[Stimming] - Typical or Autistic?

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Nobody reads long posts so I'll sum up this one with two questions:


1. What in your opinion makes a stim 'autistic'?
2. How do you distinguish between an autistic stimming for autistic reasons, or for typical reasons?

What's with the bias poll?

Every thread needs flavouring.

If somebody can convince me how leg shaking can be an autistic stim I will change it

If you're talking about 'vibrating' the legs when sitting, then no, it's not an autistic stim, just a stim. If you're talking about 'jerking' the legs, as many of my autistic students do, well it's certainly not something that everyone does.

Can you please explain the jerking motion? (no pun)

I'm interested. I have observed something like that in my autistic friend.

It's exactly that - a jerk, an involuntary (it seems) bending and kicking out of the legs, usually while sitting, but some do it while standing.

From my experience, people can be bothered by leg bouncing even though it's normal. Foot tapping is normal too and so is pacing and all these have annoyed other kids. But just when do these become autistic stims or ADHD habits Maybe when the person isn't able to not do it again after being told to quit or maybe when it irritates others around them and they just keep on doing it?

I remember being at a class for my job and there was another guy there who had autism and he started bouncing his leg while he sat and he was sitting right close to me and his movement was making me feel it so instead of telling him to quit, I just pulled my chair a foot away and he apologized and kept on doing it. I don't know if this counts. I solved the problem just by moving my chair so I wouldn't feel his legs bounce because they were rubbing against mine and my chair.

I remember being in high school and my dad kept bouncing his legs and tapping his feet and my mom kept telling him to quit it. He would do it again seconds later and I made a joke about it saying "Does he have ADHD or what?" and my mom said "Actually he does" and I was shocked.

It seems to be a very common behaviour, whether caused by ADHD, anxiety, or just thinking.

I used to do it a hell of a lot in places like classrooms and I put it down to low-grade (undetectable) anxiety.

I think an autistic person can stim this way, but it isn't an autistic stim, it's a typical response to anxiety (in that context). Autistic stims have always seemed to be more spontaneous, stereotyped and blatantly different to me.

Instead of classifying each repetitive motor or other stimulatory behavior as autistic vs. neurotypical stimming, another approach is looking at overall pattern of stimulatory behaviors from motor to smelling, touching, visual, vocal. If a person engages frequently in these behaviors across domains and in many situations including in public or social situations, then these behaviors together provide evidence of RRBs in autism. Because these behaviors are often odd, they are generally noticeable to others as a person acting weird for no reason.

Simple answer: These is no difference between autistic stimming and non-autistic stimming. They are all the same.

In addition to that, there is no difference between tics and stims either. They are also all the same, although a few tics seems to have physiological reasons.

The term "Repetitive Motor Patterns" used in psychiatry is totally wrong in describing both stims and tics.

But stimming is pleasureable and tics are not

Some tics (with a probable physiological background) like coughing, clearing throat and sniffing are not pleasurable (but still serves a function), while the rest of the tics are very similar to stims. I think there is a rather small amount of people that have "real" tics (and not just misunderstood stims), but those are a small minority only. For that matter, all stims (including the physiological tics) have a function, and thus are not meaningless repetitive motor patterns. We have an article on peer-review about this that we hope will eventually be accepted for publication.

@rdos: I'm glad you changed your "there is no difference between tics and stims either", to "while the rest of the tics are very similar to stims", as I have Tourette's, and there, most definitely, IS a difference.

Similar in this context means that stims and tics cluster on the same factor, and thus relates more to each others than to other traits. They are not separate as they have too large correlations with each others. This in essence means they have a similar (if not identical) genetic background. However, "hunting" traits and odd communication traits also clusters with stims, so this is a rather varied group of traits.

Well if people keep getting irritated with your normal stims, then you have to be doing it wrong or else people wouldn't be making a big deal about it if they are normal.

I guess it could be when you count how much you do it, at what intensity, and what its purpose is, but it seems like an all around "human" thing to do. I see lots of NTs and autistics do it.