In this short essay, I will try to explain in a few lines why social interactions with Neurotypicals are hard to understand for people with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). Of course, the topic is very complex and cannot be fully explained in five minutes. I hope this will be of help nevertheless.
The first principle to understand social interactions is that neurotypicals communicate on multiple channels. A “face-to-face conversation” does not take place only on the verbal channel (the words that are pronounced). It also takes place on the body language channel, on the facial expressions channel and on the voice intonation channel. In order to fully understand what message is transmitted, you will have to pay attention to all such channels.
If you are not able (yet) to recognize body language, facial expressions and vocal intonations, you will have to train such skills. A method that some find effective is to watch again a movie or tv series episode which you already watched in the past, this time without voice and without subtitles. Focus on the body language and facial expressions of the actors, while using your previous knowledge of the story to interpret them.
If this is too difficult for you, or if you find you are not learning enough, repeat the previous exercise in company of a neurotypical friend or family member, asking them to tell you what is going on just based on the body language and facial expressions. Make sure that they explain how they reached such conclusions: which expressions did they observe? Which postures? Do not be afraid to ask too many questions. Make sure that you fully understand a scene before passing to the next one.
Once you have finished watching the movie or episode, watch it one more time. Keep watching it until you memorized all the facial expressions, body language postures, their meaning and how to recognize them.
If you did this correctly, the next time you observe a social interaction in the real world you should be able to pick up some of the facial expressions and body language postures, especially if you proactively look for them. With enough time (a few months) you should be able to do this passively, without thinking too much about it.
The second principle of social interactions is that neurotypicals communicate for multiple purposes (often, covert ones). Small talk, for example, does not take place to exchange information about the weather or other banalities. It takes place to make the other person comfortable, for gauging his or her value and intentions and eventually for showing that person that you can be a valuable ally to him or her. Other kinds of conversation might have other purposes. If you do not understand the real purpose of a conversation, it will feel meaningless to you. But if neurotypicals keep having such conversations, chances are that they have a purpose (even if they might not be consciously aware of them).
The third and last thing to remember is that neurotypicals consider a broader context as being part of the conversation. You might think that the only things that matter in a conversation is the message being transmitted through the words (and the purpose for transmitting such message). Many other things matter. Here are a few.
- Whether you act confidently or not will modify the valence and validity of your message. For example, if you speak unconfidently, your message might be received as the opposite (they might think you’re lying just because you look unconfident).
- Some people might be influenced in the reception of your message by how you’re dressed, how you entered the room, who you know and other contextual details. I’m not saying that everyone will use such criteria to judge you, but that some will. You need to be aware of these criteria and their importance, in order to understand how people might react to you, and eventually to change their perception of you. The best way to learn about these criteria is simply to observe them, relentlessly, around you. With some time (a few months at least) you should be able to notice their patterns.
- When you speak, people will project what you said over the map of their beliefs and worldviews. What they will hear is not only determined by what you said, but by how they will interpret it. It’s not fair, but it’s how some people work. You need to be aware of it and talk taking this into account.
To conclude, remember: neurotypicals communicate across multiple channels, for multiple purposes, using context to make sense of content, often in an unconscious and/or covert way. The more you will keep this at mind, the more you will notice the patterns of their communication and the more you will be able to learn the rules of communicating with them.
I will soon publish a new book, “The World of Neurotypicals”, in which I explain the implicit rules governing the interactions between people not affected by ASD. It is a useful guide which will help high-functioning autistic people to understand a world they might not be fully grasping (yet).
You can pre-order the book here.
