Comments on: High functioning versus low functioning autism

By: donna

donna — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 04:07:53 +0000

yes, there can be many factors at work

prosopagnosia is specifically inability to recognise faces
social-emotional agnosia is inability to perceive facial expressions
there is also Form Agnosia which is inability to perceive several parts at a time - ie visual perceptual fragmentation
I wrote about the latter in Like Colour To The Blind when I was told it was part of my Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome
and whilst tinted lenses have allowed me to see faces now as a whole
its clear that several decades of seeing them piece by piece does nothing to combat prosopagnosia
and I also feel its time we recognised Form Agnosia for what it is
seeing the part and losing the whole
a form of visual perceptual context blindness

By: hava

hava — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 09:26:36 +0000

Hi –

Your posts make me wonder how common various forms of agnosia are in the autistic population. Interesting. I’ll mention that to my professors next semester (I’m a cognitive science major at UC Berkeley)

On another note, you may be interested in making this distinction: ‘face blindness’ can be divided into two different parts, and it’s possible for a person to have one part but not the other part, or the two parts to different degrees. First, there is the ability to recognize one person’s face from another. So, for example, if I am introduced to someone at a party, can I recognize her at a later time.

The second part is the ability to read the emotional expressions on a face — so, whether I am viewing my mom’s face or a stranger’s face, can I pick apart which emotion is being felt from facial expression alone?

By: Casdok

Casdok — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 19:00:42 +0000

My son is definetly a fuit salad!
Your explanations are one of the best i have ever read. Thank you.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:09:30 +0000

But even with the face seen as a whole, there’s very little visual memory.

You’ve got that right. My mom used to tell people that the reason I couldn’t recognize people by face was I’d seen faces only in pieces. But even with tinted lenses that helped me see faces as more of a whole, I could still not recognize people by face.

By: donna

donna — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:46:35 +0000

With me the object is seen, the form, and if it’s in it’s ‘placement’, then I know what it is. If it’s outside it’s usual placement, it’s about 30-50% chance that I’ll recognise and if its of a color or size I’m not use to, even less. If I see someone use something, I can tell from the actions what it is, no problem. Similarly, from tapping, flicking, rubbing or smelling I know quite quickly what an object is. If that’s not agnosia, certainly help me out with a word for it. I’ve called it object blindness, context blindness, meaning blindness. But the word agnosia helps parents of those with similar to understand the situation easily.

As for faces, I used to see them a bit at a time, struggling to process the eye, nose and mouth together, each bit would be ‘there’ but just as if it were ‘art’ rather than a concept. With tinted lenses I can now see faces as a whole, basically they cut out certain light frequencies, allowing my brain more time to process what I see. Peripheral vision works similarly through limiting the number of rods used to see.

But even with the face seen as a whole, there’s very little visual memory. I can use serial memory for movements and space, which means I can basically replay anywhere I’ve moved and touched, but this lack of visual memory thing means that people, like objects, if seen out of context or they change their usual form (ie clothes, hair, glasses, etc) they become strangers.

there is semantic agnosia, which is meaning blindness. This is different to associative agnosia. Semantic means one can see the form but little idea what they are seeing. Associative is like your spoon example. I don’t have too much trouble with that one, but most things bowl-like become bowls, most things that are cup like are interchangeable, including glasses, for a long time chickens and ducks were in the same group and then pidgeons were seen as chickens (because they weren’t on water) and swans as long necked ducks. So I understand the associative thing too.

I think what I have is multiple agnosias, which does make the issue more complex, perhaps very devasting until one learns to compensate, as I have… people with such agnosias should be inspired by Helen Keller…. and so where there’s multiple agnosias, the situation isn’t as clear as in a person with one or maybe two forms.

Meaning deafness and meaning blindness appears to fun on my father’s mother’s side where there are several people on the autistic spectrum. But there were many toxicological incidents, starvation of oxygen and illnesses related to two primary immune deficiencies which likely contributed. Nevertheless, the point is what one CAN do and whilst some very simple tasks are always 50-50 of at best 70-30 in terms of success, when I compare myself with my OWN group, I’m doing damned well so there’s no need for me to get distressed at my failure rate on simple tasks…many in my group gave up trying long ago or had others simply take over until that was ‘life’. If that’s ‘luxury’ I’ve done well not to have had it.

