Attribution and Causal Relationships

[Lecka]

I am re-reading/skimming a Tony Attwood book about Aspergers, and something it talks about is having trouble with causal relationships (cause-and-effect relationships) and this leading to problems with understanding interactions they have with other people.  

Is this the same idea as attribution and/or misattribution that was mentioned here recently?  

[PeterPan]

No, not exactly. Attribution is about internalizing/externalizing. So you're right that it's part of a process of social behavior mapping, but it's how it gets glitched, but looking to the wrong source as the cause. 

So like if you look at a situation and you map it back and attribute it as being about you, it could be that it had diddley to do with you, that it was really stemming from something else. So your misattribution leads to screwy thinking on cause/effect.

I think it's kind of an older kid thing, a stage they would get to, not necessarily like the blank cause/effect you get even when they're young. So my ds was making ZERO connection on cause/effect, couldn't learn from scenarios. That was from a very young age. But the misattribution is more of a cognitive thinking issue, a later stage.

[Lecka]

Thanks.  I am still a little fuzzy on the attribution stuff, but I am interested.  

[kbutton]

Which book are you reading? I have The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome, and I would be interested in reading the same passage if that's the book you're using.

On 7/14/2019 at 10:45 AM, PeterPan said:

No, not exactly. Attribution is about internalizing/externalizing. So you're right that it's part of a process of social behavior mapping, but it's how it gets glitched, but looking to the wrong source as the cause. 

So like if you look at a situation and you map it back and attribute it as being about you, it could be that it had diddley to do with you, that it was really stemming from something else. So your misattribution leads to screwy thinking on cause/effect.

I think it's kind of an older kid thing, a stage they would get to, not necessarily like the blank cause/effect you get even when they're young. So my ds was making ZERO connection on cause/effect, couldn't learn from scenarios. That was from a very young age. But the misattribution is more of a cognitive thinking issue, a later stage.

Honestly, it sounds like two sides of the same coin to me, but from what little I know and from what I have seen with IRL, I agree with Peter Pan that it's the attribution that leads to the wrong cause/effect pair. I am not sure about older kid or younger kid thing, but I agree that it is in a later cognitive stage. I hesitate to put ages with things because my son was out of sync in some ways with having amazing insight into some things and total blindness to other things, but both things seemed like they would be similar cognitive stages.

My son's cause and effect about the natural world was pretty well intact--the laws of physics made a lot of sense to him, and we could watch him test them and draw conclusions even in his play. Not so much his pragmatic/social idea of cause and effect. For instance, when he was in first grade (before he was diagnosed), he really, really needed to use the bathroom to avoid an accident. There was another child in front of him in line, and instead of understanding that he could tell someone he couldn't wait his turn, he pinched the kid in front of him. In his thinking, he couldn't go to the bathroom because the kid in front of him was basically keeping him from being able to go. At the time he did this, he didn't really know why he was doing it; he was just seriously stressed. When the school called us in, he still didn't know, but I knew that he would have a "reason" of some sort (he really liked the kid he pinched). He couldn't tell me until hours later (maybe days--can't remember) what he was thinking. Of course, the school knew him as a kid who was a little strange but super smart--they really didn't like it when I said he wasn't bullying and that he undoubtedly had a rationale (no matter how flawed) for pinching this kid, even though the reason was likely really weird and not something that would make sense to anyone but him. They insisted that by saying so, I was blaming the other child for doing something wrong, which I made clear I was not. After that, let's just say I developed a very good relationship with the school counselor, who totally understood what I was getting at--she handled things like this afterwards, which as really nice.

My ADHD family members also struggle with attribution, but in their case, it's more like when their "magical thinking" doesn't pan out, they find the wrong thing to blame it on (or wrong person, etc.). It's definitely related to a warped view of their own responsibility to follow through to ensure things work vs. just expecting good things to happen with zero realistic action (or even acting in a way that is completely the opposite of what they should do to make something happen). Or they literally lose track of events as they unfold, and at the end, they are attributing the outcome as someone else's fault. For instance, they ask a question, get sidetracked and take a bunny trail, and when the person they are talking to brings the conversation back around to the original question, the ADHD person who asked it gets all mad at the person for "changing the topic." The ADHD person, has totally FORGOTTEN WHAT THEIR ORIGINAL QUESTION WAS and why it mattered. It's like, "Dude, you started the whole conversation by asking me that question, derailed that conversation, and you're mad at me for trying to actually give you an answer?" So much fun. I kind of think of the ADHD version of this as the Teflon problem--when I was a kid, kids would say, "I'm rubber; you're glue; bounces off me and sticks to you." There are so many ways for it to be "not their fault," and they strongly believe that they are attributing the problem to the correct source.

