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No answer is no answer / Print NAS articles?

Einfallspinsel

I have a colleague I like, she seems patient and reasonable and nonjudgmental. But we are both introverts and kind of private, so we only speak about work-related things. I think we have secondary hobbies in common, and each has one primary hobby that the other one is indifferent about -- which is normal, I've seen other people be friends with less in common.

Twice, I worked up the courage to change the topic to something non-work related, a hobby or viewpoint that *I think* we share. In both cases, she did not answer. I was confused and embarressed about having missed her reply, and hesitated. Then she just changed the subject to something meaningless.

Every time it fails the same way, the conversation ends, and I don't know why. Were we mistakenly both waiting for the other one to say something? Did she not hear me acoustically? Was what I meant lost in translation? Was she annoyed by my attempt to be more personal, and politely ignored me? It could be anything.

I already read all those books and "survival guides" for Aspergers and I apply the advice. I must be partially successful, she is still talking to me (at work…), and at least she treats me normally, what else does one wish for.

I considered printing out NAS pages for her, to explain what the problem was, just to end the awkward confusion. I don't know what the "FAIL!" looked like from her point of view. (By the way, the NAS page recommends to keep first-time info short, so I'll probably just print the "triad…"?)

When she doesn't reply, what do I say? "Without any words, I can't tell what the answer is?" … "I assume your face is the answer, what does it say?" … "Is that silence-yes or silence-no?" … How do I say that politely? Has anyone succeeded in explaining that… whatever "that" is?

Honestly, all my friends are either geeks, on the spectrum, or (interestingly) face blind. I don't meet often with these friends, but we are fine with that. I never have communication problems with them, and they don't have any with me (as far as I know).

But she's an NT, I don't know what to expect. Not trying feels like a wasted opportunity. I am not an emotional or social person, so she would not get anything out of a friendship, I can't recommend myself as a friend. I just want to explain what the problem was earlier, I don't care, we don't have to be friends. It's plain stupid to fail at such a simple task of talking to someone. It's not like I'm trying to date her or anything complicated.

Any ideas how to clear this up?

Parents

  • At the risk of blogging within Einfallspinsel's thread, I'm also intrigued by the visual factor.

    Our eyes perform a remarkable set of processes, which could also be described as gestalt (an outcome greater than the sum of its components). They create colour from the responses of blue green and red receptors, they merge separate images from each eye into one image, and being lenses our eyes see the world upside down while our brain processes it the right way up.

    Part of the gestalt factor is memory and understanding. Most people don't see everything in front of them, but blend the incoming information with memory. One of the reasons we experience deja vu is that our brains are trying to match knowledge with the current scene.

    People on the autistic spectrum, however, see too much detail. We may be overloaded with this detail, or distracted by it, and it may be a painful experience. A methophor that might apply is "cannot see the wood for the trees".

    Hence we may be spending more time trying to sort through what we see, which means that we are less able to quickly process and record the general information of something seen - the "gist" or the essential parts of the visual message.

    Where I feel this is an issue is in attempts to use pictures of people's expressions to help people on the spectrum to understand social interaction, they may be missing the point. It is not that we don't understand facial expressions but perhaps that we are too concerned with other details to take in the essential body language information quickly.

    That may also affect our ability to learn how to create facial expressions appropriate to what we are trying to explain.

    I wonder if most approaches to helping people on the spectrum are overly siimplistic NT perceptions of the problem, that are not really doing any good.

Reply

  • At the risk of blogging within Einfallspinsel's thread, I'm also intrigued by the visual factor.

    Our eyes perform a remarkable set of processes, which could also be described as gestalt (an outcome greater than the sum of its components). They create colour from the responses of blue green and red receptors, they merge separate images from each eye into one image, and being lenses our eyes see the world upside down while our brain processes it the right way up.

    Part of the gestalt factor is memory and understanding. Most people don't see everything in front of them, but blend the incoming information with memory. One of the reasons we experience deja vu is that our brains are trying to match knowledge with the current scene.

    People on the autistic spectrum, however, see too much detail. We may be overloaded with this detail, or distracted by it, and it may be a painful experience. A methophor that might apply is "cannot see the wood for the trees".

    Hence we may be spending more time trying to sort through what we see, which means that we are less able to quickly process and record the general information of something seen - the "gist" or the essential parts of the visual message.

    Where I feel this is an issue is in attempts to use pictures of people's expressions to help people on the spectrum to understand social interaction, they may be missing the point. It is not that we don't understand facial expressions but perhaps that we are too concerned with other details to take in the essential body language information quickly.

    That may also affect our ability to learn how to create facial expressions appropriate to what we are trying to explain.

    I wonder if most approaches to helping people on the spectrum are overly siimplistic NT perceptions of the problem, that are not really doing any good.

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