NT social interaction thought process

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I'm reasonably sure that the level of conscious thought that goes into my social interaction - not so much with people I am very comfortable with, but strangers and mild acquaintances - is not typical. But I can't be sure, because I can't find anywhere that details such a thing for NTs - not a theoretical, academic paper, but more of an inner monologue transcript. Do any of you know what I'm talking about and have any relevant links/insight?

I don't really.

All I have to go on is the literature, my own experience, and what others with Autism have said about themselves. That and the fact that I've never heard anyone NT ever explain the "process" they use to do the same things, and the weird looks I get if I ask them how they do it, as if they've never really had to think about it.

It's that last thing that's the give-away for me. They all seem to just "do it" and the very thought of having to process any of it seems so foreign, or "other-worldly" to them.

Guess that's why we call this "Wrong Planet."

They don't have to think about it even for strangers?

I think they don't think about it.

When I was considering approaching my GP for a referral for a diagnosis, I wrote to someone who knows me, and is very good with people and also has some knowledge of ASDs and a lot of knowledge of mental health issues and mentioned my suspicion.

He told me he wasn't surprised at all. I asked him why and he said he hadn't really thought it about ... it just seemed likely to him ... but that after thinking about it for some time he said the real key for him was my "unusually conscious and constructed interaction with others" He went on to say that most people just do it naturally, even when they're shy and somewhat hesitant, but there was a different quality to my interaction that he had seen in other folk with ASDs but nowhere else.

I'm pretty sure that NTs don't think about the everyday social interactions, even with strangers. I've asked many people around me, and they all tell me that they don't think about these things, consciously and on purpose. They do have to think about more complicated scenarios involving multiple people, such as who likes who, is trying to make who look good or bad, is trying to please who, is trying to backstab who, etc, etc, etc. None of the people I asked could describe their thought processes. They just told me that whatever they knew or did was the one and only right thing that everyone knew about and did that way.

They don't think about it, it's pre-conscious. Try some oxytocin and find out for yourself.

http://www.unitedpharmacies.co.uk/produ ... ductid=958

[I am speaking for myself, not for all NTs]

The thought process is not about how to conduct the social interaction. That part is subconscious. The conscious part when interacting with a stranger is in trying to figure out how to classify them. Are they a threat? (mugger, scammer) Are they just looking for some small talk? Are they somebody I will get to know more later, such as a new co-worker I've just been introduced to? Once the stranger has been categorized, subconscious subroutines take over. The only conscious part is the categorization.

If I made an example inner monologue for you, it would be initially all about the categorization process if the person is a stranger. ("Is this guy trying to sell me something? Is he trying to pick my pocket? Or is he just making small talk?") I can't give you an inner monologue transcript for how I decide what I'm going to say (once I have categorized the person) because there isn't one. I just say what I say and do what I do. In another thread, a poster theorized that some of his difficulty in communicating with NTs comes from the time delay in doing consciously what NTs do unconsciously. Doing something consciously takes more time and therefore there is a lack of synchronization between the person doing something consciously and the person doing it subconsciously. NTs have inner monologues, but they aren't about the specifics of how to coordinate a conversation. They may be entirely unrelated to the conversation. I can be having a conversation with some random person but the inner monologue is about what time the next bus is due to arrive. OPr something else unrelated.

Last edited by Janissy on 08 Nov 2011, 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

For the most part, no, I don't think they do. Not consciously anyway, and that's the main difference. For them it seems to mostly be subconscious. For us, it's mostly conscious processing.

But I couldn't point you to any specific documentation that proves it. I don't know for sure that there isn't any, but there may not be. Something like that might be so widely accepted as truth, because it is so for the vast majority, it may be that one one has ever considered it necessary to prove.

