Comment author: tut 15 May 2010 05:24:05PM 3 points [-]

... when someone's voice is overlapping with a dozen other voices in the room: I can't understand them.

If this is your only or primary problem I would recommend having your hearing checked before you start on the neuro stuff.

Comment author: NullA 18 May 2010 02:05:10AM 0 points [-]

Okay, I'll keep this in mind, but is this potentially a hearing problem when I can hear people whispering to me 1-on-1?

Comment author: Yvain 15 May 2010 11:50:18AM 12 points [-]

The comments to this post and most of the other literature I've read assumes that the problem with poorly social people is that they're afraid, not sure how to carry out a conversation effectively, or make poor decisions when confronted with social dilemmas.

Anecdotally, my experience isn't like this at all. I'm pretty good, maybe even better than average, at talking to people in one-to-one conversations, at home, at cafes, on the bus, before class, and pretty much any time other than at deliberately social events. But at bars or parties, the constantly shifting conversations of dozens of people trying to all talk to each other at once at a mile a minute, about nothing in particular, in a loud and overstimulating environment completely discombobulates me, and I usually end up either ignored, unable to break into a conversation more than once every few minutes, or just plain bored with having nothing to say but the same small talk everyone else is making.

Maybe I'm atypical of non-social people, but I also give a bit of credence to the possibility that all this "not knowing how to give the right reply in a conversation" stuff is what neurotypical people imagine being bad at socializing must be like, the same way hicks sometimes deal with non-English speakers by speaking English words really loud and slowly because they can't imagine what it's like to genuinely not understand English. But I'd like to hear from other non-social people to confirm.

(I got a 23 on the test)

Comment author: NullA 15 May 2010 04:47:14PM *  2 points [-]

Your comments sound as if I wrote it myself =) But wait, do you have Asperger's? If so, I should really get checked.

Growing up, my social skills were fairly slow to develop, but at this point in my life, I've practiced enough to actually be quite socially savvy with people. I can easily weave humour, emotional intelligence, facial expressions, deep comprehension, etc into my conversations. I'm always making new friends.

But, I've never been able to handle environments with too much stimulus (bars/clubs), when someone's voice is overlapping with a dozen other voices in the room: I can't understand them. When there's constant noises, light displays, many events around me: I feel a sort of confusion / cognitive dissonance.

This is not a matter of introversion/extroversion in my case: my ability to comprehend people in these environments just drops. Sometimes to the point where I seem deaf. However in 1-on-1 situations, there's no issues. I can be quite extroverted, an initiator.