Apergian females are normal?

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Please don't tell me you make presumptions about an entire sex of spectrumites based on your perceptions from an internet forum,
let alone think that the only components of Autism involve social functioning and sensory differences in the first place.

I can assure you that when someone is blasting rap music next door and I'm having a nervous breakdown, it doesn't particularly strike me as "minor oddities". My abysmal short term memory and propensity toward emotional shutdown don't, either.

There are "no objective tests that differentiate aspergian females from neurotypical females" not because aspergian females are "normal", but because the very DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA and much of the current literature were developed studying only boys.

I forgot to comment on your comment about the girl seeming socially perceptive. Most people consider me to be socially perceptive in that I score highly on verbal comprehension part of the WAIS. This is actually social comprehension. You are asked questions about what to do in social situations. However this phenomena is well documented amongst those with AS.



It is known as "explicit theory of mind".

However while many social situations can be thought through when presented as hypothetical situations, it can be impossible to apply the same skills to real social situations as they are occurring. Simply because one has strong comprehension skills does not mean they are able to implement them in actual social situations.

Last edited by Chronos on 31 Oct 2011, 1:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

What data are you referencing?

The data known as common sense. You leave school and the only person you really have to interact with, for many females, is your husband / significant other and you don't really need "social skills" for that, merely someone who is understanding/accepting/embracing.

Of course, there are bumpier roads.

That seems very likely. I wonder, then, what tests could be developed for girls? It's already been shown that most modern aspergian females are more similar to their female NT counterparts than aspergian males to their NT counterparts (Considering the difference in social outcomes, i.e., most aspergian females find accepting peers while most guys find rejection), so it seems like it'd be intrinsically harder to find a difference because there's less difference to begin with.

That is a really interesting analogy. A number of people with AS say that this is how they are.

Me, I kind of wish I at least had a facade. I am kind of like an upside down building or one that has pieces falling off it all the time. I cannot look normal no matter what I do. I guess in a way people at least know something is up, but then people tend to assume that I am mentally ill rather than mentally constructed in a bizarre way.

You can achieve this if you work at it, and perhaps enlist the help of an image specialist.

As a kid, kids could tell I was obviously different. They thought I was ret*d or stupid or a show off or weird. But I think I have learned to adapt enough to come off as normal now. But I still think people can tell I am different when they see me often enough.

Lol. They are image specialists, not magicians

I can look extremely NT for a period of time ranging from a few minutes ( scripted interaction at the bakery, post office, etc), to maybe an hour (those damn IEP meetings), but longer then that and i start going downhill. Faking it is exhausting, and can be shutdown/meltdown inducing. I'm apparently still recovering from the last school meeting for my son (those "impending doom" feelings I got were probably related to social overload not taken into account and "pushed through") , but I'm sure I appeared very very NT at the time.
Don't judge a book by its cover, especially based on ONE interaction/video at a time.

The "often enough " part is key, I agree with you, and even my son is the same: has friends at the beginning of the school year, a LOT of friends, by summer holidays they generally have all turned into bullies.

Well I can't speak for anyone else but I never was and still am not socially normal at all. I was bullied throughout school, never really had friends in school, and am almost completely socially isolated now.

I looked for my results and found this.

"I'm trying to do that "mind in the eyes" test. Some seem obvious to me but some I think I'm going to have to randomly pick because none of the choices seem any better to me than the others.

I got 26 and it said a typical score is 22-30. There is a problem with this test. It is multiple choice. You have a 1 in 4 chance of getting it right by clicking randomly. Had I had a longer list of possibilities for each one or especially if I had to type in what they were thinking or feeling I would have done much worse. If I had to type it in with no hints I wouldn't have known many of them."

I finally figured out why there's such a large source of disagreement between what the articles suggest the typical outcome of an average aspergian female is and the females posting to this thread: the average aspergian female is well adjusted and is much less likely to be posting to a support site, whereas the worse-than-average aspergian female is far more likely to seek support from a dedicated aspergers site. This is not to say that a given female here is worse than the average "real life aspergian female", but the average female here is. So using anecdotal evidence from posters here might be a bit misleading and could be giving a false impression of the reality of the 'average aspergian female'.

Ohh, I suppose every female here is offended because they were called ''normal''. Being called ''normal'' is the biggest compliment anyone could give me. It makes me feel happier in myself, even if it doesn't for others. I don't put words into other people's mouths, but I speak for myself when I say being called ''normal'' makes me feel a little more confident in myself.

Well, I have the same problems.I didn´t get a diagnosis, but I don´t think that all AS women are normal,I have problems to talk to people and to understand them, they usually don´t understand me or they think that I am weird.I suffer from sensory overload.I can act, obviously but only for a few minutes until my stims appear and I began feeling anxious and deppresed