Classic autism and talking.

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I know someone with a diagnosis of classic autism who seems moderate-to-high functioning. Can a person with classic autism talk a lot about their favourite topics? Or does classic autism mean that you don't really talk much or at all? Just wondering about this person as this peron can be quite talkative, but only about science or their past experiences.

Interesting question I have classic autism, couldn't speak until 4. I sort of hate spoken language and inside my thoughts are in shapes and patterns, movement and pictures. There's really no words in there - I have to make the words when I want to say what I'm thinking about. If I pay attention I can literally see each word go by as a picture. I could happily chat away about my favorite subjects, but speaking takes so much energy. Especially if I have to follow the other person's line of thought, watch their body language and tone of voice, and even more so in a social setting. I started to learn American sign language when I was still mute and I really *love* signing - it is so much more expressive for me than making mouth-nose-tongue breathy sounds, lol. Most folks describe me as quiet, gentle, and good-natured. I learn so much talking to people and I treasure the opportunities I get, but they drain my energy too. I don't know if it's the same for our Aspie brothers and sisters.

I have classic autism too. I tend to only talk about science, if I do talk, and I never do small talk or social chit chat. I have started blogging as I find typing a LOT easier than talking. Like you, talking takes extreme amounts of energy. I am trying to start using AAC but it's not well accepted by people around me.

I also feel freely comfortable discussing engineering, math and the hard sciences in general. I can actually do pleasant small-talk really well but only briefly - after a few minutes I think people start to notice that I get strained by it. It's like trying to operate a mannequin with controls for the eyes, mouth, posture, head angle, verbal intonation, word connotations, while simultaneously sending and receiving encoded messages and pretending to chuckle at the same things as the speaker and to be somber or angry if the group around you decides to go that way in conversation.
I'm in a support group for people with ASD and I find the verbal nature of the communication is an obstruction (although may be necessary in the short run). But the level of identification and understanding is wonderful anyway.
One funny thing about language - I got exposed to German in a truly wonderful program for kids with, dev disorders when I was between 3-4 yrs old. Then at 4 I got pulled from the program and only English was spoken to me under awful circumstances and I was eventually mainstreamed which truly sucked with my kind of autism. I definitely feel better about German, like English was this monkey-speech forced on me by impatient, angry parents and plastic learning machines, rewards and punishments that had no meaning to me. Then it was the language I had to respond to when I was mainstreamed into public elementary school. And better respond right, or risk getting called names or hit or kicked. Unfortunately the inability to communicate the same way as an NT - instead of motivating people to work harder on mutual understanding (like in.some ideal world), it most often seems to lead them to try to correct me or they get frustrated with the communication and move on. Basically that leaves me isolated. I need to cop to some old, deep resentments about having language forced on me I guess. I was not a happy baby, lol, and I remember.

I'm curious - what is AAC?

Verbal people with classic autism can talk as much as anyone else who is verbal.
I don't enjoy talking, but I can talk when needed.
I have problems listening to others, it is hard to understand what they are talking about often.
I would never use aac myself, because it is too slow to communicate things.

It's a communication device, it's like a computer but it has a bunch of pictures on it with words or letters and it's like a keyboard on screen. I had to look it up in google images to know what it is because I could never picture it so I had no idea what it was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmentative_and_alternative_communication

To be honest I'm beginning to change my mind about AAC as btbnnyr said it is too slow, and my thoughts / mental processes are very fast due to high IQ. I'm going to ask my support worker to help me out with verbal communication so that I can produce speech with less difficulty.

One method that I use is to say short phrases and draw pictures while saying things.
This is both speedy and good for communicating science ideas, which is most of what I need to communicate.

That is a very sensible idea. I will try that. Although I am dysgraphic so there may be difficulty.