What Communication Differences come with Autism?

Possibly the most discussed feature of autism is the supposed “difficulty” with social communication, and the source of that “difficulty”. One popular theory suggests that autistic people lack ‘theory of mind’, meaning they are unable to perceive or understand the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of others. The reason the word “difficulty” is in “scare quotes” is that the people who defined it as such were not autistic, and relied only on their external perception of autistic interactions while not taking the perspective of the actually autistic into account.

A concept that has only recently become a part of the conversation is what is known as the ‘double empathy problem’, which is the result of including the autistic side of the social equation. From the flip side, the allistic person is the one with social difficulty, the case for which can be easily made: the use of needless deception (white lies, half-truths), irrational reactions (negative reactions to plain facts being laid out, or the completion of a task exactly as dictated), the use of bizarre phrases to mean a completely separate concept (idioms), time wasted in discussion of topics neither side is interested in (small talk), et cetera.

The more likely answer is that neither group has social deficiencies as a whole; the problems occur when people of different neurotypes interact. A study showed that when groups of either entirely autistic or entirely allistic people played a game of telephone the end result for both groups was roughly of the same quality. However, when they were combined into mixed groups, the results were considerably lower in accuracy to the original phrase.