Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article really makes me question the definition of "provocative." The premise of this paper appears to be, "autistic people, like other humans, want social contact and relationships with others. This is true despite behavioral traits (like poor eye contact) that would seem to indicate otherwise."
Calling this "provocative" "challenging" or "new" strikes me as very disturbing. I actually spent a couple minutes asking my computer screen/academia variations of "why?" after reading the article. If accurate, it suggests that most of academia has never met an autistic person or read much of anything published by one of us. In the fields that deal directly with studying us, this is more than disturbing, it's outright terrifying.
Once and for all, everyone. Autistic people are people. We have the desire to make friends, be with others, maybe find a significant other, get married, have kids, etc. I have at least one autistic friend who is suffering from crushing loneliness because of how they've been treated by others. It can be that due to our unusual behaviors, points of view, and differences, that we despair of having friends or relationships, and decide we're better off without them... but any person can do that in the right circumstances. It's not an autism thing.
Lack of eye contact in neurotypical people may signal a lack of interest, but for us, it can be a way of minimizing pain or moderating information overload while in a conversation. It hurts me, like a baseball bat to the head, to look directly into peoples' eyes, or even right at at their faces. If I'm having a bad sensory day, a high anxiety day, or I'm upset with the person, I won't look directly at their faces, because why should I increase my suffering when the tradeoff is simply "the comfort of others"? Ya'll can deal with some poor eye contact so I can have another 15 minutes out of the house, and finish my grocery shopping or whatever.
Repetitive movements can be a way of calming one's senses in a busy environment. Some people play with fidget toys, knit, or do other activities while conversing. This is like a full-body version of that. I once knew a guy who bounced both his knees. He said he had hypertension, I think, but I actually learned to bounce one knee because of him. It's a movement that can be hidden below a desk, which makes it much more socially appropriate than full-body rocking. However, the larger the movement, the more comforting and realigning it can be for the senses. Behaviors like rocking, spinning, rolling, etc. serve this purpose.
Echolalia, or repeating, word for word, phases or words spoken to you, is probably the toughest of these behaviors for a neurotypical person to handle. Most people have been subject to mocking via repeating our words back at us, often as small children, but even sometimes when we're older. When an autistic person does the same thing, it can be hard not to see it as either mocking or as a sign of disinterest or lack of understanding. It's simply not done.
Thing is, conversations are hard. The demands of "a proper conversation" with give and take and paraphasing what the other person says to be sure we understand it, and responding in the same mood, and finding what words to move the conversation along, can be extremely difficult even for neurotypical people. Not surprising, then, that autistic people find other ways of doing things. We can even build up whole vocabularies of phrases used differently than the "normal" way, kind of like our own personal language or set of in-jokes.
The actual article linked with the DOI at the bottom of this article also mentions lack of pointing. I'm not sure how common or uncommon that is in autistic people, but I strongly remember my mother telling me it was rude to point at people. I'm not sure if that explains the whole of the phenomenon, but it might factor in. It may also be that the pointing behavior, signaling a bid for attention, has simply been rewarded with negative consequences so much that most autistic people don't bother. I'm honestly not sure.
If nothing else, please remember the bottom line: different does not mean broken. We are still people. We still want to have friends, relationships, family, etc. Please don't mistake our differences for unsociability.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
Today's article really makes me question the definition of "provocative." The premise of this paper appears to be, "autistic people, like other humans, want social contact and relationships with others. This is true despite behavioral traits (like poor eye contact) that would seem to indicate otherwise."
Calling this "provocative" "challenging" or "new" strikes me as very disturbing. I actually spent a couple minutes asking my computer screen/academia variations of "why?" after reading the article. If accurate, it suggests that most of academia has never met an autistic person or read much of anything published by one of us. In the fields that deal directly with studying us, this is more than disturbing, it's outright terrifying.
Once and for all, everyone. Autistic people are people. We have the desire to make friends, be with others, maybe find a significant other, get married, have kids, etc. I have at least one autistic friend who is suffering from crushing loneliness because of how they've been treated by others. It can be that due to our unusual behaviors, points of view, and differences, that we despair of having friends or relationships, and decide we're better off without them... but any person can do that in the right circumstances. It's not an autism thing.
Lack of eye contact in neurotypical people may signal a lack of interest, but for us, it can be a way of minimizing pain or moderating information overload while in a conversation. It hurts me, like a baseball bat to the head, to look directly into peoples' eyes, or even right at at their faces. If I'm having a bad sensory day, a high anxiety day, or I'm upset with the person, I won't look directly at their faces, because why should I increase my suffering when the tradeoff is simply "the comfort of others"? Ya'll can deal with some poor eye contact so I can have another 15 minutes out of the house, and finish my grocery shopping or whatever.
Repetitive movements can be a way of calming one's senses in a busy environment. Some people play with fidget toys, knit, or do other activities while conversing. This is like a full-body version of that. I once knew a guy who bounced both his knees. He said he had hypertension, I think, but I actually learned to bounce one knee because of him. It's a movement that can be hidden below a desk, which makes it much more socially appropriate than full-body rocking. However, the larger the movement, the more comforting and realigning it can be for the senses. Behaviors like rocking, spinning, rolling, etc. serve this purpose.
Echolalia, or repeating, word for word, phases or words spoken to you, is probably the toughest of these behaviors for a neurotypical person to handle. Most people have been subject to mocking via repeating our words back at us, often as small children, but even sometimes when we're older. When an autistic person does the same thing, it can be hard not to see it as either mocking or as a sign of disinterest or lack of understanding. It's simply not done.
Thing is, conversations are hard. The demands of "a proper conversation" with give and take and paraphasing what the other person says to be sure we understand it, and responding in the same mood, and finding what words to move the conversation along, can be extremely difficult even for neurotypical people. Not surprising, then, that autistic people find other ways of doing things. We can even build up whole vocabularies of phrases used differently than the "normal" way, kind of like our own personal language or set of in-jokes.
The actual article linked with the DOI at the bottom of this article also mentions lack of pointing. I'm not sure how common or uncommon that is in autistic people, but I strongly remember my mother telling me it was rude to point at people. I'm not sure if that explains the whole of the phenomenon, but it might factor in. It may also be that the pointing behavior, signaling a bid for attention, has simply been rewarded with negative consequences so much that most autistic people don't bother. I'm honestly not sure.
If nothing else, please remember the bottom line: different does not mean broken. We are still people. We still want to have friends, relationships, family, etc. Please don't mistake our differences for unsociability.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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