Persons with autism have some great social skills.

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Due to the nature of my job, I have met numerous people who are on the spectrum. Many of them are entertaining and fun people. Many of them speak their mind so freely and live in the moment. Thus, I feel like I am engaging in authentic and meaningful communication.

Alex Plank reminds me of some these cool individuals. I felt surprised to learn in his Youtube videos that he feels uncomfortable in social situations because he demonstrates so much charisma in the videos. He lacks all pretense and has a terrific sense of humor.

Many of the persons on this website share deep insights into themselves and other people. I feel like many NT people lack these types of insights. In addition, many of NTs seem unable to communicate their insights as clearly as so many people on this website. As a teacher, I know when a person delivers clear explanations and examples of complex ideas.

On a previous, thread, I asked people if they like to play with small children. The majority of people said yes. In my opinion, socializing with children is an extremely intense social activity. Most kids seem to demand high levels of attention when they play.

As a result, I wonder if persons with autism just simply socialize differently. I struggle with the notion that they are socially incompetent for the above reasons.

What do you think? I do not care if I am wrong. I only want to know the truth.

I think the social stuff is actually because most of the people we interact with have a different neurology. I mean, in our interactions with NTs, the NTs fail spectacularly, too. But most of their interactions are with NTs, so they blame it all on us. And most of our interactions are with NTs. So it comes out looking like we fail at interacting because all of our interactions turn out horribly.

It's basically about the differences (not deficits) in communication and perception.

Most of my social problems are because I'm too honest and unaware of the invisible social rules. If I was just free to talk how I wanted to without being laughed out or outcasted then I'd be fine.
Instead I must watch my tongue and try to come up with socially appropriate replies. So most of the time I remain silent.
Also, I don't really know what to say when people have their normal conversations. I need a subject and I need to have a lot of knowledge about that subject. Also, I can't stand it when people say things that aren't true then I get shot down for trying to educate people.

The raving on and on that some aspies do, does drive me nuts. I'm a stoner who goes out five times a week, so I dont have the need to dominate a conversation, which is rude. (I occasionally do start raving but dislike it in myself)

NT's follow a verbal standard, like text and grammar with the written word. Aspes are like incorrect grammar.

Compared to the standard we fail. Homosexuals failed the sexual standard, blacks failed the racial standard, but are now accepted.

It is only a matter of time....

I noticed when I went to an AS support group that many of the Aspies there were talkative and charming, if perhaps slightly offbeat. But I am not one of the charming, talkative ones.

I find that socializing is difficult not because I don't know the rules (I know them more or less), nor because I don't know what to say (though that is a huge issue for me), but because being around people is so disquieting. People's attention is constantly focused, so that interacting with them is like being on the spot, nonstop. It's an incessant dance, and I find it terribly alarming, confusing, and unsettling.

That is what makes socializing so difficult, the fact that there is no off switch on other people, and no time to rest or gather one's thoughts. It's like a truck is bearing down on you the whole time and you have to constantly improvise and think on your feet.

Remember what Alex said in the video about how much maintaining that level of sociability costs him energy-wise.

I can socialise ok with one person. But more than one is difficult for me. Even one is sometimes too many.

I cannot socialise well with kids because I think they are more unpredictable than adullts

Which video was that?

As for socializing, I've built up quite a selection of things that sound like the right thing to say in particular situations, and of course I am capable of improvising (although I don't like it, because it slows me down). I am social, but I do not feel like socializing is an intuitive activity for me. I do come across as fairly social in some situations, or at least I used to.

Oh, and I can't forget impulsive speech (blurting), which can often be tactless. At least I've managed to cut way back on impulsively breaking confidences. I think I tend to underplay this because I hate it so much, but a good chunk of my socializing is just saying the first thing that comes to mind vs. what I can determine is the best possible thing I know to say in that situation. It, again, interferes with my ability to say what I want to say.

I can't verbally communicate my thoughts quite as clearly as in text. The best available option for me is to translate thoughts I've written as text into verbal communication. I don't need to do this for most things, but if I want to discuss things in any depth, I usually do this. In fact, this is precisely how I communicate with my therapist, since I've spent so much time writing introspective things over the past several months.

I don't feel like socializing with children is the same as socializing with adults, much as - as a child - I felt that socializing with adults was easier than socializing with children my own age. There were, honestly, fewer expectations in both cases. It's not that children are okay with you being rude to them, it's more... my communication with children doesn't require me to do much more than listen to them, and say a few relatively simple things. The possible number of responses is much lower and thus less work to figure out.

Last edited by Verdandi on 01 Feb 2011, 7:23 am, edited 2 times in total.

@Verdandi
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt114120.html

Playing with young children isn't anything like socializing with peers. Young children haven't tied themselves up with rules of what is or isn't proper behavior. They simply play. Adults have layers of hidden feelings, unspoken agendas and unwritten rules of interaction that if broken elicit negative reactions.

I don't find Alex Plank charismatic (sorry Alex). He's a bit difficult to listen to. Bit I DO find him interesting, and I rate interesting higher than charismatic. Charisma often hides true intentions.

