Aspies For Freedom

Here's the story:

I'm 100% sure I'm NT.  (Unless you use the most restrictive definition of NT, as someone with no DSM conditions, in which case I'm maybe 50-60% sure.  I was diagnosed ADD as a teenager, and although I strongly doubt that I have or ever had ADD now, there's a reasonable chance it wasn't a total mistake, especially given that my NLD/ADD friend in college who knew a lot about neurodifferences told me I had almost classically ADD speech patterns.)  But when my boyfriend first started hanging out with me, he suspected for a little while that I might be an Aspie, and even gave me the business card of his therapist who specializes in AS issues.  That suspicion apparently came from his peculiar theory of mind*, which has the same fundamental hypothesis as any theory of mind - "People are, until proven otherwise, pretty much like me" - but appears to be more "black and white" than most people's theories of minds, consistent with his self-report of what I call a binary mind, with feelings and response patterns being either 100% on or 100% off for him.  Anyone with any visible temperamental similarity to himself upon first impression - e.g., a similar sense of humor or similar set of interests and love of talking about those interests - he tends to call "just like himself" or "a lot like himself," whereas anyone who initially comes off as temperamentally different is either "just like the people he knows/grew up with" or "unlike anything he's ever seen before."  Of course, he can modify these initial impressions over time.

So I started to wonder if other Aspies develop similar theories of mind, such that someone showing temperamental similarities is judged to be just like them or similar to them, and if they show enough temperamental similarities or the right ones (especially personality traits they associate with AS), to the point that they could be mistaken for an Aspie.  On the other hand, with such a theory of mind, they would easily peg anyone who appeared plenty temperamentally different from themselves as NT.

But my alternative hypothesis is that the theory of mind where everyone is "just like me, just like the people I grew up with, or nothing I've ever seen before" is an individual trait of my boyfriend and not a general Aspie trait, and that the ability of Aspies to peg quirky NTs as NTs depends on how well schooled they are in spotting subtle mannerisms that are far more telling of Spectrum status than any of the popular literature, rather than on a combination of assuming that people who are a little like them are a lot like them + spotting certain temperament traits.  And this schooling would likely depend on how often the person hangs out with other Aspies.  Of course, NTs would be able to develop this same Spectrum-spotting skill if they spend a lot of time among Aspies, but they are probably statistically much less likely to do so.  My boyfriend, of course, spends little time interacting with other Aspies, so all he had to go by was what he knew about Aspies in general, mostly from literature, and what he knew about himself.

I vastly favor the latter hypothesis over the former, but I'm still curious.

So...what do you think allows or prevents Aspies from being able to tell their own kind apart from the quirky NTs that uninformed NTs will usually mistake Aspies for?  How often do you hang out with Aspies, and how good are you at making the distinction?  Also, I'd like to know, for curiosity's sake, what exactly those key Aspie mannerisms I mention in the second/favored hypothesis are, if you see yourself as being good at spotting them and they are something you can put in words.  I'm actually going to have an opportunity very soon to observe, and maybe even meet if they have time, some Aspies on an adult ASD panel that my boyfriend is serving on, and it would be cool to have some idea of what to look for beforehand to help me learn how to spot Aspies.  So far I've only ever met two Aspies (my boyfriend and an internet friend who was in the area once), which isn't enough to get a general impression.

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*I'm not sure if I'm using the term "theory of mind" correctly here, but I'm not sure what else to call whatever it is that causes you to make assumptions about the person's general nature based on whatever behavioral patterns you see in them at the moment.

Me too, I think I'm an NT. While my eccentricities and narrow obsession with machines is genetic, I think my lack of social interaction ability is mostly due to lack of experience.

I think this is the difference:

Aspies are, if untrained, almost incapable of small talk and "heavy" social interaction like scoring girls, being sleazy, etc.
Quirky NTs dislike small talk and "heavy" social interaction. However, they CAN pull it off.

P.S.: I may be wrong, as I've never met any aspies in real life.

Perhaps it has more to do with the level of disability. Quirky NTs only need a little guidance to communicate with "normal" people, while Aspies will need lots of training to communicate with non-Aspies.

I actually don't know what classically ADD speech patterns are.  I didn't ask her what they were.  Perhaps I should have.

So...I actually went to the event today...there were only three "new" Aspies, besides the teacher of the other section fo the class.  All the males seemed to have something of a shy or nerdy vibe.  The one female, just seemed kind of neutral to me, I guess.  Each one had a different manner of speaking.  I don't think I really got any new sense for Aspie mannerisms.  I think that kind of thing has to be learned by a lot of experience interacting with people on the spectrum - parents of aspie/autistic children, for instance, seem to be pretty good at it.

It was interesting to hear some of the personal stories.  As a kid who had my own set of quirks and neuroses, I could relate to one of the issues mentioned by the non-autistic teacher of the main section: "You're so smart, so why can't you figure this little thing out?"  One of the most common ignorant assumptions out there is that if you can do one thing that's considered a sign of intelligence, you should be able to do "simpler" mental things with ease as well.  That seems to be a major issue especially in the misunderstanding of autism, where the distribution of abilities is often very uneven and unlike what most people unacquainted with autism (or stuck in some kind of cultlike dogmatic belief about autism) would expect.

I recommended this website to people as a good place to learn about adult autistics, and also the various blogs and such linked in the Aspies for Freedom Award nominations thread.  This came up in a small group discussion afterwards, where one of the students asked about where you could learn more about adults on the spectrum.  I also told them that the internet in general is a good place to learn.  My boyfriend recommended Wrong Planet, another autistic site with all ages including adults.

Thanks for all the input thus far, by the way.