Reading specific 'social' situations better than most other people?

[kenaij]

I was wondering if anyone here can relate to this.
I was reading an article about how ADHD and Autism have overlapping characteristics and where they are different.
This article was also about the social difficulty differences. Where most people with autism usually have somewhat more of a problem reading social cue's intuitively. It explains that some can still do it, but instead use their prefrontal cortex and analytical skills to do so.
Which got me thinking that I feel like it do this. I seem to be able to read specific social cue's pretty well. But I feel like I do it with logic instead of intuition.
This sometimes brings forth situation in which neurotypical people miss certain signs when I do see them.
This often happens when I have a bad feeling about a person. I analyse their behaviour and specific things they do, and what and how they say them.
I string those things together to 'feel' that something is wrong.
Most of the time I turn out to be right. But people around me seem surprised about me being right.
They seem to have missed all the cues that I saw.

Anyone who can relate?

 

[Misty Avich]

How do we know whether we're analysing social cues logically or intuitively? I've never really thought about it til I read this thread.

 

[Hypnalis]

@kenaij

Here's the way I look at it:

* Given enough time and repetitions of something, it becomes effectively automatic.
* Quite young children put a lot of effort into learning all forms of human communication. Except for Aspies, who aren't interested in the full range of communication - mostly just speech.
* Much later, even articulate Aspies have to learn a certain amount of indirect and non-verbal communication

There's also good evidence that there is a temporary capability in childrens' brains to help them learn spoken language. And maybe other forms of human communication.

So we spend a lot of effort developing and using our "masks", while NT's have most of it locked in and "autonomic" by the time we start developing ours. Naturally it takes much more mental effort for us to use those skills than for NT's - and for a long time we're not as good at it. Given time, I suspect the effort to use our masks goes down. That's certainly true for me, but a sample size of 1 can't be used to establish a general rule

There's one interesting side-effect that you noted - each Aspie mask is more specific to the individual than an NT's, because we have to custom-develop much of the part that NT's get as a standard package from family, school, and "society as a whole".

So we may be worse at some things than they are, but we may have different ways to achieve the same results, and some (just a few) social abilities they don't have at all.

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

I was wondering if anyone here can relate to this.
I was reading an article about how ADHD and Autism have overlapping characteristics and where they are different.
This article was also about the social difficulty differences. Where most people with autism usually have somewhat more of a problem reading social cue's intuitively. It explains that some can still do it, but instead use their prefrontal cortex and analytical skills to do so.
Which got me thinking that I feel like it do this. I seem to be able to read specific social cue's pretty well. But I feel like I do it with logic instead of intuition.
This sometimes brings forth situation in which neurotypical people miss certain signs when I do see them.
This often happens when I have a bad feeling about a person. I analyse their behaviour and specific things they do, and what and how they say them.
I string those things together to 'feel' that something is wrong.
Most of the time I turn out to be right. But people around me seem surprised about me being right.
They seem to have missed all the cues that I saw.

Anyone who can relate?

I am not sure I am autistic because I am undiagnosed
But I can read people quite well.
Like I can pick up basic emotions and sometimes energies.
I really believe I have this because I am an autistic super empath.
But the down side is I burn out easy.
And I cannot always understand others on a intrapersonal or different levels or find it easy to understand different beliefs in the sense I often think people think similar or also should think similar and often I hate taking about opinions because of this because I think my opinion is right.
The other down side is I cannot stand conflict and always try to keep the peace but if someone really upsets me or someone more prone to narcissistic qualities or selfish tendency I will not find it easy to get along with unless they are kind and gentle and love me for me.
But often I am so gentle and kind, it can be all giving no receiving the same back.ls
I cannot just give it up because I am either nice or mean or in between and I do not even know how to be mean to someone unless they provoke me and prefer to just try to keep peace.
I like my shade of light blue and a almost a lemon yellow, sort of a sort yellow because I feel those make me feel mellow but often it can lead to burn out
I do have off days where I am more irritable
But I just prefer to keep peace, I do not even know how to be irritable with someone, sometimes I snap
For some autistics they may just have irritable and off days then they might say I do not like talking much today or feel off let me rest in my room or just respect my mood.
But I guess I suffer in the end because I struggle saying that.
I just want to be nice to keep peace.
I often like faces and auras instead of words because words can get exhausting.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I was wondering if anyone here can relate to this.
I was reading an article about how ADHD and Autism have overlapping characteristics and where they are different.
This article was also about the social difficulty differences. Where most people with autism usually have somewhat more of a problem reading social cue's intuitively. It explains that some can still do it, but instead use their prefrontal cortex and analytical skills to do so.
Which got me thinking that I feel like it do this. I seem to be able to read specific social cue's pretty well. But I feel like I do it with logic instead of intuition.
This sometimes brings forth situation in which neurotypical people miss certain signs when I do see them.
This often happens when I have a bad feeling about a person. I analyse their behaviour and specific things they do, and what and how they say them.
I string those things together to 'feel' that something is wrong.
Most of the time I turn out to be right. But people around me seem surprised about me being right.
They seem to have missed all the cues that I saw.

Anyone who can relate?

It is hit 'n miss with me. It just depends upon the situation, but I am more inclined to analyze things logically, which puts me in a situation where there is a built-in delay in the processing. The other part is because I am analyzing things logically, and the situation is emotional, I will not be able to have the perspective to understand as emotional thinking is chaos for me.

