar content when I was tiny.
Better than Toy Story, but Toy Story is much better known and does the same thing
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#15I'll stop personifying objects when they stop having personalities! The abstract seems to suggest that object personification is common with people who don't have autism too, perhaps less common than with people that have autism. This more or less tracks with my intuition that object personification is normal. People do it all the time with ships, cars, guns, computers, or whatever other machines they work with, what…
Same here, feels like a pretty normal trait, both my kids have this with their favorite toys (I had the same as well) and nowadays I do have attachment to some of my stuff, specially my kitchen utensils/devices, my kitchen aid mixer (10 years old now) even has a name.
From the summary it feels like the problem is more related to the fact they have more distressing events, I don't think i've had any recently but i can think of one or two when i was a kid and lot favorite toys.
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#16I'll stop personifying objects when they stop having personalities! The abstract seems to suggest that object personification is common with people who don't have autism too, perhaps less common than with people that have autism. This more or less tracks with my intuition that object personification is normal. People do it all the time with ships, cars, guns, computers, or whatever other machines they work with, what…
There's definitely some bias around personification. Several religions and cultures place importance on personification and/or anthropomorphism. Perhaps like auditory hallucinations, the experience can be distressing _or not_ and we can observe that between different cultures. I appreciate that the abstract highlighted where personification is unhelpful.
Yes, I found that part interesting. It never occurred to me that some people might find object personification to be distressing.
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#17[deleted]
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#18I don't have access to the full text, but based on the abstract I think it's likely that I relate to this phenomenon (I am autistic). My experience is not so much the attribution of human characteristics to non-human objects, but I understand why this might be the only accessible language of expression. For me, if a useful object is damaged or otherwise loses its usefulness through neglect or malice, I experience som…
Here's where you can find the full paper.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326979070_Object_pe...
It's pretty short and was basically just a survey monkey survey of ~100 people (400 total) who report having autism.
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's definitely some bias around personification. Several religions and cultures place importance on personification and/or anthropomorphism. Perhaps like auditory hallucinations, the experience can be distressing _or not_ and we can observe that between different cultures. I appreciate that the abstract highlighted where personification is unhelpful.
Yes, I found that part interesting. It never occurred to me that some people might find object personification to be distressing.
[deleted]
Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)
#20This is neither here nor there, but it's interesting that the only personification made more often by non-autistic people is gender. Demographics may explain this but I wonder if there are more broad differences in how autistic people view identity.