[links.Autism Spectrum]

[wispfox]

Via conuly, Girls' autism 'under-diagnosed'.

"Hyperactivity, and interests in technical hobbies have been seen as characteristics of the disorder.

But Christopher Gillberg, of the National Centre of Autism Studies, said girls were often passive and collected information on people, not things."


*pauses*


"collected information on people, not things." A-yup. My fascination, once I was in school and saw the need, was with people, and social interaction and trying to understand why the hell people did the things often very strange things they did. My fascination is with minds and social interaction and such, not machines.

I'm an awful lot less likely to be watching from the outside now, although sometimes I still do. Almost certainly due to the large number of people I know now whose behavior makes more sense to me, so is less likely to cause me to be distant while trying to figure things out. Instead, my investigations into friends' minds are part of my interaction with them.

Heh.

Comments

[ayalanya.livejournal.com]

fascinating! i actually tend to find myself wanting to collect information on both people and things, and sometimes much more interested in things, but then i think i'm slightly more male-minded than female-minded.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Obsessively collecting, or just collecting?

I think collecting information is normal for humans.

I think obsessively collecting information is one of the AS hallmarks. I can't remember, though.

[ayalanya.livejournal.com]

depends. i can't currently think of anything i'm currently obsessively collecting info on, but i'm more used to that happening with things rather than people. on the other hand, that may be because i'm lumping people together as one thing to collect info on - i think there may be more actual instances of obsessive collection with individual people...

huh. i dunno!

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I think this sort of thing is on a huge and convoluted spectrum. Many folks I know, especially geeky folks, have some sort of collecting or categorizing or information-confusing or other autism-type behavior or thought processes going on. Some of us somehow cross that line into "autism," some are just eccentric or geeky. It gets in the way of functionality around people with some folks, not others. It's a very tangly and multiply related web, more than a straight line continuum.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I think this sort of thing is on a huge and convoluted spectrum.

Yes... but I note that so is autism. Is why I tend to say 'autism spectrum', rather than simply autism. _not_ that I'm trying to imply that the entire spectrum of people who have autistic-seeming behaviors are necessarily on the spectrum, mind.

It gets in the way of functionality around people with some folks, not others.

Yes, but I note that - from what I understand - this is also true of the autism spectrum. Namely, functionality around other people with similar behaviors (ie, others on the spectrum) is going to be significantly higher than with those who are not, unless perhaps those who are not are sufficiently familiar with and comfortable with the subset of people who behave that way. For example, I suspect that much of the poly boston crowd is accustomed to that kind of behavior, regardless of whether or not that kind of behavior is natural to each individual person or not.

It often feels to me like a language-based thing; those who 'speak' autism and those who don't, regardless of if it's natural to them or not. *shrug*

Thingy. This is, of course, all speculation and based on stuff I've seen or experienced, rather than research.