Always the spectator, rarely a participant.

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I thought a few people here might be interested in an article that someone posted on the NAS forum today. It's looking into the reasons why autistic people struggle with social interactions, the incentive to mask, and how we may retreat into sanctuaries from the other people in the world. It's slightly unusual in that it's written by a sociologist rather than a psychologist or neurologist, so looks at how our social skills are affected not just by autistic traits, but also by other people's reactions to them and the ambiguity of social norms. I'm always a bit cautious about sociology and, sadly, the language can be a bit impenetrable in places; however, I think there are a few interesting ideas here, albeit only supported by a limited amount of anecdotal data from a small cohort (though I'm sure that many of the anecdotes will be familiar to a lot of us.)

LINK: It's like you are just a spectator in this thing.

I've not read your link.
But it reminds me of something that lives with me regularly.
40 years ago, someone said to me: "you're an observer, you're not a participant".

Exceptional piece of analysis - especially since he hardly even knew me...

I am rather a spectator than a participant. I enjoy observing and contemplating more than taking my part in activities. Taking my part is too messy, I can hardly focus, unless I can do it perfectly alone.
When I was a child, I used to believe it was something wrong with me, that I should live this kind of extroverted life full of activities instead of reading books and thinking all the time. I've grown out of it long ago. That's my part of life and it's fun, it's productive and fulfilling. My brain is different, why shouldn't my life be different?

What particularly interested me about the article was that it agrees with a point of view that I've been drifting towards ever since my diagnosis (which of course, could well just be an example of confirmation bias!) It suggests that the core differences in autism are the sensory, perceptual, and cognitive ones, and that the stereotypical social behaviours are simply a predictable consequence of living amongst people who mostly work from a different internal model of the world around them. This, of course, is the reverse of how autism is usually viewed in practice; the diagnostic manuals, most interventions, etc. are based around the consequent behavioural signs, and there is barely any mention of the sensory, attentional, and cognitive differences, shut-downs, melt-downs, burn-outs, masking, and many other effects of autism which so many of us experience.

If this is the case, then the perceptual, attentional, and cognitive differences might be innate, but the social behaviours are environmentally driven; we're not hard-wired to be asocial or socially awkward per se, we're just basing our models of the world and other people on incomplete information that's biased to perceive a different set of information than most other people would perceive. As I pretty much already believe, this would mean that the primarily behavioural viewpoint which has dominated thinking about autism ever since it was first identified is fatally flawed, as whatever a person's innate traits might be, the differences in social behaviour are entirely contingent on what environments the person finds themself in, especially during critical developmental periods in early childhood.

I've been affected both by my relative inability to socially interact--and by people's reactions to my sometimes social overtures.

My mother reacts like an exaggerated version of those people who disdain me for "lacking the social graces," or making various types of faux pas.

I absolutely agree with the premise of "frequently a spectator, rarely a participant."

I am on the "inside looking out," so to speak.

I feel like I'm the center of my own universe "looking out" at the wider world.

My personal opinion is partially in agreement to yours. I agree that the primarily behavioral definition of autism is fundamentally flawed. But there was a research: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 124717.htm (I've got the full text if you are interested) that I think is worth continuing. It gave some clues suggesting that unconcious social reactions of autistic people are fundamentally different. In one of the experiments, people were exposed to sub-concious levels od chemosignals and then their reaction to sudden noise (like changes in heartbeat) were measured. The chemosignals had opposite effect on Aspies than on NTs.
So I suspect social awkwardness is a core part of autism, in a sense that processing social information, even on unconcious level, is fundamentally different.
And it may be for a purpose - someone alert when everybody is calm, someone thinking outside the box of crowd psychology wouldn't have an easy life but their existence would benefit the whole group.