documentaries with seemingly normal aspies ?.

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thats so awesome, i remember seeing some of his movies which i loved.

Ah, yes, good call!

There are two recent videos in particular that I like in which he's being interviewed about his directorial debut, and if you're aware he has Asperger's, then you might pick up on a few things.

In the one video, he's seated, with one leg crossed over the other, and when the interviewer is setting up the question or talking to someone else, Paddy is bouncing or shaking his foot. He stops every time he begins to answer a question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54vwMP4xuCY

In the second, he's being interviewed on the red carpet, and he keeps shifting his weight back and forth between his feet, which displays as a slight rocking motion. Again, if you didn't know he had Asperger's, you would probably think absolutely nothing of it, but being aware of his diagnosis, I recognized those stims right away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U6hOqySyhg

i bounce weight back and forth on my feet to prevent myself from apearing to stiff. I read that if you move around a bit you come across more open and aproachable. Same thing with the hands, or when holding a beer etc.

Ah, I do not shift my weight intentionally, it's an abbreviated form of pacing for me, which I do when I'm stuck in one place. It's a stim, and not something I think about, which is why I really related to Paddy in those videos.

Bouncing my foot or leg is an even more abbreviated form of pacing, because I obviously can't move around much when I'm sitting.

For me, it's like doing those stims helps me to think, and it would make sense if it were the same for him, since he does it when he's listening to a question to which he'll have to respond.

Severe [and lifelong] impairments in reciprocal social interaction does not a seemingly normal person make, nor will they fit in reasonably well due to the same.

That's straight from the diagnostic manual [and probably every other clinical description out there].

But I've seen a few times that aspies who *did* have problems and end up having normal lives - no longer want to be associated with the label. So it's going to give a biased view of the difficulties of the AS population.

Also, the "normal" aspies I have met, do often have problems that they hide very well, such as paranoia, OCD and relationship difficulties.

Indeed!

That almost sounds as if you're embarrassed to have a disorder that is associated with obvious social disabilities.

Why would anyone want t make a documentary about ordinary people? Ordinary people don't sell, savants sell.

this is an example of a severely affected autistic boy who has asperger syndrome, but also deep autism.

many people think that people with asperger syndrome are at the mildest level of autism, but it is not true as far as i have been told.

my doctor said that autism and intelligence are not related, and someone with mild autism who is of below average intelligence will seem more affected than someone with more severe autism who has above average mental capacity. it is theoretically possible that someone who is at the mildest level of autism yet who is mentally deficient will seem profoundly incapacitated, while someone with very severe autism who also is mentally gifted will seem not incapacitated but emancipated and advanced, but in a very unreachable way.

i am quite severely affected by autism, but i am not at all mentally handicapped, and so i do not seem ret*d or incapacitated, but i can not connect with any people in real life social situations because i am not in their world. it is all gobbledygook to me.

this child is similar to how i was as a child but he has a vastly greater intellect than mine, and the clip begins with him introducing his song he composed. this child can not function on many levels at all. he is overwhelmed by confusion when he is in a situation for example like when he is on the street with his mother. he could not steward himself because he had no understanding of how society worked. he had no functional capacity for reciprocal conversation and was considered very impaired by autism. he is 19 now, and this clip was when he was 12, but his vocal style is very typical of someone who has severe autism coupled with advanced mentality.

he is a savant. this is a song in a 33/8 time signature which is exceptionally complicated and sounds erroneous in places to average people. it is incredibly complex and very correct.




[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGD1gl0YtfM[/youtube]

One thing that can't be underestimated here is age. I would have been a different person in an interview at 18 than at 35 to present. I have learned what it takes to be successful in an NT world and my ASD mannerisms are mostly hidden now. I can now look people in the eye better and stay on conversation.

Recently, I attended a meeting with a roomful of people that were all officially diagnosed on the spectrum. All but maybe 4 or 5 would not be obvious to the untrained eye (and those were either younger or more classic).

I guess i said all that just to say this- don't underestimate the effects of age on masking ASD mannerisms when observing interviews. Obviously, ASD severity plays a role but so does age and experience

And there is me. I'm 68, and it took about 65 years for anyone around me to notice. I was married to a psychologist: he got his Masters' in Clinical Psychology, and went to work at a hospital as a Clinical Psychologist, _while_ we were married. I knew and related to many Psychologists and Psychiatrists during my adult life, and saw my share of MDs for medical problems. We had known since I was an adult that I had Clinical Depression, and I've been off and on antidepressants since the first SSRIs came out. ("Taken your meds lately?"). My Spiritual Director in the nineties, who was a priest, was also a Master's Degree Psychologist, and had worked at it before he went to seminary. The Depression, of course, took the blame for a lot that I hadn't learned my way around. It took my adult daughter, who of course knew me better than anyone in the world, to figure it out, and get the wheels turning for a diagnosis. If she hadn't taken a couple of Counseling courses in college, we still wouldn't know. Nobody else noticed. You have to remember that NOBODY (pretty much) was diagnosing Asperger's, or even HFA, until the DSM IV came out, about 1994. The student psychologists weren't learning about it, just about extreme Autism, at most, which was considered fairly rare.

Now kids are being picked up in elementary school or before, before they've had time to learn and adjust their natural behavior to fit in. I think I learned pretty well. Someone who regularly associated with Aspies and Auties might pick up on me in a video, might even consider me "obvious". Maybe. But it took a PhD who was working at a Children's (mental) hospital, and specializing in Autism in general, to diagnose me. The Psychiatrist who was (still is) writing my prescriptions for antidepressants, and the Therapist who is working with me on the Depression, didn't have a clue. When my daughter brought it up, the Psychologist was frank that she wasn't qualified to diagnose it. The Psychiatrist didn't say anything.

Yeah, that's a great point. I probably would have not known about it if i didn't see myself through my own son's difficulties. Watching him prompted me to evaluate my own history.

One more thing to add is that people are more willing to be open with a young person than with someone older. I could see an adult telling a young person that his mannerisms seem different and ask if they have had it checked out; as an adult, people wont approach you about it , they just stay away and ostracize you.

Well that would have a lot to do with the fact that ever one 30 and over has had a lont time to work things out and learn how to mask there problems.

Older people who don't know that they are autistic might come across as more autistic than younger people who grew up knowing and were taught social things on purpose.

I do agree that many documentaries about AS show people that look somewhat different externally. I don't think there is any shame in looking different, but I find the discrepancy between AS on paper and these videos quite confusing.

The kids in this video here look pretty average, instead http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeGaffIJvHM I liked it.