Communication breakdown

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What does everyone think is the cause of the seemingly frequent miscomunications and misunderstandings between NT's and autistic people?

My own theory is:

- NT lack of understanding of how autie's see the world.
- Autistic people then make "mistakes" (social faux pa's or seem rude)
- The lack of understanding means that the NT then reacts badly or with hostility
- This, of course, stresses out the autistic person.
- This experience is then "logged" in the amazing autistic brain database and recalled when the next social interaction takes place
- This makes that next interaction a bit more stressful
- This stress makes it MORE likely that social cues, facial expressions or hidden verbal meanings will be missed (cos the autistic person is anxious that they will cause offense again)
- The autistic person unintentionally cause offense again
- Repeat the cycle

This vicious circle, when gone through many times, create a whole treasure trove of bad memories in the autistic person and now the often excellent autistic memory acts against the person because they can't simply "forget" these bad experiences and bad reactions form NT's. These are recalled iin every social situation making them incredibly stressful. This stress means that social situations are avoided and of course this sets up a secondary vicious circle:

- The autistic person avoid social contact
- As a result they have less opportunity to learn how to interact socially with NT's
- This means they find it hard to improve their social skills, through lack of practice.
- They know they lack these skills and so this feeds into their anxiety leading to the notion "oh I just can't DO social interaction"
- Repeat to step 1

I am not autistic myself, I have a 4 year old son who is, but I am on a mission to understand the issues faced by autistic people as they get older. I want to be able to see potential problems before they arrise and take preventative measures. The above ideas have bean gleamed through conversations with adult autistic people but my data points are limited so any comments or thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks

Autistics have trouble effectively communicating. Period. It's truly not just an issue between NTs and people on the spectrum, because miscommunication and misunderstanding is even more prevalent in my relations with other autistics.

The primary problem is that NTs and autistics think differently.
NTs often make social-emotional interpretations of things that autistics say without implying XYZ.
And autistics don't know that NTs think that they implied XYZ and interpreted more than there was.
So that is major cause of misunderstandings between NTs and autistics.

What you're describing sounds like development of social anxiety, which can happen for many autistic people who had negative social incidents, but it is not autism itself, and some autistic people don't develop social anxiety.

Sure but the driving force behind the development of social anxiety is the miscommunication between autistics and NT's. And this then becomes a feed back loop. So I agree the miscommunication is not the autism itself it is an effect of having two different cognitive styles trying to communicate. Now this happens for others as well, not just autistics, many NT's develop social anxiety but I would argue that it is more prevalent in the autistic community. The good news is that greater awareness by NT's will help break the cycle the bad news is that generating that awareness is often quite hard. It is difficult for most people to think differently and understand that other people may see the world in a very different way to them.

Interesting. I have heard different views from aspies and high functioning autistics who have said that they have no problem communicating and empathising with fellow autistic people its just the NT's that they find weird, chaotic and random.

Are these face-to-face interactions where they have no communication problems? Hmm, I guess I can see how in theory there would be less issues, but I personally cannot imagine a consistent relationship of any sort involving me where I wouldn't have my typical communication blocks- NT or ASD.

When you say "communication blocks" what do you mean? Could you elaborate on why you find it hard to communicate? Is it because you find it hard to understand what's going on internally for you i.e. understanding your own emotional responses and thus it becomes hard to express those feelings to others? (many NT's struggle with this as well but I have heard that autistic people often have additional problems in self reporting/ self diagnosing emotional states) Or is it something more fundamental like not being able to connect the words you want to say with what you want to say? Or is it something completely different! I really want to understand this because I need to be able to communicate with my son. He is very young now (4 1/2) so its a bit early to be discussing his emotional states with him but I want to get ahead of the game and increase my understanding of how his mind might be working. Obviously I know that you can't tell me how it is for my son because he is unique but you might be able to offer me some clues that I can't think of myself.

This sums up most of the problems I have had communicating with people.

It's not so much anxiety as it is feeling like I might have to say A through W to make sure I don't get misunderstood as implying XYZ. It takes too much effort and it just gets tiresome.

I actually empathise with this. As an NT when I communicate with autistic people it takes extra effort because I am worried about using idioms, metaphor and other turns of phrase that I know the person I am trying to talk to might struggle with. I have often typed out a post on line and the had to go back and de-idiom it and I stress that a few idioms might slip through the net (.....like just then when I used "slip through the net"! !! ). It does take extra effort because we are so used to thinking and communicating in a certain way.

Sure, I can try my best to elaborate. Part of the issue definitely comes from not being unable to understand my feelings or reactions, which switches my feelings over to one feeling- frustration! Then when you couple that frustration with my severe executive dysfunction that impacts self-regulation, the mixture of all of my feelings, that I don't even grasp, tends to come out in very inappropriate ways. This leaves other parties in a bewildered state and possibly some kind of hurt feelings. I guess the biggest difference here between most NTs that struggle with identifying and understanding their feelings and me is the frequency in which it impacts. I would put this down as my biggest detriment when it comes to friendships. "I don't like when you do ____, because ______." is just something I am unable to do, so minor problems become major problems. This is where miscommunication comes in.

I also have great trouble articulating my thoughts, wants, and needs. I mean incredibly basic needs. I guess the best example I can give here is one that would have been from childhood. As a child, when I would be so hungry that I needed to eat ASAP, I was never able to directly tell anybody "I'm hungry". I really cannot describe this any further because I'm not sure about the whys and hows. These incidences would end with me melting down. I know I'm hungry, I know I need to eat, but why can't I communicate that? I don't know. I still have issues with these types of things, just in a different way. What I mean by trouble articulating thoughts is that since conversations go so fast, I don't tend to follow and process very well nor do I get the needed time to think through what I want to say and often end up saying things that aren't what I intended. Some of those situations do come down to social faux pas, yes, but not always. This is where misunderstanding comes in

I feel like I missed the mark in trying to describe it all, but I gave it a go.

