Is This True About Aspies?

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In this book I'm reading, it said that Aspies are not that curious about other people and what's going on in their lives so they have to learn to ask questions and 'fake' it. Is this true that Aspies don't have an interest in people and need a motivation to connect with others? I find this hard to believe....

It both is and isn't true. Interest in other people is an individual inclination. The same goes for NTs. I've known plenty of people who just weren't that interested in others...you know, people who just love to hear themselves talk?
Asking questions and "faking" it isn't about being interested or not. It's about not knowing HOW to express interest, or what questions to ask. We do have to LEARN these things, but it's not necessarily because we aren't interested in other people.

What book are you reading?

One of the reasons that AS is so misunderstood is that we don’t all share the same traits. Some people will have A, B, and C, but not D, and others will have A, B, and D but not C.

Ahhhh, yes. there have been people who have complained that that book, while easy to use and more practical than many on the subject, makes too many broad generalizations. Like, "all Aspies do this" or "They never do that". One of the reviews on Amazon.com even mentions that. Diversifying your book collection will give you a more accurate picture, and it seems you're well on your way towards that.

It depends. I have met some really boring people who only want to talk about themselves, and on the most mundane topics; like telling how they got their nails done, or that they went to the gym to work out. OTOH, I have met people who actually have interesting topics of conversation and I find that I don't have to work so hard to show interest.

It would be wrong to say I am incurious about people. But my curiosity proceeds in a very atypical manner.

The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome by Tony Attwood. I can't post the link because I haven't reached 5 posts. It's on Amazon.


This book opened explained a lot about my life. Things that I do/did & never even realized that I was doing them or why. I had never even heard of Asperger's until about a year ago & I'm 25.
It's worth mentioning that it also brought back some bad childhood memories that I haven't recollected in a long time.

An example would be "stimming". One of my earliest memories as a child is me laying in the floor & folding the corner of my pillowcase & rubbing it against my fingertips & the palm of my hand. I've done that all my life. (Usually the bottom of my shirt folded up nowadays....stiffer fabrics & tighter folds provide more stimulation.) I never realized that I did it....I just did it because it felt good & calmed me. My hands are pretty sensitive. My girlfriend will sometimes rub my fingertips & palms with her fingernails to help me get to sleep. I do it with my knife sometimes as well. (Not in a cutting manner.....just a light rubbing motion with the very tip. NO CUTTING INVOLVED, I use VERY light pressure.) Sometimes I'll do it for prolonged periods of time until my hands and/or fingertips go numb.

Yes and no for me. Sometimes I am curious and most of the times I don't even care. If it's about me, then I get curious like I used to ask some people how to they afford to have a baby because I wanted to have one and I wanted to see how low income people afford one and make it. Telling me they have jobs didn't really answer the question because the sort of jobs they had wasn't high wages. I guess they were on food stamps and stuff because they couldn't even tell me how they afford it. I learned at Babycenter that being on any type of assistance is controversial and it's something you should keep quiet about or else you will get judged. So maybe that is why none of those people couldn't tell me about their lives. So I am guessing all those people were on assistance and thought I was going to judge them so they couldn't give me a good answer how they afford their baby.

If you are reading that book, do you have a fairly young child who has been diagnosed with AS?

If so... wouldn't it make sense for you to observe the particular facets of AS that your child has, rather than establishing whether most people here have that facet after reading about it in a book? The same applies if it isn't your child, but a friend or family member or student or collegue...

Books can be good at explaining things, but you should look for things in the person before finding them in the book, not looking for them in the book before checking if they apply to the person