Can an autistic person have better social skills than an NT?

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So, I'm wondering is that if considering the studies have been finding people's social skills are getting worse due to less interaction with each other because of entertainment and whatnot, and the fact autistic children get explicitly taught social skills, is it possible for the autistic person to actually end up with better social skills than their neurotypical peers in the end?

Highly doubt it but who knows. Aspergers is a spectrum disorder, not so much a concrete disorder like PTSD, Depression, etc.

Absolutely possible. There are plenty of complete idiots out there with very poor social skills who are NT. Doesn't matter if you're NT or not, it's a matter of intelligence and understanding situations to develop your social skills because that's really what they are, skills, which can be learned.

I'm not sure.
In the spectrum, there is a lot of common points which allow a diagnosis.
About the question, if it's not impossible — because we can't be absolute on a question — I assume it's more an exception that a generality.
Obviously I think it's different according to reference source.

+1,000,000
Social skills are just that, skills.
I'm relatively neurotypical tho I'd argue I'm on the spectrum somewhere, I'd put money on myself having far better social skills than the average nt person because I have spent far more time learning to interact with people. With that said, if you are on a can't read facial expressions, level, I am less confident lol

Possible? Yes. Particularly in specific areas.

Yes, some autistics study social skills for years through interactions.

How are doctors able to tell if someone just has poor social skills than an ASD or social communication disorder or just have symptoms (BAP)?

I think some Aspies think things logically, and sometimes logic sounds more sensible.

Depends on what's meant by "social skills."

Hello, could you please kindly share how You learn it? Thank you.

(I try to observe people to learn, i'm far from stupid in other fields, but when it's about learning social skills, sometimes it feels like i'm learning Chinese just by watching a Chinese mouth move...

Yes, I think so.

To me, Asperger's is a matter of instincts. I have terrible social instincts but I can learn social skills when I invest the time. Some NTs may have terrible trigonometry instincts but can learn it if they invest the time; trigonometry came naturally to me.

So an NT may have better social instincts, but they are hidden by selfishness or other personal issues. Where as an Aspie may exceed the lazy NT's social skills with dedicated study and practice.

I thought that part of the concept of "good social skills" was the ability to use social knowledge intuitively. I doubt that someone who did not naturally pick up on "social skills" and had to be taught explicitly can ever use those skills as intuitively as an NT, so, in that sense, no, an autistic person could not have better "social skills" than an NT.

Yes, eventually-- in the way a non-native speaker of a language may have better grammar than a native speaker. As an AS person, you have to learn the rules by careful study, while the "native speaker" learns them, sometimes incompletely, by osmosis. At the age of 53, I'm extremely fluent in NT-style interactions, but I didn't get to that point till I was in my mid-30s, and I still make mistakes sometimes. And it still feels foreign.

There is far more autism than just poor social skills.

Well I don't suffer with any typical aspie problems, I'm very high functioning to the point no one even suspects me of being anything other than NT. I just come on here to help others normally, as I've helped plenty of other autistic people in the past.

That wasn't the case when I was younger, I was still high functioning but I realised I was lacking a lot of social skill, not being able to hold conversations for very long etc. But, I wasn't very socially aware of my own actions and how I was being seen to other people so I had to learn off others quite a lot, and in doing so I ended up with a much larger vocabulary and general understanding of why people say/do things. Psychology/Scoiology research helps tons.

For my aspie friends, they ended up getting really into TV dramas, animes and such. They enjoyed them anyway but they didn't just watch them normally - they tried to take something from it. Like why did this/that character do this for example.

I think it's like, some aspie folk were born without the ability to learn social skills fast like an NT can just pick them up as they get older, or they had some understanding, different levels for different people. So with this, I think it's kind of like trying to learn another language that you weren't able to automatically grasp when you were younger like a lot of NTs. You're just an individual who doesn't get the social language and that's okay cause you can learn.

Since I understand all this, I've helped people in the past better their social skills tremendously by being in person with them and showing them what this/that means or why you shouldn't act a certain way or why something can be perceived as weird or rude.

For example, an aspie male friend of mine kept liking pages on Facebook that were very women orientated, kept liking ALL of his female friends desperate boob shots so I had to explain to him that a lot of people who are following him on Facebook can see these posts he's liking and it makes other people perceive you as desperate for a woman when he was only liking their pictures because he was actually incredibly innocent and liked their smiles and didn't realise that he was actually damaging his social life by doing that because people stop talking to you when they perceive you as desperate like that. But self awareness plays a HUGE part in it all which a lot of people seem to skip out on when it's probably one of the most important aspects of even learning social skills. Which is basically understanding what you are actually doing and what affects it will play on you. You need to be aware of how it will affect others around you, like my friend didn't understand that which is why a lot of girls avoided him cause they thought he was just a 'f**kboy' since he kept liking pictures of every single girl and even really desperate boobie 'attention me' shots, hopefully that makes some sense.

This is the real kind of learning experience a lot of aspie folk really need so they can understand things better, because I don't think an NT can explain things in the way that we'll definitely understand. If you know any high functioning folk with great social skills, definitely get them to teach you. If not, don't lose hope it's still possible.

If you're wanting to learn on your own - it will be simply a bit more time spent on it, you just have to throw yourself into social situations but try to take things from it and ask people questions about why someone would do this/that or what they mean by something, it's fine to ask questions, it doesn't matter if you're coming across as weird as you're trying to learn. Don't be afraid to ask, you're trying to better yourself and that's waaay more important than them poking a bit of fun at you or whatever. If they ask just say you were just wondering cause you were confused. If you know someone with good social skills who is a decent person then try to take parts of their vocabulary and put them in your own, the parts you understand though. You can even change them very slightly so you don't come across as odd for mimicking your friend. Don't worry about being odd in the start though, most people actually don't care if you're a bit weird they're more bothered about themselves.

I could type more but there's so much so I'd be here all day haha. I hope some of that made some sense anyway, I find explaining these things for someone else to understand can be a confusing process in itself.

All this is kinda like when you were younger and you didn't know how to type on a keyboard without using just 1 finger and didn't know where the keys were so you were just barely getting along. Well, figure out/remember where the keys are so you can excel at it.



There are certain quirks which make it so they can tell, like blank expression, "soulless gaze" etc.
A new specialist came around to my friends house, like her regular specialist doctor therapy person and the first time they met he was like "I can tell you're autistic just from looking at you" which I can get, cause it's the whole 'shifty' look thing.



You can definitely learn facial expressions, I've seen the worst of the worst develop into someone who can blend pretty well with NTs. All it means is that it's a longer learning process.

But yeah, the more time you spend actually learning and interacting it definitely pays off even if it doesn't seem it at first.