By: kim riley

kim riley — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:08:07 +0000

So agnosia in general, I think, is a problem of recognition, not meaning. In prosopagnosia (face blindness)…well obviously the person is not “blind” to the face itself…but rather to the recognition of the face, and, not to the meaning of the face. So the face has meaning, the facial expressions have meaning, the face and facial expressions can be seen…it’s that the face is not recognized. Reminds of of Alzheimer’s Disease…the spoon is seen, it has meaning, it’s functioning is understood, it can be used, it is sought out for it’s purpose, but, the person doesn’t recognize it as a spoon. So it has meaning in all senses, except it isn’t recognized.

I think the meaning-blindness you discuss is different than agnosia. In the agnosias there is meaning. A person, and the spoon, have all the meaning as a person and spoon…they are just not recognized. Well actually, for the person, while he/she is recognized as a person, he/she is not recognized for who he/she is…so a mother might not recognize her son (I’ve seen a case study of this on TV), but still the mother knows the boy is a person, and can fully interact with him, understand all aspects of social interaction, facial expression exchange, communicative exchange, etc. Seems the meaning-blindness you speak of is far more devastating and complex than agnosia.

I actually have some difficulty understanding the nature of this recognition, that is, difficulty with imagining what I mentioned above.

By: donna

donna — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:31:21 +0000

it’s also possible that just as there is Visual Verbal and Auditory Verbal agnosias, that we currently know of visual simutagnosia but we may find there are other forms. For example, I can hear intonation and words but I process either one or the other. When there is significant intonation I struggle to process the meanings of words. hence I prefer men’s voices of rather monotone ones. I also very much rely on intonation to recognise people (I’m largely face blind and rely on movements and intonation) but when tuning into the meaning of words, its like the intonation has gone. Until late childhood, I had delayed echolalia of long strings from TV shows, but not with meaning, but all complete with each character’s intonation. After gaining meaning from words after age 9-11, I can still do this and shadow speak people’s voices, but not as astoundingly and still when doing so I have no idea WHAT they are saying. So perhaps there is an Auditory Simultagnosia too but those with it may be too autistic to acquire functional communication and write or speak about it, who knows. As for loss of other when processing self, this seems to be a split between sensory systems where, when using body and thinking in order to express oneself, there’s a loss of visual and verbal processing relating to perception of ‘other’. They just become ‘art’ or ’stuff’. Then when in all other no self mode, it’s as if perception of body and thinking has left. What remains, however, is a kind of computation skill, an ability to map the patterns but with no access to one’s body responses to know what one feels. I was mostly in that state until my 20s and first got enough simultaneous sense of self and other to know it existed in other people’s perceptions when I was in my 30s, which I wrote of in Everyday Heaven.
I wrote of it in Autism; An Inside Out Approach as ’systems forfeiting’. But if one has a range of agnosias - visual, auditory, verbal, tactile - then there could be interactions relating to compensations which cause such strange perceptual experiences.

By: donna

donna — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:15:32 +0000

when two people are talking, I see one person’s mouth moving and noise coming out. Then I see another person’s mouth moving and noise coming out. I see the person I’m needing to speak to has stopped moving their mouth and making noise so I address them. They snap at me, ‘can’t you see I’m speaking to someone. I answer, no. If I’m further away, I can get it, but the closer I get the harder it is to hold processing of two things, be those objects or people. This is the same problem I have with cooking and running a bath, different components keep seeming to go ‘missing’ from consciousness. If my hands are on them, it works, but once my hands are off, things get lost. Parts of what I’m seeing just seems to become ‘art’ so this leads to fire and flooding. It would be amusing if it weren’t so annoying. So, sure, maybe you’re right, that simultagnosia can’t explain a lack of simultaneous processing of self and other, but it seems to me just an extension of the same issues in holding track of two people in a single context or two objects. It is certainly the case that when processing ‘other’ I’m regularly losing the processing of ’self’ and vice versa. Perhaps there’s an additional form of agnosia that covers this, but until it’s got a name, personally, I see it as functionally little different to the regular loss of processing simultaneous people, objects and visual context. Thanks for your feedback in any case.

By: jjc

jjc — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 07:31:51 +0000

“If they also have Simultagnosia they will struggle to hold a simultaneous sense of self and other”

This is not Simultagnosia. It has nothing to do with ANY “sense” “of self and other”. And when people develop this condition, they do not also suffer a loss of social and other functional abilities.

It has nothing to do with any “sense of self and other”, instead, it is a recognition problem, and of visual objects, not senses of self and other people.

“Inability to recognise multiple elements in a visual presentation, i.e., one object or some elements of a scene can be appreciated but not the display as a whole.”

It is a visual object problem, and one of RECOGNITION.