Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 116 posts

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#31

Post by [deleted] »

tetromino_ wrote: post #28
sctb wrote: post #8

I 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…

> A good example would be a dull knife. There's something "sad" about an object whose nature or purpose it is to be sharp to lose or lack that sharpness. Interesting - I think you've just explained "Tear-Water Tea" [1] (Arnold Lobel's classic childrens story) for me. [1] https://archive.org/details/Tear-waterTea-English-ArnoldLobe...

[deleted]

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#32

Post by Tijdreiziger »

wcoenen wrote: post #24

> We carried out an online survey, administered via Survey Monkey This type of thing, where they do some statistics on survey data, seems to be fairly typical in psychology research. But I find it hard to believe that you can actually get good data from self-reporting in surveys. There must be selection effects: " The survey was advertised on social media and through the researchers’ own networks ". And the questions…

Forget the quality of the data, you can give the same data to different researchers and get wildly different conclusions. [1, from 2, from 3]

(Disclaimer: not my area of expertise.)

[1] N. Breznau et al., “Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty,” PNAS, October 2022, URL: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2203150119

[2] B. Klaas, “The Crisis of Zombie Social Science.” The Garden of Forking Paths. https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-crisis-of-zombie-social-sc...

[3] The crisis of zombie social science (20 points, 2 days ago) – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44272057

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#33

Post by earnestinger »

shayway wrote: post #20

This 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.

Lot of languages assign gender to objects.

One should control for foreign language knowledge.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#34

Post by Tijdreiziger »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #27
wcoenen wrote: post #24

> We carried out an online survey, administered via Survey Monkey This type of thing, where they do some statistics on survey data, seems to be fairly typical in psychology research. But I find it hard to believe that you can actually get good data from self-reporting in surveys. There must be selection effects: " The survey was advertised on social media and through the researchers’ own networks ". And the questions…

> I find it hard to believe that you can get actually get good data from self-reporting in surveys. Especially when you consider the Lizardman's Constant of 4% https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... This article was written in 2013. The Internet has become a significantly more toxic place since then, and I would imagine the constant is closer to 15-20% these days.

> […] I would imagine the constant is closer to 15-20% these days.

On what basis?

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#35

Post by Barrin92 »

Take this with a grain of salt because I am not autistic but my first intuition when reading the paper wasn't that autistic people antropomorphize objects, but maybe its the other way around. Namely that they have less of a subjective or interior view on people, how other people see them and maybe how they see themselves (there's some comments to that effect in this thread)

Again because I don't have direct experience with it I don't want to lean too much into stereotypes, but it seems possible to me that people with autism have a more monistic, or at least less dualistic view on these things because the kind of thing that makes other people distinguish between subjects and objects is less present in people with autism.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#36

Post by stego-tech »

I’m glad to see more research into this phenomena. Not the best data out there, sure, but it’s a start that could incentivize further research with proper sample sizes and procedures.

This is an issue I’m acutely familiar with. Everything of import is, to a degree, personified. Not everything gets a name, necessarily, but everything has an “identity” which helps me to process events and interactions with it.

AVR crashes? “Oh, she’s being pissy today.”

Car taking a little longer to start in the morning? “I know girl, I’m tired too.”

This extends to treatment: the more personified the object, the better its treatment. Stuffed animals get names and apologies, as does Siri (though the voice assistants also get a tongue lashing when they’re non-performant). When I retire something, I try to find it a good home before trashing it (which is why an old Pioneer HDMI 2.0 AVR is still sitting in a box, alone and unloved by a new owner). I treat objects with the same reverence I treat people, which earns me the occasional eyeroll.

I’d love to know more about why this phenomena is so prevalent in autistic people, and what the benefits or harms of it are. Here’s hoping another team takes up this baton and runs with it some more.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#37

Post by steve_adams_86 »

sctb wrote: post #8

I 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…

I relate to this easily. My family finds it so strange that I can look at a flat tire and say something like "aw, poor thing". And I'm half-joking, yet... Well, it gives me an emotional response. I think a lot of people can relate to that example in particular because there is a sort of 'deflated' sense of self most people can experience, but not so much with the dull knife or a rock being split in half.

Something I found which coincides somewhat well with what you're saying: it seems like a disproportionate number of vegans are not neurotypical. I'm mostly plant-based because I can't separate animals from humans enough. It feels wrong to eat them. Not that I lower humans to animal level, though. I raise animals, or the hierarchy is flatter. I also find insects so much more amazing—and neurologically salient I suppose—than virtually everyone I know. Yet in the isopod collecting hobby, you'll find plenty of people who love insects and arachnids and so on, and they seem to lean towards neurodivergence as well.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#39

Post by Vaslo »

My small daughter is mildly autistic. Very friendly but overly obsessed with the life of bugs and very concerned about human like tendencies in bugs. She personifies other objects but it seems hard to tell if that’s just a child thing or one of her symptoms.

Even with the bugs I’m always wondering if that’s a kid thing too, but the fact the other kids her age couldn’t care less about bugs makes me wonder if it’s autism related.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#40

Post by vntok »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #34
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it hard to believe that you can get actually get good data from self-reporting in surveys. Especially when you consider the Lizardman's Constant of 4% https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... This article was written in 2013. The Internet has become a significantly more toxic place since then, and I would imagine the constant is closer to 15-20% these days.

> […] I would imagine the constant is closer to 15-20% these days. On what basis?

An online survey administered via Survey Monkey, of course.
Post reply on HN