Atypical aspies

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Well, if you can keep a conversation on any topic and your special interests or routines don't interfere with your daily functioning my guess is that your diagnosis can be discarderd.No impairment, no syndrome.

Being 'geeky' has absolutely NOTHING to do with a developmental neurological disorder.

Well, my special interest are Serial Killers so i'm not sure if that is considered geeky.

It's the other way around. If you are an aspie, you tend to categorize, collect information etc. Not necessarily like math or computers.

I'm not a geeky type at all (though I grew up in the pre-geek decades). I am "bookish", literature is a special interest as are nature and animals. Both began early for me and were always comforting presences in my life. If you are saying that anyone who isn't a geek is automatically an "atypical aspie" I would disagree. Most AS women are not the geek kind so far as I can see. Applying the geek thing as the typical signifier of aspieness doesn't hold water for me, it's a misleading stereotype where a minority are misrepresented as the great majority.

To me geekiness it's not just math. It's anything that has to do with a drive to categorize and/or gather information whatever the field. That's way almost all aspies score high on systemysing.

I don't fit the geek stereo type but I wouldn't mind it either. I'm into music, foreign movies and other little things. Trying to keep myself busy.

i am not sure how "typical" i am of the stereotypical general understanding of asperger's syndrome.

one way that i do not identify with other asperger people (i only know them online (none in real life)) is that i have no desire for company or socialization.
most asperger people are not devoid of the need to connect with others, but i am.
most asperger people have a major problem with feeling happy due to their displacement from normal society, but i do not.
i could not care less.
i do like to write what i think and say what i think, but i care not for what responses it gets.

when people over 18 talk about taking simple things literally, i suspect that they are just pretending to have asperger syndrome, because with moderate intelligence it is easy to identify absurd statements that other people make and therefore deduce that it is metaphorical or allegorical, and then calculate what the metaphor is. as a child hearing absurdities for the first time, it is certainly the case that i took those things literally, but i do have a memory for the instructions i received that they were just parabolic and not literal, and i saw that all things people said that seemed absurd in a literal sense had some other meaning behind them.

a very simple example is "how are you". when i was 5, i thought they were asking how i came to be, but i quickly learned that they were asking if i was happy or not.
when i see people who are 30 years old on forums who claim that they still take it literally, i must think they do not understand the reality of aperger syndrome and are just adhering to the pamphlet bullet point symptoms they read in order to appear as if they have asperger syndrome (for some other mysterious reason which i can not determine)

i do have intense focus on the details of things i am interested in, and i do spend much time investigating the minutia of those interests, but i do not have that "eggbert" type of personality that most people associate with geekiness or nerdiness.

i seem rather arrogantly assured of the importance of what i choose to talk about, and i am oblivious to the dissension of others to the importance of what i choose to say, so i just barge on like a robot that can not be turned off before it has completed it's programmed course of dissertation. in that way, i am not geeky or nerdy but i guess i am aloof and only aware of my own world.

Obviously we differ in that I don't regard Baron-Cohen's theories as fact. He managed to produce findings to fit his theories, a feat far more common in academic experimental psychology than people generally realise..(it's very easily done - most simply by discarding the test scores and series that don't fit the theory and only reporting the ones that do). There is no requirement (unfortunately) to report all the raw data results.

I am more inclined to this view expressed on the website Aspertypical:


So when we compare males to females with autism, are we really looking at individual differences and how these play a role? If we take the Extreme Male Brain Theory, which attempts to summarise autism as an extreme form of the male brain, whereby individuals on the spectrum are quite low empathisers and high systemisers, we see a very set way or viewing autism which does not allow for individual differences. Instead of viewing autism as an extreme form of the male brain I would argue that autism is more a extreme hyper focussed selective brain. If you test mainly males for an extreme male brain, then of course you will find many have an extreme form of maleness, because they become hyperfocussed in their interests, and as they are men these will mostly be male orientated. So if more males are systemisers who like physics, then for sure autistic males will be even stronger systemisers who obsess about physics. If we look at the common obsessions females with autism have, they look completely different to males. Females with autism often obsess over soap operas, books, animals and psychology. It could therefore be said that autism is an extreme form of the female brain too, when actually autism is just an extreme brain. I am often surprised by just how different two people on the spectrum can be, and in my field of research and work come by a really diverse mix of people with autism. What binds them all is their similar difficulties in socialising, and the extremeness of their obsessions and sensory stimulations.

how do you score on this test? http://personality-testing.info/tests/EQSQ.php

I would score zero, as I would never provide data to a researcher that I have no confidence in, and who seeks to survey the internet in the belief that it can provide robust data (for his use and benefit) anyway.

that is for you too
|To me geekiness it's not just math. It's anything that has to do with a drive to categorize and/or gather information whatever the field. That's way almost all aspies score high on systemysing."

Possibly a reification effect? A research artifact?

It looks like the tests out there misled me into thinking all aspies have to be geeky to some extent. My question is, then, how do you score on the aq test?

I'm not geeky at all. My special interests have always been certain people. My hobby is writing stories, which, where I come from, is not considered geeky.