Social Skills – Do they Define Autism?
August 20th, 2008I keep seeing people define autism as a “social” condition.
It is not.
Yes, autism affects how autistic people socialize. We don’t do it like neurotypicals. But that isn’t the root or sole effect of autism, nor is it even enough for a diagnosis. Having a hard time socially is something many, if not most, of us experience. But many people without autism have a hard time socially, too.
There is no one thing that every autistic has, that distinguishes autism from anything else. Instead, autism is defined by people having several of a set of characteristics – not all the characteristics, but enough to be significant, and enough to distinguish autism from many other neurological differences. Having just one characteristic (for instance, “social trouble”) is not autism.
What might some of the other characteristics be? The first bunch that pops to mind (I don’t subscribe to the DSM criteria, so these won’t match, but I do think most autism people will agree that these things are all common among autistic people – not universal, but common): Communication differences (receptive and expressive), unusual (compared to neurotypicals) sensory processing, trouble with short term memory and sequencing, learning styles that require a different way of approaching generalization, emotional differences, intense interests, and motor control issues. I’m sure there are bunches of others too, that I just don’t happen to be thinking of right now.
It is important that we remember all parts of autism, not just the social part, when we discuss autism publicly – it is more than having trouble with social stuff. (oh, and lest anyone think that this is what distinguishes “autism” from “Aspergers”, no, it doesn’t – Asperger’s shares the same things I mentioned above)
Hi there;
Maybe this is a dumb question….but what is the difference between Aspergers and Autism?
I have an Asperger’s dx-and having met enough other Aspies I think it fits…..but I have no idea how I differ from anybody else statistically except for the differences you mentioned. Those all fit me pretty well. I am an extrovert and have times where I am fairly social and times where I am too mentally tired to be very social.
~Sarah
The social condition is a secondary trait to me. The primary characteristics of autism are all you mentioned and the talent polarity is also usually a bit different and often aligned with the intensity of interest mentioned. Things like short term memory affect a lot of things in terms of social execution and timing.
Sarah try the following link (an overview of both):
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-44462006000500002&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
Oh thank gourd someone’s speaking up about this. It’s been a very recent revelation to me that NTs only really ‘get’ as problems the aspects of autism that affect THEM directly. (Nice empathy there, eh?) So our social skills are an easy target. Heaven forbid we ask them to meet us half-way though …
Then there’s my “reward” for having developed passable social skills: NO support for the other aspects of autism, the ones that really bother ME and decrease MY quality of life.
I don’t mean to sound bitter against all NTs. Am just at a point where I’m tired of being the designated strong one who should be able to make it on her own AND be understanding that “others need help more than she does.”
The major thing over here that really makes the difference between a diagnosis of ‘kanner’ autism and Asperger’s is speech delay. Don’t have it? Then Asperger’s (or PDD-NOS if there were just a bit too few of the other characteristics present). My own diagnosis states that they were giving me the Asperger’s diagnosis because I never had a speech delay (implying that otherwise I’d have had a kanner autism diagnosis). But I’ve read that in other (geographical) areas, other things are more important and will sway a diagnosis this way or that.
I recognised myself in social difficulties, but it has always been a lot of the other things on the list that I identify more with and that I recognised in myself sooner.
It will be a heck of a lot easier when the neurological disorder biomarkers all get sorted out (lol maybe never) and we don’t have to rely on aging faded (somtimes even false young) memories and features shared with other conditions to diagnose ASDs.
I brought in my seventy plus year old parents to speak with my psychologist. Of course they don’t remember a lot of the behaviors or delays I had against the background of 4 other children and 40 years gone by.
I second Molly’s observations too. I asked for help 30+ years ago, but at that time they didn’t have the ASD diagnostic categories, other than childhood schizophrenia. What help did I get? NONE. Am I having problems now that might have been avoided? IMO Yes. Do I think I still might need some help even though I have faked it fairly well for so many years? Yes.