 

[Misty Avich]

I don't get burnout from socialising, the only thing that can be exhausting is being shy. So I don't think I'm using extra mental energy to figure people out.
If anything I'm rather sensitive to other people's emotions and body language, where I can't help but not notice it.
But I've never really thought about it. I don't go to a social situation reminding myself "right, if someone makes X facial expression it means they're going to say Y". Sometimes I prepare my own behaviour so that I don't look stupid or anything, but I don't need to mentally revise other people's social motivations. I also don't need to revise social cues. I just sometimes feel too shy for the verbal stuff, so I just end up smiling and laughing and just speaking when I'm spoken to, like general smalltalk. That's why I like to look attractive whenever I go to a social event, it helps your confidence. It's what I lack, is confidence.

 

[Tom]

I think there is something to that - while socializing is often hard for us, there does seem to be certain aspects of it some of us may actually be quite good at.

But I can't speak on it in scientific or pyschological terms. I don't know what it is in that sense. I just have exoerienced picking up 'vibes' about people all my life. Like I can sometimes read what's underneath the NT masks (I think they often mask too). And on occasion when I have mentioned my thoughts to an NT friend/spouse they have many times not seen it themselves or felt I was reading too much into it. But I have a lot of confidence in it as it seems to have usually turned out to be correct.

Just a silly but curious story.

Back in my surfer dude days I was in Puerto Rico for a while and there was this strange American hermit living up in the jungle somewhere. One of the other surfers befriended him and the hermit camped nearby for a time. He thought he was some kind of Shaman and spoke in those terms. Trully a strange bird. But anyway one day he was describing a few of us in his mystic terms. (He kind of entertained us in return for food and money). When he got to me he looked at me for a moment and then said I had 2 invisable antenna coming out of my head, like an ant.

 

[LadyS]

I was wondering if anyone here can relate to this.
I was reading an article about how ADHD and Autism have overlapping characteristics and where they are different.
This article was also about the social difficulty differences. Where most people with autism usually have somewhat more of a problem reading social cue's intuitively. It explains that some can still do it, but instead use their prefrontal cortex and analytical skills to do so.
Which got me thinking that I feel like it do this. I seem to be able to read specific social cue's pretty well. But I feel like I do it with logic instead of intuition.
This sometimes brings forth situation in which neurotypical people miss certain signs when I do see them.
This often happens when I have a bad feeling about a person. I analyse their behaviour and specific things they do, and what and how they say them.
I string those things together to 'feel' that something is wrong.
Most of the time I turn out to be right. But people around me seem surprised about me being right.
They seem to have missed all the cues that I saw.

Anyone who can relate?

Yes I can relate, glad someone else can too. Logic, patterns in behavior, social history, personality traits, cultural context and just general human vices.. use all of these to decipher people. Tend to do it with people I know personally though, or someone I've had repeated interaction with from a distance. And ya usually am right too. But people don't take kindly to being analyzed like that so I tend to keep it to myself.

 

[Judge]

For me I'd say I have the ability to read people to an extent, however that what often socially "hampers" me is a matter of timing. That I tend to process human interactions with some kind of delay. That in real time, I can't seem to process things so effectively, until I have worked them out in my head- moments, minutes or even days later.

 

[Outdated]

I was always a very shrewd judge of character. I get tripped up sometimes but not very often. I think a lot of that comes from growing up in a rough neighbourhood and learning lessons the hard way. There's a lot of social situations that I never learned how to respond to so I instead learned how to judge characters and context in order to avoid those situations.

I had a boss that noticed micro expressions in me that no one else ever picked up on, and he made use of it. He carted me along to every meeting in his life for many years, interviews with both employees and clients, lawyers, financers, he used me in almost every aspect of his life and I knew more about his business and finances than his wife did. He called me his Miner's Canary. I spotted things in people that he often missed.

He told everyone that he was teaching me business management but that was a lie. I was there because I could read people well and he was able to read me yet no one else could. I always sat across table from him where I was in his constant vision.

It was really nice working with someone that actually understood me and it was fun having someone able to make use of my talents. We ended up becoming good mates and we worked well together. He died way too young.

 

[kenaij]

I was always a very shrewd judge of character. I get tripped up sometimes but not very often. I think a lot of that comes from growing up in a rough neighbourhood and learning lessons the hard way. There's a lot of social situations that I never learned how to respond to so I instead learned how to judge characters and context in order to avoid those situations.

I had a boss that noticed micro expressions in me that no one else ever picked up on, and he made use of it. He carted me along to every meeting in his life for many years, interviews with both employees and clients, lawyers, financers, he used me in almost every aspect of his life and I knew more about his business and finances than his wife did. He called me his Miner's Canary. I spotted things in people that he often missed.

He told everyone that he was teaching me business management but that was a lie. I was there because I could read people well and he was able to read me yet no one else could. I always sat across table from him where I was in his constant vision.

It was really nice working with someone that actually understood me and it was fun having someone able to make use of my talents. We ended up becoming good mates and we worked well together. He died way too young.

I can relate to this aswell. My boss always asks my to do interviews with him what the function is somewhat related to mine. In his words: "You tend to judge things from a nautral perspective and can figure out complications that might arrise in the future between people." Also, when I advised against someone but he did hire them I was right 6/7 times. The last one still works at our school but has a different job than what that original interview was for. He just wasn`t a match for that job.