I don't know about it being autism related ... but I do know I experience these. More the first two and last one than the third. However, my wife is prone to the third one.
With the feeling of needing keep conversations going ... this is huge for me when dealing with other people ... particularly individuals. If there is every this kind of silence ... where the talking stops ... I feel like I need to fill it ... but I don't always have something meaningful to say ... and I'm bad at small talk ... usually at this point I say something nonsensical or random like "bunnies" or "I love you" (when its my wife) ... it doesn't usually get the conversation going but its just a coping mechanism for dealing with the sense of emptiness from the gap in conversation ... of reaching this place in a conversation and not knowing what I'm supposed to do. I think it might be a form of stimming.
When I was young and I hit those gaps I used to ask people what they were thinking or feeling or was going through their mind ... but I found people didn't like that. Or not that they didn't like it, but that they usually didn't know or didn't want to talk about it and so it was just frustrating for them ... which was less useful than saying something random.
Now, when I'm with people I know, I keep a list of things that they like to talk about and I learn about those things. So when I see them and conversation stalls, I have subjects ready to talk to them about. Or a list of things I can ask them questions about at least. With some people, I just jabber about my current special interest ... and I can go on for hours. However, a lot of that comes from a sense that I am responsible for the conversation ... because when I am in a group and they are talking ... I usually don't participate. I don't talk. I usually just watch. Its only when I feel responsible for making the conversation work that I'm a jabber box (or if I've got a particularly strong need to talk about what I'm working on/researching)
I'm not sure what happens if you are talking to someone and conversation hits a road bump and then you don't do anything ... I guess you stop talking. When talking is all you are doing though ... having that stop means now you just have a person in your house and you aren't doing anything with them ... its awkward and weird.
My wife and I have solved this largely by only talking while doing other things, like watching TV. We'll watch a show and something in the show will make us want to talk ... so stop the show and start talking ... and then when the conversation stalls ... we go back to watching our show. It also works well if you are playing cards or doing some other kind of thing. It really reduces the stress to keep the conversation going, because socialization doesn't end just because you stopped talking. So I recommend if you are hanging out with people to not just talk ... do something else too ... even if you don't really like what your doing (I hate card games ... I can't seem to understand them) ... but it fills in that gap and doesn't leave you with this awkward silence that you need to fill ...
Or just avoid people. I'm good with that too. It's my wife who likes people.
Which brings up the third item ... I said i don't have that issue, but my wife does ... she does that all the time. She makes plans with people and then when the day comes she whines to me that she doesn't want to do it ... she wishes she hadn't made plans with them ... etc. The big difference between me and her is I know that that I don't know how I'm going to feel in a few weeks ... so I don't like making plans very far in advance ... even if it seems like a good idea right now.
She has a hard time remembering that she's probably going to change her mind, so if someone says "lets get together in two weeks" ... which is totally out of her frame of reference ... she says 'sure!' ... because she's not even thinking about how she'll feel then.
I think this has a lot less to do with socialization and more to do with how one plans in general ... about the ability to look at the future ... versus what sounds good right now. My wife is very in the moment. Very instant gratification. Very much 'right now'. So she isn't thinking about how she's going to feel in two weeks or even two hours. She gets caught up in the moment and in this moment it sounds like a really good idea and thats all she's thinking about.
The reason it seems more obvious with socialization over other things is because when we make plans with ourselves and then change them we barely notice because no one cares ... we have no responsibility to follow through ... however, when other people are involved, we are expected to follow through even if we have changed our mind so it becomes more obvious.
However, unlike my wife, I think about the future and past a lot ... and I like plans ... and when I make a plan I like to keep it ... and my wife changing her plans all the time impacts my plans ... even if they are just plans with herself ... so I notice that she does it ... even if she doesn't. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you make a lot of plans with yourself and then change them. It just doesn't bother you.
If that is the case, that's not a socialization problem ... its a planning problem or a commitment problem.
The solution is the same ... don't make plans with people more than a few days in advance. If someone says 'lets plan to get together in a few weeks' ... say 'I don't know what I'll have going on then, why don't we talk when it gets a little closer to that time' ... you want to keep your plans soft, so you can bail when you ultimately change your mind ... or so you can follow through if you are still interested. Keeping plans soft might actually make you feel better about following through, since you might actually be reacting to the sense of 'having to do it' ... of the commitment ... I've observed that having to do something can often make people not want to do it, even if they don't mind or would be willing normally.