Yes, but making a video isn't the same as a social situation. A video is a one-way communication, and you can plan it for as long as you like, you can control the whole process, and do re-takes until it's perfect. A real-life social situation has realtime demands - the other people will change the subject of conversation and otherwise trip you up with sudden demands and strange insinuations, and you won't be able to flip your attention quickly enough to keep them sweet.


Again, posting on a website allows plenty of time to focus and to edit. And the lack of clarity of NTs isn't so much of a problem in the NT world, because they don't need everything spelling out to them like we often do. Though I agree that in a place of learning, if the subject matter is complex and needs to be taught rigorously, Aspies have an advantage. I went through a phase where I couldn't understand why so much of my output was scholarly - I suspected that I might be trying to reach back to my early school days when we kids were judged pretty much solely on the quality of our schoolwork.....in those days I was the darling of the school simply because I could talk or write intelligently on pretty much anything on the syllabus. But I guess it wasn't an attempted regress, it was just that I don't know any other way but to create clear explanations of things. It can come as a shock to find that the very skill that boosts your status in an academic environment is just going to get you labelled a nerd if you show it off in mainstream society.


Yes it's intense, but small kids socialise differently to adults, and that's why I think it's easier for us - many of us haven't really dropped the social habits of childhood, so we come over to kids as if we're one of them, while they tend to label NT adults as outsiders or "suits," i.e people who don't really engage in their playful world but push their own bizarre agenda.

It's possible that we're only socially incompetent if you believe the NTs, though I'd like to see an experiment in which Aspies and NTs were put into different groups of 2, 3 and more people....they could measure the social performances of AS-AS, AS-NT and NT-NT, as judged by feedback from the participants, and maybe find out how Aspies do with each other, and compare it to how well NTs do with each other. Just using theory, I can see lots of things that could make the result go either way, and I'd love to know what actually happens.

Such an experiment would surely reveal that AS-AS went better than AS-NT, but in most cases, your Aspies would have spent their early childhoods failing to have the experiences that allow NTs to hone their social skills to the degree that they do. You would only get results as good as NT-NT if you took Aspies who had each had Aspie friends during childhood. And you would have to take into account that Aspies and NTs may describe the same level of satisfaction differently. I notice that I say "it was okay" but people think I mean something really wasn't okay. To them, to describe something neutral, you say "good," which makes absolutely no sense to me. NTs will consistently overrate the successfulness of their encounters. They'll also overrate the tastiness of their food ("it wasn't wonderful," to them, means "it was awful," so apparently "wonderful" means "endurable").

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention you might also get overrating in Aspies who've never interacted with other Aspies before. Off the top of my head, I've seen at least one person post on here describing some interactions and explaining that they're absolutely mind-blowingly incredible because of the huge degree of connection, but the way they described the connection, it's what NTs experience in ALL their interactions with each other.

Thanks.



Yes.



I think so.



I like your post.

Whenever I go out, guys- I don't know if they are hitting on me or what- come up to chat with me. They always seem amused by my frankness and tell me I'm interesting and funny. I DO have a completely different way of behaving in social situations from my friends.

I think, if you have the ability to be sociable and friendly, Aspies can draw people to them no problem. But keeping people there and keeping friends is something I can't seem to work out

I wonder if the coping skills we have to learn in order to interact with NTs would impact the results of this experiment? They could interfere with the initial interaction between the AS-AS group, at least until they realised they could drop the pre tense and be themselves.

I have experienced this connection with other aspies. At the time it made me feel like aspergers isn't a disorder, but a difference, because I didn't feel like I had any social deficits during the interaction. Also, if an NT was there I think they would have found it really difficult (i.e. They would have been the socially impaired). When I'm depressed I try to think back to this encounter, as it gives me hope that if I have experienced it once, I can experience it again.

I never thought about whether I find him charismatic or not. But I've noticed that there's two very different things people tend to mean by charisma:

1. A particular set of excellent social skills that allows someone to charm people at will. This is what it tends to mean when people describe some sociopaths as charismatic. (Though by far most people charismatic in this sense are not at all sociopaths, that's just an example.) This can be a consciously manipulative thing but it can also be there in people who are nice and honest and never manipulative. But definitely a set of social skills anyway. This can take many different forms and be due to a lot of different skills.

2. An attribute that seems to come more from somewhere within a person. It draws people to them and makes people more likely to listen to them. Except it has nothing to do with social skills, manipulation, slickness, nor does it relate at all to those people that everyone looks at and listens to whose every movement is perfectly placed (hard to describe but definitely not what I mean). It's just something within the person. It can have far more to do at times with a sincerity and honest desire to do the right thing or look for the truth. I'm probably describing it all wrong but this has nothing to do with social skills and is pretty much never present in the bad version of the first kind of charisma (though people with the bad version of the first kind do their best to emulate it, and even though people with the second kind are far from infallible and can misuse their charisma without intending to).

Anyway the first kind whether good or bad is a social skill. The second kind is more like an innate trait that has to do with things other than social skills. But sometimes the point of the bad manipulative version of the first kind is to imitate the second. But they're miles apart.

I'm not saying Alex has or doesnt have either one. Just making the point (less for you than for people in general and possibly the OP) that charisma is not always a social skill even when correctly identified.