Sensory malfunction and social skills

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Do you find that your sensory perception difficulties are the root cause of your social skills deficits, or at least a strong contributing factor? For example, I often played with kids in the neighborhood but rarely in groups of more than two. I never went to daycare or even a babysitter's as I went to my grandmother's instead. Kindergarten hit me like a ton of bricks. The kids were so loud, they moved around alot, they bumped into me, etc. I avoided the other kids because of the over-stimulation, not because I didn't want to interact. Through school I could handle a couple of friends at a time. Anything above that and it became overwhelming.

Similarly, I had an active interest in the opposite sex until my first "real" boyfriend kept his hands on me all the freaking time. This was in early middle school. He didn't do anything inappropriate or overtly sexual, it was just constant. And that's why I dumped him. I felt icky about dating for a LONG time after that and couldn't quite understand why. My INTEREST in males never changed, but I was reluctant to act on any feelings.

Both of these were sensory in origin, but the cumulative effect of avoidance was lack of exposure, lack of practice, etc. My social skills, which weren't exactly NT anyway, suffered even more delays. Have any of you felt the same way?

I couldn't say... I just don't have much of an interest in socializing. It can get boring, though. Maybe that's the main problem with me and socializing--boredom.

Hard to say, too.

Yes once I have allowed people into my space.

Usualy I do not so it is not an issue.

Sensory difficulties make it much more difficult, but I'm not sure whether they're the root cause of the social deficit. I remember thinking, age 7, the main reason I could not interact with the other children was because the environment made me so uncomfortable. This was long before learning of autism. However, I also have memories of being age 5 and unable to interact, in spite of the sensory stimulation being minimal. I was simply missing the social intuition.

for me the social issues are quite distinct from my sensory ones, however the sensory does contribute:
- not being able to hear one conversation in a noisy room (auditory processing)
- painful noise level of a typical social gathering
- people like to sit around in the sun... (what??) temperature+light sensitivity
- cannot stand club-noise-level music... so i never "go clubbing" which is apparently what everyone does around here. (what?? lol)

the remainder of the social issues tend to go back to basic causes such as detail-oriented processing and difficulty multi-tasking (if only a group of people would talk one at a time, with at least 10 seconds of processing time between each comment. no wonder online interactions are so much easier.), as well as theory of mind of course :). i think my problems with keeping on the same topic as everyone else may also be related to issues prioritising the most important aspect of a particular thing someone said...

(classically:
NT: "Ooh, I went to a concert in the weekend"
AS: "Ooh, I went to a concert last year")

oh & i don't really have a problem with personal space :).

so yeah the sensory issues contribute, but there is a distinct social deficit outside of those.

I think the sensory issues definetly figure in on what is a very complex disorder. I know someone posted here about people having better eyesight then some birds of prey. My eyesight has always been more then healthy. And last nite I'm setting at the desk with a floor heater running and I hear a noise. First I thought it was the tv, next the laptop having problems, but it turned out to be my cellphone ringing. And the phone was in the kitchen, two rooms away and enclosed in my purse setting on the floor!

The more I realise how high volume my senses are I see how it affects me socially and on the job. I know often I could not tune out conversations eventhough I tried my best. And if I'm having a conversation with someone I have to try so hard to stay focoused if the room is busy or loud. This all takes so much effort, because on top of the sensory and focussing I can't maintain good eyecontact. So interacting has become way to stressful in my life right now and I don't know if that will ever change. It's very hard on my family