I picked up a book at the library a few months ago, about diagnosing aspergers in children and it mentioned they they’re always making conscious lists of rules for everything, explicit where non-aspie people do it implicitly.
It really struck me hard, as it was the first really solid evidence for Aspergers I found. Most things mentioned “face bilndness” which always seemed a little absurd to me. I can read faces fine, I thought.
But the difference was the lists. And the Scripts. I figure out what ‘movie script” they’re reading off of, and play my part.
I take _just a moment_, not long at all, and calculate consciously. It’s an exhausting process though.
If I have to do it at a party with a lot of people, or lengthy socializing with more than a few people, I have to find an excuse to leave and find somewhere to recouperate. I always attributed that to Introversion but I suspect its more than that.
Anyway I want to say thanks – you’ve given me further confirmation about the list-making and the script-reading. I’m still not certain; I’m very slow to certainty when I’m involved in introspection, but the evidence mounts.smile emoticon