The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome

by Anthony Attwood

I have also noted that ToM abilities in children and adults with Asperger’s syndrome can be influenced by the complexity of the situation, the speed of the interaction and the degree of stress. In large social gatherings the amount of social information can be overwhelming for someone with Asperger’s syndrome. The person may have reasonable ToM abilities but have difficulty determining which signals are relevant and which are redundant, especially when inundated with social cues. The time taken to process social information is similar to the time it takes for someone who is learning a second language to process the speech of someone fluent in that language. If the native speaker of the language talks too quickly, the other person can only understand a few fragments of what has been said. I have learned to adjust my interaction with a person with Asperger’s syndrome to be within the person’s processing capacity for social reasoning. When relaxed, the person with Asperger’s syndrome can more easily process mental states, but when stressed, as with any skill, performance declines.