Autism Acceptance Day 13: Communication
TL/DR: Communication is difficult for me being on the spectrum. It's not always easy to present what's in my brain to someone else so they can easily understand.
I was having difficulty about what the topic should be for today, and then my wife asked me about the USB cable she got with her new(ish) iPhone. I saw it was one of those with the USB-C on one end and the Lightning plug on the other. So I told her about the history of the USB standard, and how they went from USB-A to USB-Mini to USB-Micro, and then the different standards (USB 1.0, 2.0, 3.0). After about ten minutes of samples of the different plugs, and talking about the current data and electrical transfer rates of the USB-A vs USB-C, I finally realized she was looking at me funny.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I was just wondering why the cable I got had such a funny end on it and why it doesn’t look like my old cable.”
“Why didn’t you just ask that question?” I was starting to get confused about things.
“I thought that’s what I asked.”
Communication with others has always been difficult for me. My parents told me that my first word was, instead of mama or dada, the word light. I learned to walk before I really started speaking regularly. I was also a kid who was very focused on my own wants and needs, and how I could get them on my own. I was very quiet as a kid, and this didn’t phase my parents in the least since I was their first. Once my sister was born two years later, they started to wonder what I had been up to all those times I was quiet.
However, people rarely heard from me about things I wanted or was interested in. In human social development, this is called Joint Attention, and I certainly had difficulties with it. This is called Theory of Mind, and it is a big part of my difficulties with communication. Here’s how I explain it to people:
Imagine there’s a puppet show, and a girl comes on the stage carrying a small bouncy ball. There are two baskets on the stage, one on stage left and one on stage right. The girl, let’s call her Poppet (see what I did there - lol), puts the ball in the one to stage left and leaves the stage. While she’s off stage, a boy puppet comes on the stage, takes the ball out of the stage left basket and moves it to the stage right one before also leaving the stage. Poppet returns to the stage and the audience is asked the question, “Where will Poppet look for her ball?”
Now, most of you, being over the age of 3, will say the one on stage left, correct? Why? Because that’s where she left it. OK, you have good theory of mind, and most kids and adults over the age of 3 will answer the same. However, what if the audience is made up of kids under 3, what will their answer be? If you think about most 2 year olds you may have known, they will probably answer the basket at stage right, since that’s where they know it is. This is poor theory of mind.
Theory of Mind can be summed up as the instinctive knowledge (not taught) that each person has their own mind with their own knowledge and experiences, and using that when dealing with others. So, you knew what Poppet had seen and experienced, and that she would use that information to retrieve her ball. But kids under 3 don’t often have that ability. So, for the average Neurotypical, this is just the way that their brain works, but this ability doesn’t really develop until age 3-5.
Now, here’s where we have to start playing scientist. What would happen if, instead of neurotypical people over the age of 3, what if they were autistic? How would they answer the question of where Poppet would look for her ball? Most of them would answer like the 3 and under group (at least until their school age years). Their brain is wired differently than their neurotypical peers. There’s seemingly a lack of ability to know that other people have their own minds and experiences that may be different than their own, and they tend to be very self absorbed and non-social. However, around age 6-10, some of these autistic kids start to answer the question of where she’ll look differently. They will start to say she’ll look where she left the ball. These kids are the ones who, from the DSM-IV (1994) until the DSM-5 (2013), would be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Kids with Asperger’s would start to logically think out the answer to the question, and realize that she was not present when the boy moved the ball, and realize that she would look in the original place. This is one of the reasons that the idea of “high-functioning” autistics came from. They didn’t seem to have any intellectual differences from their neurotypical peers but just developed at a slower pace. Traditional autistic individuals, those called “low-functioning,” would still answer the question the same way.
The big difference between those with Asperger’s and their neurotypical peers comes when asked a second question. After asking where Poppet would look, they would ask what she might do next. Or, they might ask “When she doesn’t find it, how would she feel?” The neurotypical individuals would say that she’d be upset, sad, angry, confused and probably just not do anything while she thought about the problem. The individuals with Asperger’s would say something like, “She’ll just look in the other basket.” Those with Asperger’s would be able to logically process the answer to the first question, but wouldn’t be able to feel what she would feel.
THIS is the main issue with communication for autistic individuals. We have difficulty giving enough background information when communicating with someone because we often don’t realize that they don’t know what we know. It’s like trying to read a book with parts of pages missing individual words and letters. Sometimes you can figure out the meaning of things, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense. But for those with high functioning autism/Asperger’s, like me, that’s not often the problem. The problem is we have difficulty reading the audience. We can’t tell when the other person is getting bored, or when something we said bothers them. We can’t read their nonverbal cues and body language to judge whether what we’re saying is clear or not, or if the other person is confused and we should make an effort to clarify for them. And for some of us (like me), it is often easier just to stay quiet in the background so that I don’t have to deal with small talk (I am often told that I overshare when in a situation that calls for small talk.
The biggest problem with my communication difficulties is when talking with my wife. Since many of our discussions are on topics that are personal and, occasionally, dealing with things we’re emotionally invested in, that inability to read how she’s feeling during the discussion can lead to some really horrible miscommunications. That example conversation at the beginning was not very difficult, but I was unable to figure out when she was confused about why I was telling her the differences in the USB plugs and not answering her main question.
We have been married for 26 years (in August), and we are much better at communicating with each other than when we first got together. But we still have times when our communication fails, and one or both of us get upset with the other. And we are quicker at getting over our upset and hashing out what went wrong, but we will never be perfect. And we have both accepted that aspect of being a neurotypical/neurodivergent married couple and are willing to keep learning about each other and making our marriage stronger by working through each difficulty we face along the way.
LINKS: ASD & Communication; ASD Communication Strategies; Speech & Communication in Autism
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I hope for you to be happy, be kind, and know that I appreciate you more than you know.
As before, this illuminates interactions I’ve had with others in my life. I share these with three people who are actively involved teaching. Thank you!
Former President is confused:
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-mental-acuity/