My list of Asperger symptoms

I have taken this list and filtered my own symptoms out:

poor communication:

• overformal speech: academic, strictly structured speech. The structure is always the same. As if we were using a given pattern.
• speaking without any pitch or tone: monotonous and hard to listen to across a long period of time. Plus, Aspergers tend to explain everything in detail, giving very long speeches.
• inappropriate remarks: The uttering of inappropriate comments or questions can be a serious problem. Sometimes the remarks are inappropriate to the setting. Sometimes the comments are sexually inappropriate. In any case, the remarks or questions do not take into account the impact on the other individual involved. For example, Conner was attending a funeral. Oblivious to the impact his question would have on the grieving friends and relatives, he wondered out loud about the process of bodies decomposing. In another example, Mike found himself attracted to a young woman and proceeded to stare at her. When she asked him what he wanted, he told her in sexually explicit details what he was staring at and the specific nature of his interest. source

non-verbal communication problems:

• few facial expression: inability to express one’s feelings and to adapt it to the expectations of other people. e.g. smiling at funeral. It also gives a boring look and makes us appear dumb.
• unaware of unwritten social rules: contradicting the boss, flirting at funerals, involuntary provocation.

impaired social interaction:

• Social withdrawal : Unlike the severe withdrawal from the rest of the world that is characteristic of autism, children with Asperger syndrome are isolated because of their poor social skills and narrow interests. Children with the disorder will gather enormous amounts of factual information about their favorite subject and will talk incessantly about it, but the conversation may seem like a random collection of facts or statistics, with no point or conclusion. They may approach other people, but make normal conversation difficult by eccentric behaviors or by wanting only to talk about their singular interest. source
• In my case, I feel squeezed when others are around.
• Eccentric personality: Many people with Asperger’s appear to be “nerds” or “geeks.” Kind people might call us “eccentric.” Socially, we must learn by rote what your average person picks up by instinct, such as the interpretation of facial expressions, other’s emotions, or social overtures. source
• Preoccupied with their own agenda
• Socially non-adapted personality
• limited interests: one or two
• repetitive routines and rituals: i am constantly drinking water at work.
• lack of empathy at short distance. Much empathy for fictional characters.
• for an interesting view on the real empathy in Aspies, read this article.

• extract: “When an aspie is listening/concentrating or deliberately trying to be emphatic, they achieve a level of empathy well beyond what neurotypical people experience.For example, when watching a movie, I find myself emoting with the characters to a huge degree, even when they’re CGI, Cartoons or fluffy muppets. I can’t help it. Often when I’m explaining things[…], I’ll get a lump in my throat[…].” signed

• “Aspies don’t lack empathy, we have oodles of it and not just the human kind either. If an aspie has trouble understanding your emotional state it’s probably because it’s not visible enough for them to start looking deeper.”

Not to be found on the link:

poor organization skills:

• no multi-tasking skill
• disastrous short-term memory
• fails to realize the real impact of future changes

Why many Aspergers love videogames

Friends (Photo credit: L Lemos)

We need distance to feel proximity. Thus, we can feel better for people who are distant from us, and characters in videogames are distant. I have also noticed that I have better empathy for people displayed by drawings and pictures than for people in videos or close-by.

Distance and abstraction allow us to be close.

You may actually try to use instant messengers or email to communicate with Aspergers.

This article discusses how video games can help autists improve their social skills while they stay within their comfort zone.

This includes games written directly for autists:

one interactive computer program called FaceSay has been shown to improve the ability of kids with autism spectrum disorders to recognize faces, facial expressions, and emotions. Created by Symbionica LLC, the game teaches kids where to look for facial cues and helps them practice recognizing the expressions of an avatar, or virtual representation of a person.

Some experts deny the efficiency:

 experts question the effectiveness of these games and express concern that young Aspergers kids who are already socially awkward may become dependent on Internet social networking and virtual interaction and never apply the skills in real life.

Wendy Stone, a pediatrics professor at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital says:

What we would hope to see is that what these individuals are learning will help them understand social situations, feelings of others, their own motivation and will help them negotiate real life social situations. You don’t want them to just be able to interact via a computer.

The problem of distorted social interaction:

Aaron McGinley, summer camp program manager at Talisman, a North Carolina program offering summer camps and semester-length programs for kids ages 8 to 21 with learning disabilities, ADD and ADHD, Aspergers, and high-functioning autism says:

When you have anonymity, people act in a different way than when they must take personal and immediate accountability for their words and actions

I know this from myself when I’m chatting and writing in online forums. This also applies to NTs though.

Another perk of gaming is the highly-important predictability, a crucial condition for many autists.

Aaron McGinley says further:

While social conversations in real life are highly complex and unpredictable, online gamers share a common and simple language for communicating.

For example, since most online interaction occurs through typing, there is time to think about a response, and the response can be given in symbols and phrases without regard for facial expressions or nonverbal cue

The problem: inappropriate language for real life situations, still McGinley:

Online, it may be considered acceptable or even funny to make cross remarks, curse at people, or ignore someone’s effort to make contact. But if you go to basketball practice and make fun of someone’s mom, there’s no doubt you’ll get a different response.

 

Now we come to useful advice for parents:

When it comes to video games, moms & dads of a youngster with Aspergers are faced with a dilemma: Do you limit your youngster’s time spent doing the activities that interest him most and run the risk that he will withdraw even more, or do you allow your youngster unfettered access to video games despite the obvious social repercussions?

