Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack a theory of mind

Re:Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack... by staticman2 on Sunday February 04, 2024 @02:44PM (#39253636)

I'm confused. Elon Musk says he is autistic (actually he says he has aspergers, which has been eliminated with DSM 5 and replaced with autism) , is there any evidence a high functioning autistic person like him "express and demonstrate challenges with understanding sarcasm, irony, nonverbal cues, idioms, figures of speech, etc".

This definition- of someone failing to understand idioms or figures of speech, sounds more like Lieutenant Commander Data on Star Trek than the meme twitter billionaire.

Is the definition of autism so broad as to have little practical meaning?

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Re:Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack... by NohatCoder on Sunday February 04, 2024 @03:08PM (#39253870)

It is certainly very broad. And as much as some people try, you can't make any complete generalisations about what autistic people can or cannot do.

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Re:Empirical failures of the claim that autistic people lack... by Frummy on Sunday February 04, 2024 @03:04PM (#39253834)

What was described was a specific common experience, not a definition. There are strengths as well to autism. The definition is broad, but it does have practical meaning, diagnosis is done by educated psychologists obviously though

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