Tertiary ASD 'Traits'

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I see a lot of what are considered 'tertiary traits' regarding ASDs. These examples should indicate what I mean by these tertiary traits:

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1. Listening to the same song over and over, or on repeat for lengthy periods of time (up to days)
2. Difficulty recognizing faces (Not prosopagnosia)
3. Not knowing what to say
4. Disliking people that arrive uninvited at your house
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Those traits are examples of characteristics far too often overfilled into a diagnosis of ASD. I'll briefly position those traits above.

For clarity:

1. Lots of people do this, and it is much more a human trait than related to ASD or even autistic-like traits.
2. Again, many people struggle to recognize faces, which differs from extreme difficulty or inability in recognizing loved ones, or well known friends/acquaintances by their faces.
3. Introverts typically do not know what to say, hence why some people are labelled 'awkward'. The general statement is far too vague. It must be extrapolated.
4. No one likes this, the emoticon '-.-' represents how I feel about that statement.

Tests with such questions vortex in outliers who may have traits that just slightly resemble ASD. Statements without detail such as those are completely useless and misleading.

If you don't know what to say because you're socially inexperienced or naturally inept, that's completely different to freezing up when required to respond to a social demand that is outside routine expectations.

Thoughts?

_________________
Unapologetically, Norny.
-chronically drunk

People showing up unexpectedly, does it cause distress and meltdowns for everyone? Does everyone avoid answering the door? I know some none ASDs do when it's someone they want to avoid such as a solicitor. As a child I would sometimes see people peek through their windows first before answering the door and some look through the peep hole on the door. Again normal behavior here.

You say that listening to a song over and over is just a human trait, but when I come across someone who does this they will listen to the song no more than a couple of times per session. The problem I have is that I've done something like this since the age of 9 and I don't just do it with music but I also did it with a few films in which I will often use the A-B Repeat feature.

I have no idea why I do this or why I even do it to music too, but when this happens it sometimes stops me from doing other things which speaks obsessive compulsive... which is a a trait of autism.

I think it's normal and human and not exclusively ASD to be slightly annoyed and also check out who's at the door if someone is there unexpectedly, via the peephole, a window, etc.

But the difference may lie in the other accompanying feelings. A non-spectrum person -- with all things being equal, ie: not scared of a bill collector/not in debt/not a criminal/not in trouble/not running from the law etc -- will be fairly breezy, calm, and even curious in a good way, as to who this may be at the door.

In contrast a spectrum person, again with none of the above qualifiers such as being in some kind of trouble, will react not with breezy curiosity but instead anything from annoyance from the interruption, to outright fear and panic and increased heartrate, and may not even want to open the door.

1. I've been listening to various Rolling Stones and Animals records repeatedly for the last few days. Actually, come to think of it, I do this fairly frequently. Especially since I discovered YouTube. I also like to repeatedly listen to old radio broadcasts from the 1960s--especially WABC AM in New York City.

2. I have difficulty recognizing people, especially when I seem them out of their usual context (e.g., whenever I see a person in street clothes, I tend not to recognize that person if the person is usually in uniform in my presence. I recognize the person right away whenever he/she is in uniform).

3. I'm much better these days; but when I was younger, I usually had trouble knowing what to say when confronted suddenly by someone.

4. I do not like people to come to my home unannounced--period. I value my "alone time" very much.


Are these related to my Asperger's? They might be. They might not be. These features are certainly "odd," though.

Even when someone is autistic, there is much more about them that they have in common with the rest of humanity, than there is that's different.

So, yes, many things we do are things that are just plain human traits--things like worrying what people think of us, needing time to relax, becoming uncomfortable with some sensory experiences, or not getting the implied meaning in a sentence.

But some of those traits are much stronger in autistic people than in typical people. A typical person might be disgusted by the smell of a gas station restroom; an autistic person might have a reaction of the same degree to the smell of lavender hand lotion.

It sounds odd to say, but most autistic traits can actually be found in the general population. What makes autism different is that these traits are present all together, in the same person, and much stronger than they usually are, to the degree that they cause disability. Autism actually isn't some alien experience that nobody can relate to; it is more like some parts of the normal human experience have been taken to extremes, far enough that they cause a significant change in the way we think and act.

Sometimes I have a little trouble recognizing faces. Not all the time though. So you mean this is normal?

It just gets annoying like the time when I thought the old lady who comes to church and the community center was two different people or the time at work when they told me to go and see someone in their office and I couldn't remember who they were so I ended up in the wrong office and that time when I got bullied by every one in year 7 so I lashed out at a random girl and she looked hurt and said she was the only one who'd been standing up for me and I thought "Was she? Who is she?"

Stuff like that happened a lot at a school. In the first few years I could tell apart all 30 in my class (except for the identical twins) but something happened. On the first day of year 5 I realized I could only recognize three people in class.

I forget people. But people always recognize me, I'm too strange to forget.

Yes, these are tertiary personality traits or preferences commonly found in general population.
They are not core traits of ASD.

Prosopagnosia is something I never developed. I can always remember a face and the kind of person they are, though I have a harder time with names. It doesn't matter if their hair or clothing changes I can still recognize them, with a few exceptions.

It seems that I group people together on the basis of facial characteristics and I use deduction to find out what person in that group it is. There are times where I've had mistaken someone for someone else because I put the person into that same group.

Yup. Men are easier. And everyday people are easier than movie stars, because movie stars all have that same, regular-featured prettiness about them.

Prosopagnosia isn't a big thing if you can work around it, as most faceblind people do. It's common on the spectrum, though, and more easily handled if you're aware of it. Not that you have to know it's called faceblindness or anything; just being aware that you're not too good at remembering faces will do it just fine.

I recognize people most easily by voice and body movement. Distinctive physical features are helpful, of course, but not an absolute necessity. Unfortunately, sometimes when I don't make an effort, everybody becomes kind of interchangeable to me and I treat them as kind of a "generic human". I really shouldn't do that; people are individuals and I'm bound to embarrass myself eventually. But I'm lazy, so I do it anyway. I think if people knew, "I didn't know your name because I couldn't be bothered to memorize your face and voice and smell and gestures so I could remember you later on," they'd probably be kind of annoyed with me.

Yeah. My main method of coping is to just conduct all conversations without referring to people by name. I've gotten so used to it that I don't even refer to people by name when I know their name. It's more common for people to not remember names than faces and that can happen to me too. Often I'll just forget their name instead of their face and their entire existence. When that happens I have to come up with insulting nicknames inside my head to keep track of them all.

The only reason I know the names of half the people at work is because they all have their names written on iChat. The other half look too similar. Once in a while I come across someone who looks or acts so strange that I don't have to make any effort at all to remember them. I suspect people feel that way about me. The most mysterious thing is, as I mentioned before I could remember large groups of people, including their names and faces very easily during childhood and this vanished very suddenly when I was ten. I think this could be because it's semi common for children to have an eidetic memory that fades as they grow older.