McGinley recommends:

to find the balance between accepting their youngster’s unique interests, and encouraging their youngster to develop social skills and additional interests that might take them outside of their comfort zone.

I could foresee this answer. I wished he could give more profound advice. Still, the article says further that:

He[McGinley] also advises moms & dads to offer incentives to their youngster to balance their time spent focused on gaming and time spent doing social activities.

How to find real help in form of specialized programs:

Fortunately, there are programs across the country tailored specifically to improving social and academic functioning in kids with learning disabilities, ADD and ADHD, Aspergers, and other autism spectrum disorders.

Talisman summer camps, for example, have helped countless kids ages 8 to 17 who have been diagnosed with special needs. With a highly structured daily schedule, a small staff-to-camper ratio, an emphasis on personal accountability, and plenty of fun and adventure, Talisman camps have been a first choice of families since 1980.

For families that need more long-term assistance for their special needs youngster, Talisman operates an academic semester-long program called Southeast Journeys for adolescents ages 13 to 17. Based out of Zirconia, N.C., Southeast Journeys offers students who may have struggled in more traditional environments the opportunity to excel academically and socially through hands-on experiential learning trips and a small group environment. Using insight-oriented individual and group discussions, students learn communication and problem-solving skills, budgeting, scheduling, healthy living, conflict resolution, and personal responsibility.

Finally, a  note of hope to conclude this article:

Helping your youngster with Aspergers achieve his full potential is a highly realistic and attainable goal. With the help of programs that specialize in working with kids with special needs, your youngster can grow and thrive not only in the virtual world, but also in the real world.

Why Aspergers refuse communication

Telephone (Photo credit: plenty.r.)

We are introverted head people. We have a copy of our outer world (where you strangers are) in our mind. On this level, we communicate in thoughts. We have thus imaginary friendships with people with whom we actually seldom talk. We hardly notice our own silence and forget to balance it. We can in fact become frustrated because the other person does not react to our imaginary relationship, and then we cancel it.

Now if we get asked a question, the transfer between the outworld (question) and the inner world (answer) does not work. Our knowledge gets either faded out like a shadow which gets struck by a light beam or communication does not feel adequate because the person outside does not correspond enough to our copy on the inside, making trust insufficient.

The essential point is the difference between our inner world and the outer world. We cannot hardly hold them up together. Have you seen the movie RainMan? Everytime the autistic Raymond gets asked an “ordinary” question, he replies : “I don’t know.” I recognize that from myself. I don’t know the answer because the transfer does not work.

How can I communicate with an Asperger then?

I don’t have a patent recipe, yet you could invite this person to have a (private) blog to write things down, like this blog here, and then ask for permission to read the blog.

Golden Rule: Don’t ever criticize the writing! Be thankful for the trust and opportunity to learn.

As we look for reasons for the problem, let’s take this article from http://www.autism-help.org/:

In short, this article discusses communication and education issues.

In low-functioning autism, we have the case of people of remain silent during their entire life. Others learn to communicate with cards and similar support. Still, they don’t learn how to talk or type.

In high-functioning autism, that is Asperger, we have no problems with speaking. Rather, it’s the other way round, we are often academic-like talkers, very abstract, very cold way of talking. No chit-chat possible.

I was totally in this case. I only recently learning how to write the way I’m writing right now. And it’s still academic. I expressed myself in an enormously complex way during my teen years, and found it natural. I actually doubted on my intelligence and believed I still had to be more abstract.

Now what causes language problems in autists?

The causes of speech and language problems in Autism Spectrum Disorders are still unknown, though experts believe that the difficulties are caused by a variety of conditions that occur either before, during, or after birth affecting brain development. The individual’s ability to interpret and interact with the world is affected, and some scientists tie the communication problems to a theory of mind or impaired ability to think about thoughts or imagine another individual’s state of mind. Associated with this inability to see another’s point of view is an impaired ability to symbolize, both when trying to communicate and in play.

So our communication problem is said to be linked to our overall problem to interpret and interact with the world. We cannot understand other people’s positions and thus fail to interact.

Don’t you expect the cashier to ask you for money in the shop? Of course you do. Well, autist may not, which can lead them to refuse paying. Maybe they just want to make sure their money goes to the correct person and they don’t trust the cashier to be that person.

A really interesting idea is this one:

In some cases, sensory problems can mean children are so sensitive to touch that they may find the feeling of their own tongue, teeth, lips touching each other to be unpleasant so they may not move their mouths much, or avoid talking completely.

Wow, I hadn’t thought of that possibility! It’s a great one.

Next comes our problem with body-language:

Sometimes, the body language of people with autism can be difficult for other people to understand. Facial expressions, movements, and gestures may be easily understood by some other people with autism, but do not match those used by other people. Also, their tone of voice has a much more subtle inflection in reflecting their feelings, and the auditory system of a person without autism often cannot sense the fluctuations. What seems to non-autistic people like odd prosody; things like a high-pitched, sing-song, or flat, robot-like voice may be common in autistic children and some will have combinations of these prosody issues. Some autistic children with relatively good language skills speak like little adults, rather than communicating at their current age level, which is one of the things that can lead to problems.

I know the robot voice from myself. I hate my voice, therefore I’m now doing voice training against it. I actually started singing to get rid of my voice.

You will find plenty of information in this article. I will stop here.