Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Did you fail to read what I said? Or do you not know what cognitive empathy is? Because an inability to read emotion and social cues is one of the basic diagnostic criteria for being on the autism spectrum. And that, by the way, includes NT people "masking" their emotions, using sarcasm, etc. A failure to understand those things IS a lack of cognitive empathy.
Signed, Level 1 ASD.
Cognitive empathy is the ability to put oneself mentally in another person's situation and try to understand how they might be feeling (as opposed to emotional empathy in which one experiences those emotions with another person and truly understanding how they feel).
Where I (also ASD Level 1) have long struggled is with emotional empathy. At age 15, I told my mom that I didn't know if I loved her. I understand now that this was a symptom of my autism, that I didn't understand a variety of emotions, apart from excitement about hyperfixation and annoyance at most of the rest of the world for moving and think so slowly relative to me.
And, yes, cognitive empathy was also lacking when I was younger. I did have difficulty imagining what other people's life experiences were like, mainly because I was...well...young and inexperienced, not necessarily because I was autistic.
What I take issue with is the blanket statement that autistic people lack cognitive empathy because it is a sweeping generalization that doesn't allow for nuance. The implication in your statement is that we're born without it and never possess it, and that simply isn't true. It isn't difficult for autistic people can learn cognitive empathy and other sorts of emotional intelligence.