Autism

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I have been on this site for a little while now and I found out what most of the problems seem to be

1) no or unclear communication [or a failure to anticipate problems and hence communicate effectively]

2) lack of feedback

3) people assuming things [probably as a result of 1]

they are the main issues

a lack of awareness of facial expressions or body language could come under 1) unclear communication leading to 3) perhaps

What do other people feel are the main issues which arise in autism?

Possibly also a stubbornness to change [particularly when they haven;t considered the whole situation or how this affects others (eg by seeking their viewpoint] or becoming upset easily - Ive got really 'thick skin' so a lot of things don't bother me - I forgive and forget unless its very serious.

I have put this very simply - I know there is someone in my family who probably is somewhere on the autistic spectrum and a lack of communication and a failure to anticipate problems/issues really upsets me. To compound this the person fails to talk when I speak to them at times regarding important information [I anticipate what may happen].

I think these problems affect all relationships

is there any more problems which you have noticed and do you feel these points are valid? Basically by recognising problems with communication people with Asperger's could be much better communicators with a bit of practice than anyone else.

I think you are right. Autistic people have a brain which doesn't learn as a child some basic communication tools like eye contact, therefore they miss something, and its hard to find out for them, because most 99% of the other people did learn this communication tool as a baby.

Autistic people should learn that, because ignoring data results into failures (e.g. loneliness). Now when autistic people group together (e.g. in WP), on the one side it helps because we can exchange use, but on the other side there is also the risk that we form a group on our own and say, we are one group and so proud to be in this group, we don't want to be like the others, we don't want to learn.

I think the most important thing here on WP is to tell every new aspie who enters here, that it is most important for him to catch up with he missed as a child, he should try his best to learn the communication tools, and i think they can learn it, though its harder for them (at least most aspies).

But so far, i didn't find any manual which helps an aspie to learn the communication tools. We are perfectionists, create all kind of science stuff, but we got our weak point, and yet I couldn't find a perfect guide to improve this, i still have to look on my own at amazon to find out which books maybe good in learning body language and about emotions and soon.

best regards,
anton

It's not just communication. Communication is the obvious thing that the NTs will notice about you first, because NTs are just totally focused on communication. But there's the cognitive differences--we simply think differently. Put an autistic person in a room without any other people, and he's still autistic, still different from the NTs. Autism isn't just a communication disorder. It's a difference in how you learn, how you think, how you perceive the world. It's just so much more global than just eye contact. (And it's possible to be autistic and have perfect eye contact.)

I believe what is called "autism" is actually a variety of different neurological anomalies and I do not think this site is a good representation of all of them because it primarily represents those with HFA or Asperger Syndrome, who are usually vastly different from those with with LFA/MFA

@callista: what do you mean with "think different"?

i mean, everyone thinks abit different, so... i don't think its not such different, because elsewise nothing would be understood.

1 and 2 are typical for autism (and for other people who are communicational challenged), 3 on the other hand is a basic human feature (figuring out to what can/could be filled in with the equation 1+...=2 for example, only error is when you assume it can only be 1 filled in on the dotted line)

Communications, be it verbal and/or non-verbal.
Socialisations, how to act and what to say.
Empathy/Apathy, Having nearly none or having too much - it seems that this issue arises most here on the site.

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes

That's actually the issue: We think differently enough that NTs find it hard to understand us. For example, when I look at a tree, I see leaves, bark, movement, color, individual parts, and think "tree" once I put those parts together--an NT looks at a tree and thinks "tree" and then has to pay attention to notice the individual parts. It may not seem like a big difference; but trust me--it is. When you approach everything as small parts rather than a big picture, you are likely to (as I did) learn to read before learning to understand the story; learn to talk before learning to communicate; learn to imitate social behavior before learning its meaning. Add to that the sensory stuff: We're bombarded by sensory data and it's difficult to filter out what we want to pay attention to. So I'll notice everything but it takes brain power to figure out what's important about it. An NT will notice only the things he finds relevant and has to pay attention to notice anything else. It's really a very fundamental difference... there are lots of other ways it plays out, but I guess that's enough of an idea...

It also plays itself out in the ways that we approach things like religion. If you're detail oriented, you're more likely to notice every tiny discrepancy, therefore the whole concept of taking things on 'faith' may become much more difficult. It can affect the way that tasks are done at work, since the approach all the NTs are using may seem illogical or even out of coherent sequence. And you can browse the boards here for ten minutes and see posts on how it affects interpersonal relationships and causes problems, because all sorts of small things that NTs do naturally within a relationship don't even occur to the Aspie brain. Like constantly complimenting people or just sitting in the same room with them while they watch some stupid television show, so they don't feel neglected and lonely. The differences between the Aspie brain and the NT brain are huge and cover almost every aspect of life. Sometimes its easy not to even be aware of just how different you behavior is being perceived by the people around you. It may seem 'normal' to you, but it looks very odd to everybody else.

Sure everyone think differently but to the autistic brain actually works differently to the average brain. Many areas of the brain are affected in autism so the autistic has to learn things differently. People naturally make eye contact and want to socialise, this doesn't occur to an autistic.

I'm talking a very young autistic person here. Even HFA autistics may have been like this early in their development.

It's not so much stubborn about change but feeling safe and secure in familiar environments, any change can lead to stress and a meltdown.

We don't see the point in social rules or even have an understanding of what they are.

The frontal lobes (higher thinking area) doesn't work properly so things like working memory, understanding sarcasm, multi-tasking (doing more than one thing at a time - some say it doesn't exist but in autism we're really focused on just one thing at a time), and there are many more different ways of thinking that make us seem odd the NT's.

Thats incredibly profound...though some people with autism start speaking in sentences [as I think I did]. Is it that we learn one thing at a time [in social communication] and find it more difficult for everything to fit together or to take it all in at once. I find when I look over something somebody else is doing I find it a lot easier to finish than doing the same thing myself. [that makes no sense - used to seem like I could read others thoughts (when they are in the same space)]