Asperger's

Over at Mannonvile, Lance has a long response to the New York magazine article about Asperger's Syndrome.  

He is bothered that most people think of Asperger’s as nerdiness mixed with reflexive jerkiness:

On TV and in the movies a character with Asperger’s will invariably respond to something another character has done or said by saying or doing the absolutely inappropriate thing. In real life, Aspies are just as likely---more likely---to respond by not responding. They’ll give you a baffled stare or continue on as if you haven’t said or done what you said or did. 

This is because they’ve either failed to see the flashing stop light of someone’s facial expression or body language and so they plunge on ahead into the path of oncoming emotional traffic or they know they’ve missed something or fear they’ve missed something and for safety’s sake cling to the curb.

And knowing they’ve likely missed a signal, they will often try to guess at what that signal might have been and then guess at the appropriate response and they guess wrong often enough to get a reputation for guessing wrong. People start ignoring when they’ve guessed right and focusing on all their wrong and goofy guesses.