Asperger Syndrome Tied to Low Cortisol Levels | Hacker News Reader

Asperger Syndrome Tied to Low Cortisol Levels

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13 pointsnickb8 comments

It seems to me that people with Asperger Syndrome have a clear career path:

* they would probably prefer to work by themselves on a computer all day

* they would probably NOT want to climb the corporate ladder in a large company

So, it seems that working on their own computer-related startup would be ideal. And today, that sort of thing is becoming quite common.

BTW, it's not clear to me that people with this condition would want to be cured. This "disease" allows people to focus on the task at hand and be more successful at it.

In fact, we may be seeing evolution at work here as the human race adapts to the computer age -- at least in certain regions such as Silicon Valley.

Don't dwell on idea that certain type of very specific neurological differences pre-disposes anyone to/from any sort of career/social path or success.

It's what you know, what you are willing/able to learn and how hard you're willing/able to work that matters (together with a certain degree of "luck" as well).

>It's what you know, what you are willing/able to learn and how hard you're willing/able to work that matters.

In turn, what causes people to be willing/able to learn and work on certain things? Our preferences and aptitudes are primarily stored in our neurological makeup. So neurological differences (whether inborn or acquired) will cause people to behave/emote differently.

Of course, there will be lots of people with Asperger's who love interacting with others and enjoy great interpersonal success, but that's the point of a pre-disposition -- it refers to a correlation, not a hard-and-fast rule.

I don't have statistics for people in the autism spectrum, but I would not be surprised if they trended heavily toward professions that focused on intellectual work over interpersonal interaction.

I feel certain that people w/ AS trend away from professions like, say, sales. I feel certain that a large chunk of people w/ AS are knowledge workers for exactly the reasons given in this thread. But it's worth pointing out that AS encompasses people w/ a broad range of abilities, and narrowness of focus and social anxiety are only two aspects of the syndrome. There are often so-called sensory-integration issues, rigidity, a low tolerance for frustration, compulsiveness, difficulties w/ executive function, and on on -- all part of, or concomitant to, AS.

So, I'm just saying, it is a disability, and I expect adults w/ AS also trend to underachievement. Anybody know a brilliant but difficult person (or two) delivering pizzas or working as a museum guard or the like? I do.

FWIW, my 5 y.o. has AS, so I've thought about this quite a bit.

I meant it in the other way: sure, people with AS are biased towards intellectual work. Yet when we see people with AS who are successful at exactly that kind of work, we shouldn't just automatically assume "oh, they're just good at it because they have AS".

There's a lot of stigma of "oh, I could be programmer too if I was willing to be a nerd".

Also, do people with Asperger's Syndrome get to "choose" what they focus on?

I actually have Asperger Syndrome and I'm a programmer. I was diagnosed by a neurologist in 2008 at the age of 34. There are some interesting comments here. I definitely have seen a few comments from other autistic people on forums about preferring a "menial" job if it meant they could work more or less alone. Some would rather be a filing clerk than a manager in the same department. Many of them do well in academics.

Simon Baron-Cohen has said that their research indicates a link between autism and systemizing genes. So people who have the systemizing genes are more likely to enter into professions like math, science and software - which is part of the reason why autism is more common among math majors, and why you often see a history of engineering jobs in the family of a person with autism. http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/research-scientists-mo...

I wrote up some of my thoughts about this in more detail on my blog here: http://ontap.riaforge.org/blog/index.cfm/2009/4/2/AprilAutis...

I myself am working on raising awareness for an effort to improve the employment rate of people with autism called Autelligent Laboratories. The hope is that the business model for this software company can be extended and reused by companies in other industries. http://www.autlabs.com

This raises some interesting questions--

I wonder than if this means Asperger's could at times have been erroneously diagnosed as GADD/social anxiety? How else does stress/anxiety affect patterns of cognition and social function?

Would this mean that to the extent it encouraged narrow and driven focus and to the extent such a focus is beneficial, is anxiety/stress actually helpful to society? Does this explain (to some extent) success of societies with high-stress education systems?

Interesting find.

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