Most people on the spectrum will read this and go No kidding. If youre up for bonus commentary thats half as long as the article itself, read on. If you catch yourself referring to autistic people as unable to read body language or social cues, heres something you might find relevant: People on the spectrum are (typically) able to notice body language and other spoken cues. Where the disconnect happens is typically in one of two places: * In the way the brain handles and prioritizes information such as sensory input, or * In drawing conclusions from that information. Most of you have been told (thanks to pop psychology) that autistic people cannot do one or both of those two things. Heres what actually happens: For a person on the spectrum, verbal information is typically a higher processing priority than nonverbal information, because its typically higher-quality, more complete information. If you have to unconsciously pick one to focus on due to sensory overwhelm, thats probably the one youll pick. (Theres a little more to it than that, but thats enough to get the gist of it.) For the second part--which this piece doesnt touch on, but many socially-focused articles written by people on the spectrum do--most neurotypical people are taught to generalize (sometimes disturbingly broadly!) off of what to a non-neurotypical person might be vague gestures. A non-neurotypical person may notice that you pace, but instead of assuming youre upset, theyll consider that you might be feeling energetic, that you might pace as a physical focus when discussing emotionally big topics, or that you might just pace when you talk--that is, if they draw a conclusion from your pacing at all. When everything looks like something could potentially be wrong, you learn to tune out the false alarms and work on trusting that people will tell you when something is wrong. Autistic people often require tighter heuristics than neurotypical people for drawing conclusions from body language. A 60% chance of being right is a 40% chance of being wrong, and theyll often hold out for 95% before drawing conclusions. It doesnt mean they cant read and interpret body language; it just means that they need more data to do that pattern-matching than neurotypical people typically rely on. Side note: The body language of autistic people often does not map to their emotional state. This is especially true for facial expressions, which may be reflecting simultaneous mental side tangents completely unrelated to what else is going on in the room. (If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if I was angry when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to eat for lunch...) Autistic people who know their face often reflects something random theyre thinking about rather than what they feel will often give you the same credit. They may in fact be interpreting your body language after all, but interpreting it as possibly unrelated to what youre expressing verbally. If you have trouble expressing yourself verbally, you can ask the autistic people in your life to keep this in mind and to focus on your facial expressions or body language over what you say, and (heres the hard part) let them know what your individual tells are for sadness, anger, frustration, etc. They dont look the same on every person. If youre frustrated when the autistic person in your lifes words and body language dont match up, and you want to know what theyre really feeling, heres one thing that will help in a big way: try taking what they say at face value. Dont read anything into it whenever possible. (It takes practice; neurotypical people, especially people with female socialization, are often taught to extrapolate missing information or search for hidden motives. There are good reasons for this in broader culture, but its a less helpful behavior with your friends and loved ones on the spectrum.) Let them know youre doing this. Let their body language just be background noise, and focus on what theyre saying, not how theyre saying it. (Flat affect or challenges with emotional regulation may make how theyre saying it very different from their actual intent, and they may not have full control over this.) It gets easier with practice, and its a relationship game-changer.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 05:01:34 +0000
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