People on the autism spectrum sometimes have increased mathematical, reasoning and spatial orientation abilities along with frequently impaired social and verbal abilities as part of their condition.
Is there some condition which works the opposite; It has definite disadvantages but is often accompanied by either high social or verbal abilities? I don’t mean Williams Syndrome as they may be very friendly but they have improved attitudes rather than abilities.
Non-verbal learning disorder is characterized by verbal strengths as well as visual-spatial, motor, and social skills difficulties.
This sort of describes me. It doesn’t sound like it’s generally recognized, though.
There’s an interesting theory suggesting schizophrenia is the ‘opposite’ of autism in that it’s the other extreme on of the ‘modeling the world as a mind’ vs. ‘modeling the world as a machine’ spectrum. The relatives of schizophrenics, as well as schizophrenics themselves, tend to have “superiority of verbal skills to spatial skills”.
In one of his books, Malcolm Gladwell takes on the “5 degrees of separation” trope. (Sort of like the Kevin Bacon game) He points out that it’s relatively true, except that it works because there are people who are friends, or more than passing acquaintance, with hundreds of others. He describes it as “these people collect friends like some people collect Baseball Cards”. Many end up in politics, and indeed I’ve met a few people like this - genuinely likeable, meet them maybe once every year or two as part of a large group and they still remember who you are. They would be the diametric opposite of people with poor social skills and an inability to relate to others.