So, what ARE the most common special interests?

Post Reply New Topic

My main special interest is a band called, "Great Big Sea". They are from Canada and it seems like a lot of people with AS like them.

Cats are just something I love... I'm known as "Cat Lady" at school. LOL!

My real special interest is studying neurological things, like AS. Right now, AS is my interest... it was synesthesia for a while, Tourette's another time... and sometimes I'll just read any other thing that sounds interesting!

Has anyone heard of Foreign Accent Syndrome?

1. Languages. At various times, I have attempted to learn Yiddish, Polish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Gothic, and Upper Sorbian. Fluent second-language speaker of German. Current projects are Norwegian and Cornish.

2. I'm interested in really strict religious sects, like the Amish and Chasidic Jews.

3. Early modern history, especially the "gross" stuff like the history of personal hygiene.

4. Onomastics (the study of names). I am obsessed with the baby name statistics section of the Social Security Administration's website and love making spreadsheets tracking baby naming patterns.

5. Animals, especially cats.


I suspect that this list is dorky even for an Aspie.

Great, another language learner! Welcome to WrongPlanet.

You've studied lots of cool languages. Cornish?! Wow, not many people learn Cornish. I used to speak quite a bit of it, but not anymore. Prag a dhysk ty Kernewek? (that's probably ungrammatical ) Gothic is really cool, but it's too bad all we have is part of the bible in it, so we don't have a very big lexicon of it.

I think that foreign accent syndrome is most commonly associated with traumatic brain injury, but aspies are known to use unusual inflection.

Doesn't sound dorky at all. Do you study names in other countries/cultures and in the past and stuff? Do you just look at which ones are used or do you look at the etymology and stuff?

I've never even heard of Cornish.

I am extremely conflicted about how to answer this one.

My main recognizable-as-a-special-interest-to-most-people interest is cats and pretty close to always has been (with or without others). Cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats cats. I am sitting with a cat right now, cheek to cheek, like usual when we snuggle in bed. =^_^=

But... there's an entire kind of special interests that is completely left off of here and that I have also always had (going back before cats even, and including still all the times when I can't conceptualize "cat"). And this is like... all the special interests listed above are in one large category, and the kind of special interest I'm talking about is a separate category entirely.

All the special interests above are topics. Whereas, the kind of special interest I'm thinking of is sensory. (I think this has even been written about before in autism-related literature, how there's more idea-based special interests and then there's sensory special interests.) Like, I have all these different objects, textures, sparkly things, etc., that count just as much as a special interest as anything else.

And yet.... I'd have to click "other", and thus be counted in with all kinds of idea-based special interests, and I don't like that either. So maybe I ought to go with cats. I don't know. I think I can't decide for now.

Oh and I find it interesting you listed disaster preparedness. I didn't know that was common but I know an autistic person with a zillion certificates in that area.

That might explain why they seem to be catching, then.

I actually did want to include sensory-based interests, but wasn't sure how to explain that idea (I'm not even sure I truly understand it, myself), so I was hoping it would go under Other and anyone who had such interests would speak up and explain it clearly (which I can't because it's just something I've heard about in passing).

It appears not to be common, from the poll results. But given the huge number of topics to choose from, I do find it interesting that most people picked something I listed.

Should I do another couple of polls breaking down the categories with the most votes?

I picked things that you listed because they were on the top of my mind. If I had thought a little more, I would have come up with a longer list, but my list was long enough.

Yes, I would like that. If you broke down the "fiction" category into things like books, TV, movies, cartoons, anime, etc., I would be very interested to see how many other aspies have movies as their special interest. Although to be honest I would be torn between the "movies" and "anime" options, since even though my anime obsession ended a couple of years ago and now I'm all about movies, anime was a major part of my life for a very long time and I can't deny/ignore that.


I'm glad you like Mr. Burton's films as well! Edward Scissorhands is indeed a great one. It'd probably be my top favorite if I weren't so obsessed with Alice. Edward Scissorhands is my parents' favorite Burton movie; my dad even dressed up as Edward a couple of times for Halloween!

A lot of people didn't like Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I did. I have seen both Willy Wonka movies and I still like his better. It's probably due to the fact that I've always had a "thing" for effeminate, childlike men, so Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka really hit home for me. (For the record, I also very much enjoyed Depp's portrayals of J.M. Barrie and Ed Wood for pretty much the same reasons.)

I've loved Nightmare Before Christmas ever since I was a small child. My dad really loves it too for some reason. Speaking of NBC, I changed my bedspread to my Jack Skellington one today!

It may still be common. Remember, people can only pick one of their special interests here. It makes sense that a lot of people would, if having to choose between several of their interests, pick the ones that are listed rather than click other. I'm still debating which one to do, myself.

I don't think you really have to do another poll or anything.

Hmm... okay, despite a strong special interest in cats, I'm going to click "other", just so it registers on there for at least one person.

I actually haven't seen Alice yet! I was so excited about it coming out when I heard it advertised....but recently my neuroscience/psychology obsession (and obsession with autism in particular) has become really intense and I haven't seen any movies lately. Maybe I'll watch it this weekend....now I'm curious.......

I loved the first Charlie and the chocolate factory movie so much that changing it just seemed wrong...Willy Wonka was supposed to be a certain way and I didn't like how much they changed his character from the original conception.

I only began really liking nightmare recently....a couple years ago I had a bit of an obsession with it (and to a lesser extent) corpse bride which somewhat overlapped my obsession with fantasy literature. My mum and sister are now SO sick and tired of the movie (because I kept playing it and the soundtrack ad-nauseam) that they never want to watch it anymore. =) I liked Sweeney Todd too...

1) various rotating science topics

2) travel and foreign affairs

3) bursts of interest in very specific genres of fiction. These became rarer as I got older.

4) then just some random stuff that isnt easily categorized.

I think it's interesting that I have the travel bug and the very first man who was diagnosed with autism also has it. Donald Gray Triplett.

My constant, since I was a child, interests are cats, drawing, and mechanical objects (Motors, Pistons, Wheels, Pulleys... I don't really care what it is, if it is mechanical in nature and has moving parts then I'm all over it.)

My other, current, interests are music and painting, last month it was making Chainmail (the armor, not the spam) who knows what I'll be in to next month. I tend to learn new things very quickly, and, as a result, I also get bored quickly... which means I go through hobbies/interests in a hurry.

Mail is cool. Did you do a hauberk? A coif? Or something else entirely?