The difficulties of communication between people with autism and are not linked to the different ways of communicating, not to a communication deficit of the former.
One of the first criteria for defining autistic spectrum disorders is the “deficit of social communication and social interaction”. Yet communication It is a bidirectional exchangewhich can be influenced by misunderstandings and (pre) judgments. What if we had focused on one part of the speech so far? If the problem was not some “lack” of people with autism, but rather a diversity in the expressive codes used?
According to a new study, people with autism they do not communicate in a less effective way Compared to neurotypical people. Rather, they communicate differently. These differences would be – and not a lack of communication skills in those suffering from autism – to complicate social relations sometimes between those with autism spectrum disorders and those who do not have them.
A unbalanced vision. «Most of the research so far – write the researchers of the University of Edinburgh in the study, published on Nature Human Behaviour – He assumed A deficit model of autismcharacterizing the differences in the sociability and communication in autistic communication as deviations from the normality that need remedy. This model, however, ignores the relational nature of the social interaction And it locates the cause of the difficulties of social interaction exclusively within the autistic person ».
The origins of the stigma. People with autism may have difficulties in reading body language and reading the social signals of an interaction; They can communicate more directly, have a limited facial mimicry, not to be able to respect the shifts of a conversation, have difficulty understanding the change of modulation of the tone of certain words or in reproducing it in turn.
A negative vision of social benefits considered “non -regulatory” strengthens prejudice On autism, ending up further isolating the people who suffer from it, reducing their social opportunities and worsening their quality of life.
Listen and refer. Scientists tested the transmission of information between people with autism, between neurotypical people and in groups with both components using the technique of diffusion chain – A sort of “wireless phone” – replicating and extending a previous study. They involved 311 people, who had to listen to a story reported by a researcher and tell her to the person sitting next to it.
The last person of the chain had to repeat the story aloud, and the scientists also tested the amount of information in various “rings” of the chain to understand how much it was lost along the way.
No differences were found in the transfer of information between chains with single neurotype (only people with autism; only neurotypical people) and mixed (people with or without autism).
Who did you find yourself better with? However, when the participants were questioned on the liking of the experience, having to decide how much it had been Pleasant, embarrassing or easy Exchange, autistic people said they had preferred to communicate with other people with autism; And the non -autistic ones, with other people not suffering from autism. For the authors of the study, this should be to the different forms that communication assumes In those suffering from autism and in those who are not.
Differences, not distances. Research is an invitation to perceive communication styles in people with autism as a difference and not as a missing form of something. Not like a “to fix” sphere but as a track to be hooked where it is distant, so as to create more inclusive spaces and companies.
