Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests • Hacker News Board

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#21

Post by nicoburns » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

JacksonGariety wrote: post #18

I have high-functioning autism. Does anyone have some suggestions for making and keeping friends? When I meet a friend, things seem to go really well at first, and then my friend seems to slowly get bored of the interactions we have, and after a couple months I just don't hear from them again. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is there a scientific way to find out?

There's not a scientific way. But you can definitely improve on these kind of interactions. The chances that something you are doing something (or equally likely: not doing something) that you had not even considered is putting people off interacting with you.

Do you have anyone in your life that you could ask for feedback? If not then you could look into Autism support services. There are people who specialise in exactly this kind of thing, and they will probably to be able to point you towards things quite quickly as they will most likely have seen the same things before.

It's also worth considering if there are other groups of people that you may not be coming in to contact with who might be more interested in the same things as you. I know some people who now have a very strong friendship group who initially struggled simply because they grew up in an area / environment where there weren't many people like them.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#22

Post by alexandercrohde » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

tw000001 wrote: post #11

scandox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they're creeped out because they believe your emotional responses are simulated and that your engagement in phatic discourse is inauthentic? But how they can they tell the difference? And even if they can how do they know that this isn't also true of everybody else, only that others are superior fakers? How can they even know that their own responses are authentic? I ask because I'm really not sure about t…

Normal people are extremely sensitive to deviations from social norms. There's even a word for it, "coolness" and more modern derivatives. Human social interactions are extremely complex, both verbal and otherwise, and people will subconsciously become uncomfortable or disinterested when people deviate too far from patterns. The weird kids get bullied because they are legitimately weird. But pretending to be normal i…

I really like this idea.

I agree the average person responds to unusual behavior with the same innate revulsion we fee to a physical deformity (perhaps to a lesser degree). However I think both revulsions do dissipate with time.

I think what doesn't dissipate, is the distaste for when somebody doesn't follow important and healthy social codes. For example, there's a stereotype of "nerds" pedantically interrupting everybody to correct minor or irrelevant details ("um actually..."). Now, stereotype aside, this type of behavior is genuinely offputting and counterproductive.

To a large extent I think "coolness" is the ability to keep the conversation flowing when a potentially emotional topic gets invoked. The opposite is that person who has a certain trigger-word, where if it ever shows up in passing, derails the whole conversation on a 1-man tirade.

In summary, I find a lot of what makes a good conversational isn't following arbitrary norms of the era, but a strong empathy/understanding for the emotional effect of every topic and bouncing between those emotional states with grace.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#23

Post by MagnumPIG » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

JacksonGariety wrote: post #18

I have high-functioning autism. Does anyone have some suggestions for making and keeping friends? When I meet a friend, things seem to go really well at first, and then my friend seems to slowly get bored of the interactions we have, and after a couple months I just don't hear from them again. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is there a scientific way to find out?

Not sure what you mean by scientific way, as there's no real way to test this objectively, maybe you've just had crap luck

On the subject of social skills, there have been many books on the subject, traditionally titled under Asperger's: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/12108.Top_social_skills_...

Friendships, like all relationships, must be nurtured to survive. A lot of neurotypical people are kinda crap at nurturing friendships naturally but they try to do so often in subconscious ways.

If your social skills are below average you may not pick up on the subtle clues, so you'll have to make more explicit efforts to maintain the friendship, and explain to your friends what kind of gestures go toward nurturing it when it comes to yourself, ie you mostly consider time spent together, or chats, or phone calls, gifts, what have you.

I'm not a psychologist but I'm a neurotypical person with a few high functioning autistic friends if you want my opinion on anything.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#24

Post by didibus » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #3

> The study also found that IQ had a significant relationship with change in symptom severity. Children with higher IQs were more likely to show a reduction in ASD symptoms. This is important information. People of higher intelligence would be more likely to learn things, such as how to mask effectively. I learned to mask so well that most people are shocked to learn that I'm autistic. It takes about 6 months of cons…

Hope you don't mind me asking this. How would you describe your normal behavior versus your masked behavior? What's different between the two?

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#25

Post by Consultant32452 » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

JacksonGariety wrote: post #18

I have high-functioning autism. Does anyone have some suggestions for making and keeping friends? When I meet a friend, things seem to go really well at first, and then my friend seems to slowly get bored of the interactions we have, and after a couple months I just don't hear from them again. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is there a scientific way to find out?

