3 ms·
The social protocol that low support needs autistic people use is similar to the social protocol that some higher (meaning those who can communicate) support ne
by john01dav 1y ago
The social protocol that low support needs autistic people use is similar to the social protocol that some higher (meaning those who can communicate) support needs autistic people use. The fundamental difference in my opinion (which is primarily formed from fairly extensive personal experience and thinking about it) is that autistic communication is fundamentally collaborative, while allistic communication is fundamentally adversarial. This is not to say that anyone is always collaborative or adversarial, or that the communication mode necessarily matches intentions.
For example, an allistic (meaning not autistic, but perhaps neurodivergent in some other way) person is more likely to keep their goal unstated and only known through subtle semi-involuntary signs that others evolved to pick up on due to the advantages that come from understanding such semi-involuntarily-shared information. Autistic people who can speak generally just say, with words alone, what they want to communicate, and are less inclined to make such subtle inferences and less likely to perform them in the way that allistic people do. For some people this manifests in an autism accent where the speech is completely well formed in a grammatical sense (not necessarily the same grammar that's in formal writing) but has no tonal information.
This difference is also reflected in conflict resolution: most autistic people will each say what their goals are and then try to find a way to satisfy everyone's goals. Allistic people I have observed are more likely to not want to put that effort in, and will this via the aforementioned subtle communication decide on some particular resolution or will play social status games to get their way.
There is also some scientific research in this area that provides support for this understanding of different modes of communication. For example this¹ provides evidence that there is a different mode of communication, although it doesn't explore what makes up those differences. It filtered for typical IQ scores, but not for support needs.
1: Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Jones, M., Adams, C., Pearson, A., Scott, F., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2019). Autistic people’s social camouflaging in daily life. Autism, 23(3), 606–613.
- chneu 1y agoThanks for typing that up. It's a very good way of describing this. I think autistic people are better at dropping their egos and working towards goals. As an autistic person, I fucking LOVE building a plan with a clear set of goals and then accomplishing em. It has nothing to do with me as an individual, it's all about the big picture. I run into problems with people who can't drop their ego and work together because I just don't want to tolerate it. Give me a STEM team full of autistics folks any day. So much less ego to deal with.
- watwut 1y agoOne of the issues with autism is lower ability to recognize and communicate own emotions and needs. Other people do not get direct straightforward information, they get less information, because autistic himself/herself have no idea. One of very typical results is very emotional autistic person who will insist they are totally rational and non emotional in the moment. It can also cause autistic to have lower emotional control, because emotions are harder to control when you do not understand them. Autistic are not collaborative - they frequently end up locked in own heads completely ignoring what other people openly directly say.
- shitpostbot 1y ago[dead]
- seec 1y agoI believe autism is stigmatized and presented as something wrong because most people do not want to engage in honest/candid conversation because it might hurt their feelings. People are always looking for plausible deniability and weaponized vagueness in order to get away with things. They don't like it when others don't behave that way because it puts them in situations where they would have to assume the risks of their behaviors. As far as I'm concerned, it's not the so-called autists that are in the wrong but everyone else that is basically engaged in deceptive behavior. I think this behavior is the most prevalent because of evolutionary pressure, in order to avoid conflict and potentially bad outcomes. It makes sense in a violent world were looking at someone wrong may get you killed but is very unproductive in a society that is supposed to be orderly and high trust. That being said it seems like the world is becoming much more low trust and autistic behavior can indeed become risky/problematic.