Social interaction as a special interest?

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Do you think social interaction can be a "special interest"?

So, I've been told (time and time again) that my improvements socially are very atypical for an autistic person. I'm not sure if that's true but I do know some autistic people try hard but just don't seem to be able to overcome some autistic traits. But I am not exactly mildly affected socially if comparing how I started out to autistic children and to the social ability of cognitively challenged children is anything to go by.

My interest in social interaction truly is very intense and it keeps me busy most of my time. It's not like I read any books or get any warm fuzzy feelings thinking about it though. I don't feel obsessed with it and very much enjoy taking lots of breaks. I don't care emotional about a lot of social "achievements" either though I accept that a good social performance here and there can come in handy.

But I do spend so much energy on that to the point that I often end up risk hurting myself over the stress and effort. (Need to learn to stop in-time.) That means it could still be a "special interest"?


I tried asking myself: why exactly am I making such an effort socially?

Well, not for the sake of others people and my emotional relations to people and intuitive feeling of connecting to people are severely impaired. I just can't relate to others that way.

How should I put this? Social interaction is (naturally) very hard for me and things that are very difficult for me capture my interest.

It's like doing super hard puzzles and riddles. It keeps my mind busy and my mind almost automatically starts solving them. If I'm faced with a riddle but try to do something else, my mind wanders off and goes back to the riddle.

If social interaction can be a "special interest" then I guess language has been my special interest before that starting when I was a toddler. People and my inability to really listen to/watch them entertained me anyway because I kept trying and trying to not feel bored. I guess that might explain one aspect of why I started talking and kept on talking when information about my infancy/early childhood supposedly (taking that with "a grain of salt") hints at that people with similar autistic behaviours in early childhood don't start to talk or don't start to talk like me usually.


So, eh, anyone think social interaction can be a interest in which autistic people can be as good as in other special interests due to their autism? Because sensory processing dysfunction, attention to detail and good memory for these very details can be very advantageous in social interaction actually.

Yes. It's a later development for me, and it doesn't come from a purely intellectual standpoint for me. I can see the draw of it being a huge puzzle to solve. I've been reading quite a bit on social interactions now because I've been so withdrawn that I haven't gathered quite as many "puzzle pieces" to get the big picture.
You have to admit, it's a pretty darn useful special interest to have...

This is almost exactly how I feel. I've always had an intense interest in communications of all sorts.
If I'm listening to anyone speak, my mind is automatically (but consciously) and compulsively dissecting their pattern of speech, accent, word choice, etc.

As for social interaction, I still can't understand communications very well in groups but I always have felt obsessed with watching people act, their body language and tone of voice, mostly on an individual basis. I have an EXCELLENT memory for conversations, and any information related to communication, even if I don't understand them or have trouble recreating it, I feel compelled to "collect" all sorts of behavior patterns into little sections of my mind. As time goes on, when I find an explanation for one, I recall the memory and "attach" the meaning to it, get excited for a while, and then move on with whatever it was I was doing or explore the "concept map" of all the memories and collected information about people's behavior.
As for more subtle cues (ones that involve a certain amount of time looking away or at a person) or "implications"... I might as well try to give up trying to understand those things.

Now that I think about it, I've always had intense interests with the things I encounter the most difficulty with. I guess it's a coping method LOL.