what causes the social issues with aspergers?

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I think it's a matter of being stranded with no compass. In social situations, I don't really know what is going on and have to blindly say things that I think will be polite and inoffensive, rather than actively following the social dance, which escapes me. It's hard to know exactly what I'm missing in a social interaction, because I'm missing it!

I agree with rabidmonkey4262 that we feel a lot of strong emotions, at least I do. But that doesn't improve my social functioning, it only impairs it further because I can easily become anxious, or even angry when people say thoughtless things.

I also agree that empathy is often misconstrued. The way I had it explained to me by an AS specialist is that sympathy is what you feel when you feel bad for someone who is suffering, but empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes.

Thanks for the clarification about sympathy vs. empathy. My issue is still the baggage with the word "empathy". In the layperon's term "empathy" still means feeling sorry for other people so if someone googles the word "Aspergers" they will get a sh**load of stuff saying how Aspies don't have empathy. That's why I wish they would change it to "lacking prospective taking" or "difficulty putting themselves in other people's shoes".

When I told a close friend about my AS, he's told me he thinks that I have anxiety disorder with ADHD and not Aspegers). This is a guy who's actually minored in psychology back in the late 1990s when Aspergers was first becoming known known). He's fairly people smart and actually works as corporate trainer now. I've known him well for about 5 years and he's even seen me make social mistakes which he attributes to the ADHDHe's reasoning behind "undiagnosing" my official diagnosis was "people with Aspegers have no empathy and you (referring to me) are so gentle and patient with children and animals, cry when you watch sad movies, and also do volunteer work." Never mind that sometimes say things that offend people without realizing WHY its offensive!

My social issues go along with what Callista said. I also agree with Chronos about skepticism with the mirror neurons theory - one study found that autistic people's mirror neurons didn't work like NT mirror neurons, another found they worked after all. The theory is far from conclusive.

Anyway, what happens to me is: I feel like I'm on a delay in most situations. I have to process what I am seeing to work out how I should respond. I don't immediately know things like, "someone just got home after a weekend trip, should I greet them and ask how it was?" if I have no other reason to talk to them. I don't immediately know how to respond to a lot of social situations and cues and have to stop and think it through. Some I have been able to script out more thoroughly and can respond more immediately, because instead of thinking "How do I respond?" I can ask instead "which prepared response is appropriate?"

It's also harder to focus on other people if they or the environment is overloading. More of my cognition is taken up with processing all the sensory input I can't tune out and less of it can go to processing the situation I'm in, so I fall back on patterns that, well, tend to make me come across as rude and terse, whatever I intend or prefer. And other sensations can do it as well. I can ignore a lot of pain but when it exceeds my threshold I have very little left over for social processing.

Yes I have the same problem. People think that I am stupid because they think that I am off topic or that what I say has nothing to do with the subject matter. Most of the time when people say that what I say has nothing to do with the topic on hand the truth is that what I am saying has everything to do with the topic on hand. Sometimes I use analogies to explain my position but this angers people even more and they insist that my analogies have nothing to do with the subject matter.

This.

While it is clear there are a number of patterns and degrees, I think we need more research in these areas. Over time I have found that there are people a plenty whose signals I cannot detect. And typically they totally fail to get mine. It is NOT simply my processing their output - they for all their speedy processors - it that were it - cannot handle me.

On the other hand, there is a minority who fairly consistently read me, and lo and behold I receive signals from them And they typically report that i read them BETTER than the neurotypical majority.

All of which makes me think in terms not simply of processor speed, but of AM versus FM radio, or American versus European TV.

I'm currently following up a hypothesis that suggests that the cause of our social issues has to do with an inability to separate episodic communications. That is, every social situation has a beginning and an end that is decided by all participants involved (Littleton - Theories of Human Communication 1999), and I believe that it is our inability to recognise these end points, not just of complete conversations but of clauses and text segments, that is at the root of our difficulties.

I'll get back to you on it, and would appreciate any input (scholarly or otherwise) that people may have on this topic.

Basically, THIS.

Dance is perhaps the best analogy.

You can learn the moves to a dance, but if you don't have the natural coordination, you move awkwardly, and nobody really wants to be your dance partner.

With practice, you might improve, but you won't be a great dancer.

Socialization is the same way. We can learn social skills. We can practice them, but we lack that natural "coordination" to move in them as one is expected to.

Yay, I think this comes closer to what I've seen in my case. There are some people who just don't "get me" and I don't "get them". We can play act that we understand each other, but that usually doesn't last. At most, we'll become acquaintances and leave it at that.

But I'm fairly good at reading people who are, I believe, neurologically similar to me. I have my most luck with fellow ADHD'ers and Aspies. The tempo of the conversation is different and I don't feel nearly as stressed or left behind. I know this probably doesn't apply to everyone, but I do think that my brain works on a different wavelength than the majority of the population. I can understand them to some basic degree, but it really does feel like they are speaking a foreign language (and hence, translation requires time and energy, both of which I'm not always prepared to give).