It's not that we are socially impaired...

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I don't think that NTs are making stuff up when they are communicating with each other. Whether you call it empathy or projection or simulation or whatever, it seems to work amongst NTs a lot of the time, because NTs share a lot of their thoughts and feelings according to the social cognition that they share. It's just that NTs and autistics think differently, so we end up miscommunicating with each other most of the time. NTs tend to make stuff up out of what I say and do, and I tend to not pick up on what they didn't say and do. They have a tendency to look delusional to me, and I have a tendency to look _________________ to them.

nope they are normal we are not

We feel empathy for those like us...
I'm a female Aspie, and I have a lot of mannerisms which are characteristic of males, from mannerisms to speech patterns, to general give and take in conversation.

Men, all NT except for the one Aspie I dated, likewise "get" me much better than do women- I understand completely about women projecting onto me. My mother asks me constantly what's wrong, or why I'm "mad"...just because I don't sit around with a smile plastered on my face. Conversely, I empathize way more than males, and less with females.

Last edited by ValentineWiggin on 02 Apr 2012, 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Unaverage =/= abnormal

Wow, me too . I'm lucky that my classes and social groups at uni have a male majority. It's made my social life much less exhausting.

Oh yeah. When I see a man shake his head helplessly and say he doesn't understand women, I completely empathize. I'm not going to be able to give any big insights, despite being female myself...

Yes, if they're modelling people like themselves then they will usually be right. I'm not sure I can answer the question of whether I too use models or see people directly. It feels like I see things directly but NTs would probably say the same. I know that for people unlike me I do consciously use models, which can be updated. This sounds more like a smart thing than an autistic thing.

Precisely!

Reading the comments about men and women's relationships, I'm wondering whether the female/male differences and difficulties in terms of cognition and communication styles and types, are perhaps a prototypical candidate for the Asperger/NT divide.

Have you looked into the Simon Baron-Cohen's "extreme male brain theory" of autism? Different cognitive tests show that on average the NT male and female brain is different, but the profiles of both autistic males and females look like an extreme form of the male brain type. This could probably be why autistic females communicate better with (autistic and NT?) males.

What he's saying basically is that neither male nor female aspies are into 'girlie crap'.

I've just read through the 1999 journal article on this which came up through google as a pdf file. The idea has an appealing simplicity and there seems to be a lot of evidence that supports it. I'm not sure what later articles say. I havn't looked into the latest research and theories on causes of autism/asperger, but reading the article has prompted me to take an interest. It could be that more specific genetic differences are at the bottom of it. In the article, there was a footnote suggesting that Williams syndrome (look it up if you're interested) might be the result of an extreme female brain. When I checked out WS on wiki, it said that researchers have traced it to twenty or so specific genes that are not there. This is interesting stuff. It's not that male/female differences theory isn't compatible with a genetic explanation, I wouldn't think. Rather, it seems likely that prenatal testosterone release, for example, would be affected by genetics and then perhaps also modulate their expression later on. There's a lot of food for thought here. Thanks for the relevant reference.