Adrian Morgan wrote:
> If your experience is that asperger's people don't usually
> understand humanity as such, then your experience is with
> the severe end of the spectrum, not the typical.
Yes, I suppose that's true. In any event I should have said
"start off without a clue" rather than broadly "don't have a clue".
> That's typically how an asperger's person starts off, but
> we typically do learn, piece by piece, how to interact
> with the social complexity that is the human race.
I also had to learn this.
> There *are* things that I can't do naturally. For example I
> _cannot_ fake a smile for a camera,
Check the 'net under "Duchesne smile"; there's probably some
information on what facial contortion you need to assume to make a
convincing smile (it's not obvious, nor what people generally
believe constitutes a smile). I only learned how to smile on
demand a few years ago.
> However, the world is full of people with the same
> difficulties who are not sufferers from any disorder. They
> are typically described simply as "not the social type".
> They interact with the world in ways that are a little
> eccentric but which avoid those areas they find troublesome.
> Most of them have relatively few friends in total but are
> very sincere about the friendships they have.
This is me all over, and indeed I suspect it characterizes
a lot of us here on Conlang. OTOH I never had any of the OCD stuff.
> There's a myth that asperger's people typically "take things
> literally". That's a half-truth. Better to say that
> "asperger's people typically do not respond to the same cues
> as other people when deciding whether a statement is meant
> literally or not.
I still fall all over this one quite often.
--
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)