Add ADD/ADHD into the mix too. I swear I was talked about as one of those hyperactive kids, but due to my fathers beliefs I would not get diagnosed, but disciplined. (Mike Savage bites the big one, I am autistic and yet the discipline he rantingly recommended didn’t change a thing for me, a$$hole.)
I don’t think Social Skills define autism. I do think that that Social Intuition (or lack thereof) does it though. NTs can pull (non-spoken) information from their sensory environment (like non-verbal communication) in a way that is much faster, therefore more useful, than can ACs. In order to get through a social situation successfully, ACs typcially have to through it intellectually, step-by-step.
For instance, I potentially get to the point where I can generalize about (i.e. read someone instantly) a particular person, but I have to go through an intense learning process for just about everyone.
I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but I think all this comes from a de-integration of emotions and intellect, and that many (if not all) of the other characteristics of autism can be viewed from as arising from that split.
Molly: Speaking as a deaf non-autistic person — I have to agree. And it’s not just autistic people who encounter this narrow perception.
I’m lucky in most ways that I think hearing people seem to be more sensitized to deafness and the accommodations and support we need than most people are toward autistic people. (Probably in good part just because the US Deaf community organized itself in the 19th century and so has had more time to slowly educate the public. Compared to autistic people who I believe only started organizing themselves a couple of decades ago–please correct if I’m mistaken.)
But even so, I have heard of stories where hearing people have tried to tell a deaf person that they don’t need an interpreter because their speech is perfectly comprehensible without one. This, naturally, misses the point that the DEAF person may well be having trouble understanding THEM.
I have not even read the half of it, personally I am offended by those (yeah even our neurodiverse brethren and sistern) who desciribe HFA or AS as no more than social dyslexia.]
Now being a bona fide dyslexic and as positive in that lable as I am with autism I do say that those who do so are both euphemistic and dismissive of dyslexia and missig the real point about autistic difference to those of us whose experience of the different .
Wassa diffenrence between autistic and dyslexic, between dyslexic an tourettic, between touretic an OCD.
There are no clear boundaries of anything at all, and I have official diagnoses of several of these conditions and so called experts have suggested additional diagnoses I could entertain at this banquet. What the hell What we are is what we are but what they say we are and what we are like is socially defined, hardly a new argument and those who are not with it, goodbye, you are yesterdays people categorising and upharsinatin with yesterdays ideas. Look ahead and bugger the clone wars, Spielburg and Lucas are only Newport,s selbst eccentric social constuction of the condition and premonitory dividing (or whatever thou categuesteth with primes ain’t autism either)
To whom or what was the “not even read the half of it” directed?
“I do think that that Social Intuition (or lack thereof) does it though.”
What about a person who (like me) has little social intuition when dealing with NTs, but a lot with autistics?
I don’t think autistics lack social intuition (except possibly due to growing up among NTs) but rather have a different kind of social intuition, that works for different people than the NT kind. A lot of NTs I’ve seen have no clue how to relate to autistics and other neurodiverse people.
There is that. By Social Intuition, I was primarily referring to the predominant mode of communication.
I’ve done quit a bit of research on the nature of emotions and communication. It’s to much to get into here, but if you’re interested check out the link below and go down to the essay entitled “Interpretations of the Mind”:
http://www.autism-society.org/site/Clubs?club_id=1168&pg=docs
BTW, the first page has a summary of what it’s all about.
Joel, this article is a keeper. Thanks for writing it.
Marcie: the truth of the matter is that most NTs have relatively lousy social intuition. Yep, you read that right. The reason they are more successful socially is that they have to solve a much simpler problem than people in the “wings” of the distribution. If most people react the same way you do emotionally and motivationally, you can be socially proficient by solving the problem “What would I do in this person’s shoes?”. But if you are an outlier in the wings of the distribution, most people do *not* react the same way you do emotionally or motivationally. You have to solve a much harder problem: “What would Joe Normal do in this person’s shoes?”, where Joe Normal is a sufficiently-precise abstraction of the emotional and motivational processes of that majority of people in the hump of the distribution. Those of us on the spectrum who *do* succeed, to lesser or greater extent, in navigating the mainstream social landscape, do so by building up such abstractions over the course of a lifetime.