I'm in the same boat. I've found that people with trauma appreciate me much more than normies. They forgive my awkwardness and appreciate my lack of emotional reaction to their issues. Hope this helps.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#26

Post by watwut » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

scandox wrote: post #6

kstenerud wrote: post #3

> The study also found that IQ had a significant relationship with change in symptom severity. Children with higher IQs were more likely to show a reduction in ASD symptoms. This is important information. People of higher intelligence would be more likely to learn things, such as how to mask effectively. I learned to mask so well that most people are shocked to learn that I'm autistic. It takes about 6 months of cons…

Presumably they're creeped out because they believe your emotional responses are simulated and that your engagement in phatic discourse is inauthentic? But how they can they tell the difference? And even if they can how do they know that this isn't also true of everybody else, only that others are superior fakers? How can they even know that their own responses are authentic? I ask because I'm really not sure about t…

> Presumably they're creeped out because they believe your emotional responses are simulated and that your engagement in phatic discourse is inauthentic?

Why would you assume that? While it is theoretical possibility, there are many more other possibilities in play.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#27

Post by watwut » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for coming on. This quote caught my attention: >The fact that more of the girls appear to have decreased in autism severity may be due to an increasing number of girls who have learned how to mask their symptoms. What hypothesis exist to explain this gender disparity?

The gender disparity in autism prevalence is one of the big mysteries of autism since genes associated with autism risk are not generally located on the XY sex chromosome. There are a number of hypotheses out there for the disparity of prevalence. One hypothesis is that the disparity is more apparent than real: That girls are better at masking/adapting to their symptoms, and thus more frequently escape diagnosis. The…

I think that question is, why are girls better at masking/adapting symptoms? Regardless of whether autism is more prevalent in girls, what it is about being girl that makes you mask better.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#28

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

polytely wrote: post #16

kstenerud wrote: post #3

> The study also found that IQ had a significant relationship with change in symptom severity. Children with higher IQs were more likely to show a reduction in ASD symptoms. This is important information. People of higher intelligence would be more likely to learn things, such as how to mask effectively. I learned to mask so well that most people are shocked to learn that I'm autistic. It takes about 6 months of cons…

This mirrors my experience, I can pass for neurotypical I guess, but in new social situations I have to put in a lot of effort to figure out what behavior people expect from me. I guess it's great that I can blend into society but there is always the feeling that I'm just pretending to be a normal person. I feel that I've figured out how to be pleasant person to work with but sustaining deeper relationships feels alm…

[deleted]

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#29

Post by JacksonGariety » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #21

JacksonGariety wrote: post #18

I have high-functioning autism. Does anyone have some suggestions for making and keeping friends? When I meet a friend, things seem to go really well at first, and then my friend seems to slowly get bored of the interactions we have, and after a couple months I just don't hear from them again. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is there a scientific way to find out?

There's not a scientific way. But you can definitely improve on these kind of interactions. The chances that something you are doing something (or equally likely: not doing something) that you had not even considered is putting people off interacting with you. Do you have anyone in your life that you could ask for feedback? If not then you could look into Autism support services. There are people who specialise in ex…

> Do you have anyone in your life that you could ask for feedback?

Unfortunately, I don't. It's a catch-22.

> It's also worth considering if there are other groups of people that you may not be coming in to contact with who might be more interested in the same things as you.

I'm really interested in philosophy. Since January I've been using Bumble to try to find people who share this interests, but I haven't had any luck yet.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#30

Post by bad_user » Sun, May 31, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

JacksonGariety wrote: post #18

I have high-functioning autism. Does anyone have some suggestions for making and keeping friends? When I meet a friend, things seem to go really well at first, and then my friend seems to slowly get bored of the interactions we have, and after a couple months I just don't hear from them again. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is there a scientific way to find out?

Not sure if this helps, however I have the same experience and I am not autistic. My wife has no problem keeping friends though and basically I benefit from the friends she keeps.

The difference is that she keeps relationships hot by constantly messaging them (Whatsapp, etc), calling them or arranging hangouts. She's also a really good listener. My phone calls (e.g. with parents, sister, friends, etc) last for 5 minutes tops, her phone calls last for 30+ minutes :-)

In other words if you want to keep friends, you have to be the one that contacts them (though careful not to creep them out).

On the other hand don't feel bad with a high churn rate. This happens to everybody.