2. Not mentioned as much but very much a phobia in some Autistic people is certain letters of the alphabet (the sound especially), numbers and certain punctuation marks in the English language. Some kids will constantly get math prob. wrong and punctuation points taken away, but what lots of people will not think about is "why"--as far as refusing to write the number or punctuation symbol...also some Autistic people get really upset over a color which in this case is more to do with the brightness or what they think of it as referring to a texture because something else that upsets them has that color.

--Think of the conditioning experiment w/ little Albert and the 'white' mouse.

(Autistic people are conditioned very easily)

3. The size and thickness of things have been known to bother lots of people on the spectrum--for some it is big and round things like pots, for others small long things like railing bars...very hard to explain. It is a phobia that affects many autistic people. (there is a great representation of this in 'Silent Fall'...look on my 'autism movies' page and it will be there shortly.

4. Also, fuzzy things really affect the eyes of autistic people and therefore can bother them a lot so bad it becomes a phobia.

5. More coming...

Liddy

Kris

I think the social interaction could most definitely be a phobia. A perfectly rational one. Think about a toddler who can be startled one day by a barking or growling dog. She may be afraid of dogs her entire life and not know why. With the characteristic inability or difficulty in reading social cues or most non-verbal language, you learn at a very young age that social interactions are an ineffective and unpleasant way to communicate. There may be several pleasant experiences, but they do not make as big an impact as the negative. You can learn how to do it properly (or learn how to fake it effectively, but still don't enjoy it. Unpleasant experiences as a young child, combined with more of the same as you get older (along with some really nasty experiences as a teenager), could make anyone fear social interaction.

Kris

What are '' irrational '' to normals might be scary to me .

If I see my safe / known Leica II camera 1933 , I am fine , but if a copy of it from Russia has writing I can't dee'cipher [ pun ] ,especially in cyrillic I get severely anxious ... but if the Russians have falsely engraved it with Leica writing - I am settled !

The joke is that the altered camera is more real to me , than the proper one .

Multiply this by EVERYTHING and you begin to wonder why we don't have MORE '' phobias '' !

Newbie dee