I looked this over. How would a pregnancy-inducing hormone make someone pre-conscious about their interactions with others? Or...are you comparing it as people that need to take this are in a sense, how Aspergers minds work, and we need medication to work as they do? I'm confused. =(

There is a vast systematization of organizing "strangers" into some predictable box. Say, in the context of body language, a neighbor knocks at my door, and has a slip of paper in hand. I think "petition" or he found something I dropped or a notice for me was put in his mail box. But he has a serious look of business about him, and it is indeed a petition and not something I lost.

Or if a parent and their kid knocks holding a bag, with the parent standing in the background, I know it is some fundraiser and is likely school related. They didn't come over to invite us for a BBQ dinner.

This is something you accurately sense. It is coupling the non verbal language and experience with people, to 'feel' the intent.

The non-verbal is the movements of body, eyes, where the hands are, etc, and is something that is tagged subconsciously, much how we learn to speak. No one has to teach us how to speak.

Last edited by Mdyar on 09 Nov 2011, 12:30 am, edited 2 times in total.

Oxytocin promotes the pre-conscious in-group chauvinism that determines NT social interaction (I've tried it, it does.) Google current research on it and you'll see a lot of people saying it promotes empathy, a few wanting to try it with autistics, and a handful warning that it causes hostility under certain circumstances they haven't fully worked out (because it's hard to analyse herding instincts when you're a cow). In 5-10 years some genius will put the pieces together and realise what I wrote in my first sentence, i.e. that NT 'empathy' is precisely the same biological mechanism that causes them to abuse outsiders.

You see, we know a lot more about NTs than they know about us.

You hope. It's also the process that gets NTs manipulated by psychopaths or anyone else who knows how to game the system. The fact it's pre-conscious makes it very hard to update with new information that doesn't come via the oxytocin-regulated channels, such as a friendly autistic saying "You're being played."

My NT daughter has been telling me since she was about twelve (she'll be 37 in a couple of weeks) that I was doing it wrong after practically every interaction (especially with strangers) at which she was present. When she was a teenager, I just put it down to what _everyone_ says about kids in that early-separation stage, that _everything_ their parents do embarrasses them. When she kept it up in her twenties, I had an idea that she was developmentally mildly delayed. After she got the Mental Health Center to see to my diagnosis (she was sure of it herself, but not qualified to "diagnose" me) I've been paying more attention to her social judgments....

I talked to my NT friend who has bipolar so we relate in having disabilities. And from another NT friend, there's little to no thought involved even with interactions between people they dont know. I work at the market, I watch the checkers all the time, there is no thought that really goes into the interactions. They just have their basic scripts for people they don't know and those they know they catch up with whats going on.

That's the biggest difference between aspies and NTs. Aspies need to put thought into social interaction and NTs dont put thought. With NTs, it just flows. With aspies, we use rigid scripts to make sure we satisfy the expected of social communication. I personally don't use scripts as much because it used to make me nervous and you start fumbling over your words.

Let me give you some examples of conscious thought processes I have during social interactions that I would not expect most people do:

* "Is it ok for me to say hello to this person? We are colleagues but we have no rapport. I can't think of a rational reason why it shouldn't be ok but people are inscrutable..."
* "Where should I stand so that I can get this person's attention when they are finished their current conversation?"
* "Is this conversation about to end? At the end of this sentence I'm going to say '..."
* "Can I touch this person to get their attention or is that violation?"
* "Staring too long, look away"
* person I don't know says hello "Why are they saying hello to me? Oh wait, better reciprocate"
* person I don't know asks how I am "Do I give the standard answer to make this end now or do I give them the real answer?"
* "Am I going to suffer worse from correcting this person's error which I think is significant but I'm not sure if everyone else agrees it is, or from stressing about letting the error persist?"

I do the same, basically all the time, often evaluating multiple scenarios and how I'll respond to each of them.

If I'm distracted (by thinking about the next bus for example) and stop considering how I'll deal with the social interaction, I usually end up freezing briefly while I mentally try to catch up to where the interaction is and then decide how to respond.

In my experience, most NT's seem to have very predictable responses to social interaction, it's just that they don't think about it, it just happens.