I use a metaphor for this: remember in high school geometry when you had to inscribe regular polygons inside a circle? As the number of sides of the polygons increased, they came closer and closer to approximating the area of the circle. Constructing the abstraction of Joe Normal is like constructing those polygons to approximate the circle. Each new bit of information we add to our models doubles the number of sides of the polygon. An octagon is a crude approximation of the circle; a 16-, 32-, 64-, 256-gon each get successively closer. The challenge is to construct enough sides to obtain the precision needed for successful interaction. Polygons with the 2-billion-plus sides you get after a couple dozen more doublings are hard to tell apart from circles with the naked eye… but when they’re your only set of wheels, it can still sometimes be a bumpy ride.
But the main point is that it’s a much harder problem to solve, and the nonautistic majority have an inherent advantage because all they have to do is solve a much simpler problem.
The real test of social expertise is how well you can interact with people very different from yourself in emotional and motivational repertoires — and most NTs never have to do very much of that.
Phil, I don’t disagree with any of that. Most NTs are not “social savants”.
I think this misconception is what kept my daughter from getting the help she needed earlier. She would make eye contact with the doctor (read as: quick glance in her direction) and kept being described as a precious moments doll (large head, big eyes, tiny body) and distracted so many female professionals by her cuteness. They felt social toward her, therefore, she must be social. I couldn’t get them to see through this to hear the sensory, emotional, sleeping and eating challenges we were having with the added struggle of seeming to have to re-teach older skills like lost language. She was just so cute and sweet, there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong they kept saying.
I’m learning that people in general, NT or otherwise, struggle to understand what doesn’t affect them. Which makes a good deal of sense. The problem is when they refuse to try or judge you based on their sense of reality, their perception or their experiences. Especially when those people are professionals in the medical and developmental world.
“Am just at a point where I’m tired of being the designated strong one who should be able to make it on her own AND be understanding that “others need help more than she does.” – Molly
I completely understand your frustration. I feel the same way a great deal of the time. Like, oh I really should feel sorry for people who are less functioning than me, while they have all this support around them. I’m sorry to make this an issue of function, but this happens to be one of my main contentions with how NTs view the Autism spectrum. As in, well you can’t be having disabilities or problems, you look normal.
If it isn’t a Aspie group at meetup.com where the parents are heading the group, and trying to force their children towards behaving NT. It’s “Well you’re so smart, how can you not figure out how to drive?” or something else.
When you explain to someone you have an issue like Hyperacusis, you must either be looking for attention or behaving like a brat. Cause you don’t LOOK like someone who would have that issue.
Of course Molly, while dealing with all of this, you’re still being told how you don’t know what it’s like being an Autistic. Even out and out being guilt tripped into spending time with someone’s Autistic child, when you know that child most likely would want to be alone, or spend time with their parent, but their parent wants to feel they’re normal, so they have them play-act at being social for their sense of well-being.
I’m sorry, I know this real discussion of functionality will most likely get Joel upset again. In order to discuss the Autism spectrum, you can’t ignore that there are real differrences amongst the spectrum. That is what NTs do.
Am I saying, I’d be happier as a lower-functioning Autistic, no. What I am saying is that people like myself and Molly are going to always be going through life being told they need to be strong, and understand that others are suffering more than them. Despite how we may suffer, just not visibly or physically, it will be ignored simply cause it can’t be seen. It can be communicated, but the majority of the time it’s ignored. You feel rather jaded towards those who may be lower functioning than you, and who get lots of support. When you are having to deal with life, and ignorant NTs ignoring your communicating of your problems, and still are being told “Well you have no right to complain, you’re not a poor Autistic.”
[...] just read a blog post questioning the emphasis put on “social skills” when defining autism. Yes, autism affects how autistic people socialize. We don’t do it like neurotypicals. But that [...]