For a scenario where I am not sure where the problem originates (with attribution or cause and effect), I have an extended family member that will literally take the most black and white statements and turn them around to mean something totally different. Like, she'll ask a straightforward question, get a straightforward answer, and then proceed to act like the total opposite is true. Then when things don't work out, she blames it on the person that she asked the question of. She behaves as if people don't ever say what they mean or mean what they say, so she has to "interpret" it and add her own spin to it. It's a huge, huge problem. I suspect it's part a cognitive problem that might be autism-related (she has tons of traits), but years of lack of success without successfully incorporating feedback have made her form a really strange web of messed up cause/effect, attributions, etc. Everything she does it tied up into this big mess. I suspect that at some point, it was a problem with attribution, and it's like she's built her own alternate reality around all the misunderstandings. She also contradicts herself and vehemently denies that she behaves inconsistently. But this might be part mental illness--I don't know. She's not diagnosed, but she is high in borderline/narcissistic traits.

[Lecka]

I have the Kindle version and maybe a little older edition.... Edit:  I do have the revised 2015 edition.... I think I might have gotten a newer edition on my Kindle.... it is The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome.

The passage I had seen is in Chapter 2 and says “the initial optimism about friendship can turn to paranoia, especially if the child fails to make the distinction between accidental and deliberate acts.”  Then it says — there is more along these lines in Ch. 5 about Theory of Mind.

In Ch. 1 there is a section about “Compensatory and Adjustment Strategies to Being Different,” and one of these is “denial and arrogance,” — and it has a lot of denying there is a problem and blaming other people.  “A lack of ability in interactions with adults can result in the development of behaviors to achieve dominance and control in a social context;  these include the use of intimidation, and an arrogant and inflexible attitude..... When such children are confused as to the intentions of others or what to do in a social situation, or have made a conspicuous error, the resulting ‘negative’ emotion can lead to the misperception that the other person’s actions were deliberately malicious.  The response is to inflict equal discomfort...”

Edited July 17, 2019 by Lecka

[kbutton]

On 7/17/2019 at 11:05 AM, Lecka said:

In Ch. 1 there is a section about “Compensatory and Adjustment Strategies to Being Different,” and one of these is “denial and arrogance,” — and it has a lot of denying there is a problem and blaming other people.  “A lack of ability in interactions with adults can result in the development of behaviors to achieve dominance and control in a social context;  these include the use of intimidation, and an arrogant and inflexible attitude..... When such children are confused as to the intentions of others or what to do in a social situation, or have made a conspicuous error, the resulting ‘negative’ emotion can lead to the misperception that the other person’s actions were deliberately malicious.  The response is to inflict equal discomfort...”

Okay, I found this section.

So, if misattribution is related to cause and effect, I think it sounds like this could be an example of misattribution.

I am curious what others think as well. He puts it in the context of externalizing "the cause and solution to feeling different," which sounds like cause and effect. The rest of the context talks a bit about the children not believing they are different or that they need special help for anything. 

I am wondering if this is a formula for misattribution: beliefs that are not quite on point + some input/data/information that they have to categorize = wrong attribution. In this case, a wrong belief about how they function + evidence that shows something isn't right = rules/people are difficult to understand/that person was being mean. 

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

On 7/18/2019 at 1:05 AM, Lecka said:

In Ch. 1 there is a section about “Compensatory and Adjustment Strategies to Being Different,” and one of these is “denial and arrogance,” — and it has a lot of denying there is a problem and blaming other people.  “A lack of ability in interactions with adults can result in the development of behaviors to achieve dominance and control in a social context;  these include the use of intimidation, and an arrogant and inflexible attitude..... When such children are confused as to the intentions of others or what to do in a social situation, or have made a conspicuous error, the resulting ‘negative’ emotion can lead to the misperception that the other person’s actions were deliberately malicious.  The response is to inflict equal discomfort...”

 

I'm not really sure what you're looking for, but of course an Autistic person finds NT people just as rude as NT people find Autistic people. It's a dialect difference treated as a one sided pathology. Both behave the same way in these sorts of situations though, but only one side is pathologised for it.