Where does the similarity lie?

Those tests of Simon Baron-Cohen have triggered a bout of self examination lately. Noticing which of my behaviours would make me stand out from the crowd. I also had the chance to look over a few items my mother kept from my childhood, that triggered a few memories. Someone did the test on Facebook, so I redid it, thinking I was being more accurate now that I have evaluated some of my strengths and weaknesses properly. My score was even higher on the Autism Quotient.
I think a good study/paper would be in what makes a genius, geek, or introvert, different to someone on the spectum. Maybe the whole idea is that there is no difference, (that's why it's a spectrum)just degrees of personality. Obviously from a diagnostic point of view, there has to be the "triad of impairments", in social relationships, social language and communication skills, and in imagination.
I think my understanding of the language is good. I absorb information better by reading it, than by hearing it. I think I read early, and I don't remember ever being told I spoke late. The "eye test" was fairly easy for me to get a high score. Maybe I don't get facial cues as well in real time, when I am thinking about the interactions going on. I have read books on body language over the years and am fascinated with that show "Lie to me", where they read body language and faces. I've always liked the idea of people watching, but in real life I don't really do it that much. I feel uncomfortable watching people if they might catch me staring, or I just get bored maybe. I do check people out on the rare occasion that I go to clubs. I watch instead of interact. I can't piece together a life story or anything, but I can usually spot who likes who, and who is trying to get rid of who, or is upset, or the third wheel.
My impairment would be that I speak to convey information, and forget about the interaction bit. My communication is a bit functional. (In fact I am discovering I am a bit "functional" in a lot of areas of thinking.) After a conversation I find myself thinking "Oh I should have asked her about......" "I was probably meant to say......". I know I haven't upheld the social aspect of the conversation. Or I think how I must have sounded like a know it all, as if I thought I knew better than them. I come across as a snob when people first meet me. They usually tell me this 6 months or so down the track if they get to know me better. People think I don't go up to them, because I think I am too good for them, not because I am frozen for what to say to them when they look so comfortable with the situation.
Far from believing other people have the same thoughts as me,(theory of mind) I tend to believe they know stuff I don't, and I better not let on that I don't know. When my brother was disappointed, it was upsetting to me. I could lie to get him out of trouble(and myself). I knew if my big sister was being mean, or if I finally had her attention. So I was affected by how others felt. I am a daydreamer though. I tend to not initiate interactions with people. I generally don't have friends that I don't run into during my week. If I don't run into them, I won't think of them for ages. Out of sight, out of mind. I don't do all those thoughtful things for people while I am going about my day. Hey, maybe that's it! I am a crappy multi-tasker! My social problems are less for lack of ability in seeing or understanding communication, but in not attending to more than one thing at a time. I can be very attentive to the person right in front of me. Hence, I did well in hairdressings one-on-0ne relationships. Then I don't think of them until I see them again. Which is still ok in hairdressing land.
As far as imagination goes, I like fiction, and can get right into a story and imagine all the characters. I think I respond to information, better than I initiate new ideas though. I find it easy to use metaphors and analogy, which is an area of weakness with autism. In school, when we read Animal Farm, it was easy for me to see how the animals represented players in the communist regime. Explaining this to the girls in my class, who couldn't understand why we were reading about farm animals, made writing the assignment simple.
Organisation is an area I had not connected with any of this until this week. My mother is moving house after almost 30 years. So I was rereading my school reports and throwing out anything unneccesary. My memory was of a bright well behaved student, but now I am recalling a few discrepancies to that story. I talked in class, and most teachers commented that I could do better if I paid more attention and completed all my work. In high school, I never had my timetable, and would just ask people all day where they were going, and surmise my whereabouts from that. I often walked from one end of the school to the other, hoping to see someone from one of my classes at a room I thought I should be in. It worked most of the time. Forgetting textbooks and even paper and pen was a regular occurance. It must have infuriated teachers that I could still answer most of their questions, because I got good grades despite my lack of organisation. One teacher actually advised me to keep doing my assignments the night before, since it seemed to work better for me than planning too far in advance and confusing myself. I tend to leave a trail of destruction behind me, as I wander off from something I have begun, and then get absorbed into something new. I lose things all the time. I'm certainly not a neat freak of the OCD kind. My cans don't all line up the same way in the pantry. (well not for long anyway) Apparently this is not completely foreign to autism. Organisation and sequencing are problem areas which relate to dual focus. Anticipating the outcome, while focussing on the immediate task.
So it appears I have tripped over the main deficit I share with people with Autism. Multiple focus. I guess I just had to follow it back to the root, to see where this outcome starts in all of us. I'm sure with a lot of ASD, this inability to focus derives from sensory and perception issues. In another it may be attention deficit issues caused by food? One difficulty with ASD is that we can only diagnose through behaviour or symptoms. Knowing the outcome doesn't mean you automatically know the cause, and each person may have arrived at the same "Autism" destination via a different pathway. Is multi-tasking difficult for a lot of introverts? Is that why we think, then talk, instead of doing both at once, and go into hiding for a little while each day to "process" things.
Now how do I improve my multi tasking?