Do we ever develop intuition?

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When I ask the question "do we ever develop intuition"? I clearly mean in the socio-emotional sense... as many people have noticed and stated, those of us with ASD/HFA can gradually develop proper responses based on empirical observations and logical thought when it comes to social situations - sort of like debugging a computer program through iterations - but it's hard to say, even from my own experience, how much of that gets translated into the kind of fluid social intuition that NTs innately have, from the seamless blending of body language and Theory of Mind _given situational context_ into a coherent and accepted response. (This, incidentally, is the main reason why we don't "get" movie plots with smoothness.)

Granted, some of these would have to depend on the extent and frequency of social interactions we have with others - in situations like high school it's more limited, but in young adult life we tend to have more opportunities for practicing random interaction with others, which gives us a chance to reflect, take notes, etc. If we muster that courage to practice, w/o fear of being ostracized, then we might gain more intuitive faculty. It's a different predicament than, say, a dyslexic who can always practice with books and doesn't have to worry about the books rejecting him or her

I don't know if I have developed more intuition in social situations. Whenever I think I have, if I analyze my responses more I realize it still takes me a lot longer than other people to decipher tone/body language/etc. and that I don't innately get those things yet. I'm just a lot faster at it than I used to be because of practice.

I've developed a lot of intuition and now reading body language and understanding other's emotions feels so natural. I can't even "switch off" my empathy. But I usually view my empathy as a quality of mine, which is why I get so wound up when other Aspies here go on about how Aspies lack empathy. It's a bit like an Aspie being really good at painting but then keep being told that Aspies cannot paint, or something (just an example).

I think I have pretty good, maybe even better-than-average social intuition in certain specific senses of it, but near-nonexistent in other senses of it. I don't have any trouble with superficial everyday interaction (other than that it can be draining even when it's pleasant), but I cannot for the life of me understand how closer human relationships typically work or are supposed to work.

It's hard to judge it in retrospect, but as far as I can tell/remember, I was really bad at it all as a child/teenager. I can say for sure it took me a lot longer to learn any social intuition than it does the average person. I guess I got "possibly better than average" at it because, unlike the average person, there was no natural point for me to stop learning it, especially since I learned most of it after the point when usually people have already settled on a stable way of approaching social existence.

The only way I know can do it clearly is with executive function.

Otherwise, trying to do so is as distracting and overwhelming as any unprocessed and distorted sensory noises, causing too many errors and wrong turns.



One prerequisites might be losing alexithymic traits.
Alexithymic states inclines one to be cerebral, concrete and logical -- not how usual socialization works -- as it is without clear emotional references of it's own.

Specific traits of alexithymia are what made difference between autistics who know what feelings and empathy are and how it exists, from those who may claim to not to have some or any themselves.
In reality, the latter do have emotions. They just don't recognize it -- the former do.

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I think that ease in social situations arises from having one's brain set up as a fast analog circuit for that stuff. The digital, analytical side can never get fast enough. Intuition, OTOH, is more like ESP, where you might be the first to think of a word the other party is trying to remember.

I certainly have, although I attribute that to having a NT spouse who is very outgoing and popular. After decades of being his [reluctant] plus one to endless social events, I have always been quietly on the sidelines, kind of learning to decode and “read” people while he mingles. It’s kind of a “parlor trick” that he finds amusing when I’ve “read” personality traits in people he has know for years, but I have just met.

But, again, this has taken decades to cultivate. Fifteen or twenty years ago, I would have been completely oblivious to body language and facial cues. I have a child on the spectrum, and I remember we had a computer program that taught how to recognize facial cues, so that’s where I learned it.