I guess not technically related to autism, but the size of the tree for us is huge. So you have a conversation with an autistic person, often our replies are considered and deliberate, and sometimes we may take time to answer, I know I’ve been called retarded enough to know, I’m not retarded, obviously, but I do often take my time, as do we all.
We will usually have 20-30 branches off the main conversation, branches and twigs, all considered, all of them tested first before we respond. As you can imagine this takes time. Then we respond.
In tense situations, as conversing with a crush (see Limerance) things can get incredibly fraught, this tree can then extend almost to infinity as we scramble for a good answer. I’ve done this so many times and we ended up looking like a complete idiot. I usually end up just grabbing any answer that sounds remotely interesting or funny, with many tangents to choose from, going deeper and deeper, I end up with an answer that is completely obscure to the listener, but not to me.
I’ve also noticed in the past that I steered conversations away from the topic to a topic that I would like to discuss, after enough failures I learned not to do this, so as a result I don’t do this any more.