**EDIT- "Or is it something more fundamental like not being able to connect the words you want to say with what you want to say?"

Yes, this is what I was trying to describe at one point in my post haha, so I'll just say yes to this directly so you catch that clearly.

calstar2

Thank you for your insights. I think you explained it very well actually.
I can relate this experience with my little boy. He sometimes gets into a very distressed state where it is like he just does not know what he wants. He is normally crying and screaming when he is like this and will demand something, for example a favourite toy, or his ipad or a book. But as soon as I bring him the object he requested he asks for something else. Even though he asked for the thing I just brought him it is not what he REALLY wanted at all. I think that in his distressed state his mind is just grasping for familiar things that he knows he does like but it is not what he really needs. This can go on for some time and we end up in a look he asked for object a then b then d then e end then back to a again! Nothing works!

The only way I have managed to sometimes snap him out of this quickly is, and this may sound odd, is to tickle him. If I can tickle him and get him laughing enough then its like he forgets he is distressed and then calms down. But that has only worked a couple of times normally it takes an hour of patient cuddling, soft talking and unconditional love. I just wish I knew what was going on in his head so I could help more. The problem is that he does not really know what's going on in his head so my mission is to know him better than he knows himself....not an easy task!

Most kids on the spectrum have issues with becoming overwhelmed by sensory issues at times and the way I look at it, when you're struggling with e.g. unpleasant beeps from technology or too much noise or whatever the issue and there's s conversation or interaction or some kind of social demand on top, it comes out looking like social anxiety, and sometimes that's what it is. But many times it's the complexity of processing becomes overwhelming, especially because it's combined with other things that cause distress and I don't think calling the issue social anxiety makes things better, you have to look at the whole issue to find solutions, as you are trying to do.

A lot of people might look socially anxious with a car horn blaring in their ear and sometimes that's how the world can feel. A sensory issue will respond best to therapies directed to that and only indirectly to therapies aimed at managing the anxiety related to listening to car horns screaming in your ears.

I will try to answer this from the perspective of information sharing, say in a work setting.

In my experience (and I want to emphasize, this is only my personal experience), the people who I speak with don?t communicate clearly. They use imprecise or incorrect terminology. They put their thoughts together in sentences that, when examined, can be inconsistent and/or contain faulty logic. They intentionally say one thing, but really mean something else. That, when you ask them a question to clarify a statement, they become perturbed (or defensive) and then begin talking in circles. Often times, I leave a conversation with an NT, totally confused.

When I speak with NTs, I try to use extremely precise language, making certain that there is no room for ambiguity. I pre-process the words I say, to make certain that it is consistent and logical. I would guess that, when NTs leave a conversation with me, they are simply exhausted, hoping to avoid me (unless they need my help with something).

The development of social anxiety is not specific to autism, so what you describe is not fundamental to autism or the misunderstanding between autistic people and neurotypical people. The gap is the one of social cognition that is much more complex and broad than social anxiety.

For myself:

Atypical information processing (e.g. issues with working memory; issues with information retrieval; issues with processing speed; difficulty with set/topic shifting; difficulty paying attention/distractability; sensory processing disorder; parts to whole/zoom lens issues).

Concrete, not-words-based thinking.

Language deficits. (I assume these are mild and I don't know the specifics in technical terms and it takes too long to write about my experiences of using words -- the neuropsychologist just said my testing indicated "language deficits" and something about assessment by a speech and language pathologist for more/better information.)

I often fail to consider other people's "prior knowledge" or frame of reference (and have trouble guessing what their frame of reference is even when I consider it) and I have extreme difficulty with figuring out whether or not I've been understood when I speak or write things (many times I've thought I'd been understood when I tried to communicate something, only to find out much later that I was, in fact, wildly misunderstood...I have no idea how often I'm misunderstood, just that it happens enough to cause lots of problems and I can remain unaware of it for long periods or possibly forever. The reverse happens, too -- where other people do understand but I think they don't, because I don't understand/misunderstand their responses to things I say).

I usually take things at face value and don't often read between the lines. Sometimes people expect me to read between the lines and they often seem to expect me to know and understand their motivations and intentions.

Personally I don't have such detailed memories of misunderstandings, only certain scenarios that made a deep impression on me. I don't recall those in every social situation, only when something reminds me.

Lots of other things make social interaction stressful for me:

-not recognizing people outside their usual context (face blindness)
-auditory processing problems - specifically it is hard to distinguish voices from background noise
-sensory sensitivity/overwhelm in general (can feel like trying to talk while riding a roller coaster)
-forgetting words (aphasia) or getting them out of order, or having my mind go blank mid sentence
-sometimes slow to connect my brain to my mouth, if I'm not already mentally prepared to speak
-missing my turn to speak and having someone talk over me
-not knowing what to say, or not really having anything to say
-wanting to end a conversation that just goes on and on and not knowing how
-not wanting to interact or communicate to begin with, but feeling like it is imposed on me

Plus another one is, a lot of people can carry on a conversation while they do other things, but sometimes I can't manage that. It could be a simple task that other people can just do without thinking a lot about it, but I really have to concentrate on it and be more mindful of what I'm doing.

I experience a lot of mental confusion in general...which is stressful in and of itself, regardless of whether other people are involved in the equation. When other people are added in, the stress level goes up because it requires even more brain processing power. It's like when you already have too many windows open on the computer, and then you open just one more and everything crashes.

Often the cause of misunderstandings is that people read emotions or character traits or social intentions into my behaviors, when they are actually just symptoms of mental confusion and sensory overwhelm.