Perspective-taking is two-sided: Misunderstandings between people with Asperger's syndrome and their family members.

Brett Heasman,Alex Gillespie

doi:10.1177/1362361317708287

Abstract

Misunderstandings are social in nature, always having two sides. Yet the misunderstandings experienced by people with Asperger’s syndrome are usually studied in terms of the individual with a diagnosis, with less emphasis on social relations. We use a two-sided methodology to map out misunderstandings within 22 dyads (n = 44) consisting of people with Asperger’s syndrome and their family members. Both sides of the relationship were asked about 12 topics in terms of one’s rating of Self, one’s rating of Other and one’s predicted rating by Other. The findings show that people with Asperger’s are able to predict lower scores from family members, despite disagreeing with their view, and that family members often over-estimate the extent to which their relatives with Asperger’s syndrome are egocentrically anchored in their own perspective. The research demonstrates that a two-sided methodology is viable, and it uses it to identify how representations of Asperger’s syndrome can both support and hinder social understanding within relationships affected by Asperger’s.

Highlights

People diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome (AS) report difficulty in understanding what other people are thinking (Hochhauser et al, 2015; Locke et al, 2010; Muller et al, 2008), research has shown that in social relations this phenomenon is two-sided, because close friends and family have difficulty in understanding people with Asperger’s syndrome (PwAS; Brewer et al, 2016; Froese et al, 2013; Kremer-Sadlik, 2004)
We report research based on the Interpersonal Perception Method (IPM), a two-sided methodology for identifying how members of a given social relation understand or misunderstand each other
RQ1: What misunderstandings occur in PwAS– family members (FMs) relationships?

Summary

Introduction

People diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome (AS) report difficulty in understanding what other people are thinking (Hochhauser et al, 2015; Locke et al, 2010; Muller et al, 2008), research has shown that in social relations this phenomenon is two-sided, because close friends and family have difficulty in understanding people with Asperger’s syndrome (PwAS; Brewer et al, 2016; Froese et al, 2013; Kremer-Sadlik, 2004). While ethnography has been productively used to explore the two-sided nature of these relationships (Maynard, 2005; Ochs, 2010; Solomon, 2010), there is currently a lack of methods used in research on AS that systematically compares the perspectives of each side within real social relationships. We report research based on the Interpersonal Perception Method (IPM), a two-sided methodology for identifying how members of a given social relation understand or misunderstand each other. We used the IPM methodology to examine relationships involving participants from a charity supporting PwAS and their family members (FMs). The IPM was used to examine: what misunderstandings occur in PwAS–FM relationships? And what reasons do participants give for such misunderstandings?

Methods

Results

Conclusion