On the other hand I’d think it would be easier for autistics to study social reality than NTs—for NTs, since much of that stuff “comes naturally” it’s going to be harder to decompose and explain.
Consider the classic problem of determining whether a person with whom you’re interacting is sexually interested in you. An NT would (I assume) simply have to make an opaque intuitive judgment. An autistic would (I assume) have to go through a checklist involving eye contact, amount of touching, conversational subject matter, posture, whether the subject has already initiated intercourse, etc.
I definitely agree that explicit study would come more naturally to an autistic person. It’d be interesting to see which sorts of cases the two groups would make errors in, and compare explicit study done by autistic and neurotypical subjects.
As an aside, to me, (some kinds of) sexual interest seems to feel like a “vibration” or “pressure”, but does direct my attention (if desired) to more specific signs. I’d guess that part of the signal is extremely difficult to consciously access (scent, subtle prosodics).
On the other hand I’d think it would be easier for autistics to study social reality than NTs—for NTs, since much of that stuff “comes naturally” it’s going to be harder to decompose and explain.
Consider the classic problem of determining whether a person with whom you’re interacting is sexually interested in you. An NT would (I assume) simply have to make an opaque intuitive judgment. An autistic would (I assume) have to go through a checklist involving eye contact, amount of touching, conversational subject matter, posture, whether the subject has already initiated intercourse, etc.
I definitely agree that explicit study would come more naturally to an autistic person. It’d be interesting to see which sorts of cases the two groups would make errors in, and compare explicit study done by autistic and neurotypical subjects.
As an aside, to me, (some kinds of) sexual interest seems to feel like a “vibration” or “pressure”, but does direct my attention (if desired) to more specific signs. I’d guess that part of the signal is extremely difficult to consciously access (scent, subtle prosodics).