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Non-autistics ( neurotypicals) possess a comparatively sophisticated sense of other people's mental states. Most people are able to gather a whole host of information about other people's cognitive and emotional states based on clues gleaned from the environment and the other person's body language. Autists (or autistic persons) do not have this ability, and the individual with Asperger's can be every bit as "mind-blind" as the person with profound classical autism. For those who are severely affected by "mind-blindness", they may, at best, see a smile but not know what it means (is it an understanding, a condescending, or a malicious smile?) and at worst they will not even see the smile, frown, smirk, or any other nuance of interpersonal communication. They generally find it difficult or impossible to "read between the lines"; that is, figure out those things a person is implying but is not saying directly. It is worth noting, however, that since it is a spectrum disorder, a few with Asperger's are nearly normal in their ability to read facial expressions and intentions of others. Those with Asperger's often have difficulty with eye contact. Many make very little eye contact, finding it overwhelming, while others have unmodulated, staring eye contact that can be off-putting to others.
Asperger's syndrome involves an intense and obsessive level of focus on things of interest and is often characterized by special (and possibly peculiar) gifts; one person might be obsessed with 1950s professional wrestling, another with national anthems of African dictatorships, another with building models out of matchsticks. Particularly common interests are means of transportation (for example trains) and computers; dinosaurs are another favourite topic. These interests are often coupled with an unusually high capacity to retain and recall encyclopedic amounts of information about the favoured subject.
In general, things with order have appeal. When these special interests coincide with a materially or socially useful task, the individual with Asperger's can often lead a profitable life. The child obsessed with naval architecture may grow up to be an accomplished shipwright, for instance. In pursuit of these interests, the individual with Asperger's often manifests extremely sophisticated reasonAlternate uses: Reason (program), Reason (magazine), Reason (Asimov In philosophy, reason (from Latin ratio by way of French raison is the faculty by means of which or the process through which human beings perform thought, especially abstract thought.ing, an almost obsessive focus, and eidetic memoryPhotographic memory or eidetic memory refers to the ability of a person to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with great accuracy and in seemingly unlimited volume. For instance, many famous artists and composers like Claude Monet and Mozart poss. Hans Asperger called his young patients "little professors", based on the fact that his thirteen-year-old patients had as comprehensive and nuanced an understanding, within their area of expertise, as university professors. It is because of this that individuals with Asperger's are considered to have a higher intellectual capacity while suffering from a lower social capacity.
Autists have emotional responses as strong as, or perhaps stronger than, most people, though what generates an emotional response might not always be the same. What they lack (or are markedly slower to develop) is the inborn ability to perceive the emotional states of others or to express their own emotional state via body language, facial expression and nuance in the way that most people do. Many people with Asperger's report a feeling of being unwillingly detached from the world around them; they lack the natural ability to see the subtexts of social interaction, and equally lack the ability to broadcast their own emotional state to the world accurately.
This leads to no end of troubles both in childhood and adulthood. Asperger's children are often the target of bullying at school because of their idiosyncratic behaviour, language and interests, and because of their lower or delayed ability to perceive and respond appropriately to non-verbal cues, particularly in situations of interpersonal conflict.
When a teacher asks a child with Asperger's, "And did the dog eat your homework?", the child with Asperger's will remain silent if they don't understand the expression, trying to figure out if they need to explain to the teacher that they don't have a dog and besides dogs don't generally like paper. The child doesn't understand what the teacher is asking, cannot infer the teacher's meaning or the fact that there is a non-literal meaning from the tone of voice, posture or facial expression, and is faced with a question which made as much sense to him as "Did the glacier in the library bounce today?" The teacher walks away from the experience frustrated and thinking the child is arrogant, spiteful and insubordinate. The child sits there mutely, feeling frustrated and wronged.
Those affected by Asperger's may also manifest a range of other sensory, developmental and physiological anomalies. It is common for Asperger's children to evidence a marked delay in the development of fine motor skills, and they may also display a distinctive 'waddling' or 'mincing' gait when they walk, and may also walk with their arms held out in an unusual manner. Compulsive finger, hand or arm movements, such as flapping, are also observed.
Some Asperger's children have also been observed to suffer from varying degrees of sensory overload , and may be pathologically sensitive to loud noises or strong smells and may dislike being touched -- for example, certain Asperger's children exhibit a strong dislike having their head touched or their hair disturbed. The 'sensory overload' factor may exacerbate problems faced by Asperger's children at school, where levels of noise in the classroom can become almost intolerable.
Another noted behavioural characteristic is echolaliaEcholalia is the involuntary repetition of the last word or last several words heard. Schizophrenics sometimes exhibit echolalia.. It has also been observed that children with Asperger's often display advanced abilities for their age in language, reading, mathematics, spatial skills or music, and that these sometimes extended into the 'gifted' range, although as noted above, they may be counterbalanced by appreciable delays in other developmental areas.