From what you're saying it sounds like "autism" meaning "incapacity to relate [emotionally or in complex fashion?] with other humans" (or variant thereof) is separating itself linguistically from "autism" meaning "specific mental health condition"...have I got that about right?

It'd be nice to have correct(er) terms if possible.  I know a young girl who has been diagnosed with Aspergers; the most I know about autism (medically diagnosable condition) is that there was a book written about it (where an example of autism was the narrator's inability to recognise the emotions described with simply "smiley" type faces), and there was a television programme about a woman who seemed to have five autistic kids (maybe I've got that wrong), and one of them seemed very clued up--his main problem was that he had endless energy he needed to vent so he became just uncontrollable, leaping over things (I may have remembered that wrong.)

Is it useful now to make a distinction between the kind of people ThatBritGuy is describing (might be called people who would score low on an EQ test--I'm not sure...the shorthand word most used seems to be "autistic"--so...er....I think it's a useful distinction to make if such a distinction can be made--I'm saying...if autism is a "scale of social inability" then...hmmm...could you expand on "it's nothing like the social malady you're describing"?

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.