I’ve just read a valuable post (over at the Autistic Science Person blog) on Non-autistic social skills. At first, I thought it was going to be a little tongue-in-cheek, but it is actually both gracious and enlightening.
If you haven’t got time to read the article right now – and you really deserve to give it a read, if at all possible – here are the summary reflections:
Some allistic people:
- Assume others have the same social cues, body language, and intent that they do during social interaction and are interpreting it the same way
- Subconsciously are very confident in their assessments of others’ body language/facial expression/tone of voice
- Subconsciously read between the lines even if there aren’t any
- Subconsciously consider social cues (where people look, how they sound, how they move) asjust as, or sometimes more important than the actual words being said by them
- Subconsciously assume how other people take in information (assume they know when someone else is making eye contact with them even though research shows this is not true).
- Assume other people are “reading” their social cues in the correct way and/or should be doing so, so there is no need to make this information explicit.
- Get overwhelmed, confused, or frustrated when the words someone says does not “match” their body language/tone of voice/facial expressions
- Are uneasy when texting or call someone on the phone because they cannot see the person’s facial expressions or body language and adjust their conversation based on these signals.
Some autistic people:
- May have subconscious social processing with other autistic people, but this is less known about because most of us interact with non-autistic people most of the time.
- Focus on actual words (as if you’re writing a text or email) more than tone of voice, body language, and facial expressions
- Look away from others to concentrate on their words
- Do not obtain meaning from allistic body language or where allistic people look, or at least do not jump to conclusions as quickly solely based on this information
- Experience overwhelm and pain with eye contact and prefer that other people not try to “look” at their face or eyes if they are intentionally looking away
- Can’t think of what to say, or can’t understand what the other person is saying when making eye contact with them – it is easy to completely blank out on words or become overwhelmed or in pain
Like, I said, it’s pretty enlightening stuff. Check it out for yourself here.