Any studies on aspies with strong social skills?

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Musicals can teach us so much. Just look at how My Fair Lady can teach us how to be a mysogneist jerk and how Hello Dolly can teach us how to profit from being a manipulative busybody.





Seriously I love musicals

@Nightingale79

Thank you for sharing!! This is just what I am wondering about, what sort of things have actually helped autistic folks to learn social / communication skills. I see so much just from what you've written here... Your early use of imitation in social interactions (I used imitation as well, but of peers, not media), with the resulting negative and positive outcomes (it didn't communicate your thoughts and intentions well, but it did facilitate future interactions and gave you social experiences to experiment with and learn from). Your learning various things about people, emotions, and communication from acting (it would be so interesting to break down what you learn into more specifics). The fact that you learned all this through a sustained passion / "special interest". And I wonder, what sort of things did you miss until much later? What sort of things would adult you have told kid you or adolescent you.

I can see a lot of things in common with my story, and a lot of things different. I started out imitating as well, starting around age 10, but imitated peers instead of people I saw on media. It helped me get by and get more social experience, but it failed a lot as far as actually communicating any information or anything inside of me, and it also failed often at avoiding embarrassment. Imitating people got me to a point as an adolescent where I got myself into a couple of cliques, built around partying/drinking and role-playing (DND). In these I was able to get a lot of feedback... mostly being called out for embarrassing actions and words, ranging from teasing to nasty bullying. This got me much deeper and more varied social experiences, and I got better at avoiding embarrassment. But spending too much time in these groups, just to gain social skills (and I was very aware that this was my purpose) with no regard to my well-being or self-worth, was pretty scarring, and I carry a lot of that with me to this day. On the other hand, it worked in a lot of ways, and put me on a path to where I am now, where I socialize well at work and in my relationship, better that I ever could have imagined at any point over my first few decades of life. But I wonder, if I could have given myself advice back then, how could I have managed things so I could have gotten this learning and social experience, without subjecting myself to all the terrible-ness?

There's a lot more to my story, as I'm sure there's a lot more to yours. Just not enough space to share it all here.

Imagine if somebody could collect this sort of stuff from 100 autistic folks, who have self-identified as having learned strong social / communication skills. See how results correlate with environmental factors such as social background, personal factors like sex and IQ, severity of autistic traits like sensory issues. I bet you'd find a lot of common themes, maybe a lot of what we'd assume is true, maybe some surprising results as well, and probably a lot of things to pursue deeper in further research.

Or maybe screw the analysis, and just do a project like this for the purpose of collecting and sharing people's stories? Make it public and let readers sort out what might work for them, see what they can learn from others' journeys, failures, and successes.

[quote="justRob"]

It seems obvious to me that the place to look for what actually works for adolescents and adults is to study the strategies and resources actually used by successful aspies / auties. Locate a bunch of such subjects, collect data through interviews, questionnaires, other methods, maybe also let them write freely on their critical experiences and strategies. Then analyze the data for patterns, like common experiences they found critical to their development, common stages of social learning, and common tools and strategies that were found to work over these stages of learning (like personailty typing systems). Not to mention, include questions about the fallout from these strategies, as many strategies that can find success in social life, dating and the workplace can have costs to things like one's self identity and morals.

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Locating a bunch of aspies who are willing to participate in research and actually follow through on participating is easier said than done.

If you have strong social skills, then it's far more likely you're a sociopath than an "aspie".

I might be able to contribute here as I fall into the group of self-diagnosed Aspies with very strong social skills

(Note: I have stopped calling myself self-diagnosed on WP as it appeared to cause offense so just lump myself into the NT maelstrom)

I wasn't born with strong social skills and it took me a while to catch up with my NT peers. By my mid 30s I hit my prime where I basically taught myself to socially assimilate seamlessly. How did I do it? It didn't happen overnight

Many Aspies are good at learning. I applied my intelligence/learning to social skills. I put myself in situations where I watched people both in real life and TV and studied non-verbal and verbal cues. I then put it in action. It's not a free ride as I had to compensate for my social anxiety and put up with years of ridicule and awkwardness. I also had to consciously work on reducing compulsive speech, I'm still working to iron out quirks re: the latter but it's not such a big deal. Bottom line is to watch people carefully, study them.

As part of my work I do public speaking and meetings. I don't maintain an active circle of friends as I am now married but used to when I was in my 30s.

I may not be the best example though as I would (probably) be mistaken for NT if you met me. There are plenty of Aspies on WP who are highly successful so perhaps diagnosed Aspies might like to share their strategies

no offense taken...