Autism Matters
  • Home
  • Training
    • Talks
    • Exploring Being Autistic
  • Blog
  • About
    • Caroline's published articles
  • Services
    • Training and CPD
    • Talks
    • Consultations >
      • Consultation enquiry
      • Consultation confirmation/payment
      • Family consultation confirmation/payment
    • Exploring Being Autistic
    • Employers
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Feedback

Autism and social skills

8/2/2017

9 Comments

 
.  
One thing that autistic people have in common is a social difference (of course we humans are all different in that we are each unique, what I mean here is that autistic people interact with others atypically).  I think this is because autistics are unable to pick up non-verbal and other communication that is below the level of consciousness.  Like much to do with autism, the cause of this social difference (which everyone across the contentious field of autism agrees exists) is not clear.  While I believe that the lack of social radar equipment to detect social signals is one of the main reasons for social atypicality there are other factors that also contribute to varying degrees.  
It is clear to me that issues with “theory of mind” (the very non-literal term used for the intuitive awareness that the contents or other people’s minds are different from the contents of our own mind) and what psychologists tend to call mentalising can impact severely on the ability to relate successfully to other human beings.

Autistic people are often distressed by problems mixing with others and making friends and therefore jump at the chance to learn social skills which they hope will solve these problems.   Despite the popularity of social skills training the limited research that exists suggests that such training is not very effective in real life* .  I find this totally unsurprising. Nobody has suggested giving deaf people hearing training or blind people sight training. As social skills require an ability to pick up social signals that is absent in autistic people, training is unlikely to be effective because, despite high motivation, the social radar equipment is just not there.

What I suspect happens is that the social skills sessions themselves are successful in that the people attending get to have a nice time which includes limited socialising with each other. They learn what to do in specific scenarios, they learn the steps to go through, and they have enjoyed it so they give the training good feedback.  Everybody is happy, outcome measures get nice ticks but nothing changes in the outside world, the lessons that seemed so relevant in class turn out to be irrelevant in the real world because the real world does not use the same scripts that were taught in class.

I regard this lack of “social radar” as being somewhat analogous to tone deafness in music (I am tone deaf).  I used to love singing, but unfortunately I was exposed in front of the class at age 7 as the one who was singing incorrectly and since then I have been unable to sing in public. What is particularly humiliating about this was that I was doing my best and as far as I am concerned I was singing in tune, but everyone else could hear that in fact I wasn’t.  Most autistics have had the experience with trying to engage socially, trying to get along with people, doing what we believe to be the right thing, but discovering that others think we are doing something wrong.  We tend to get rejected without ever finding out what exactly we did wrong (or we realise ourselves a week later when the time to rectify it has passed). We are just not able to “tune in” in real time to the social context we find ourselves in.  
The underlying issue is that the point of interacting socially is to connect with other people, and you don’t do this merely by exhibiting a set of skills, you do this by being your authentic self and being open to another human being.  Too many autistic people have been taught supposed “skills” which leave them in the words of Lianne Holiday Wiley “Pretending to be Normal”.  As Valerie Gaus points out in her book “Living Well on the Spectrum”  appearing “normal” does not make a person likeable and being “weird” does not necessarily make a person unlikeable.  Learning a set of rules might be necessary but it is certainly not sufficient to enable you to connect in real time with real people.

*See for example http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02179376

9 Comments
Sonia Boue
15/2/2017 03:21:50 pm

Hi Caroline,

I read this with interest and agree (I think you are right on limited to zero value of this kind of training).

Do you think that the opportunity to talking through ideas and viewpoints might be more satisfying in trying to gain some pointers for interaction with NT, especially if it is an autistic person guiding such a discussion topic. At the very least relief at not being alone and grasping why it's so difficult could be helpful...affirming preferred style of communication would also be therapeutic I think.

I'm a bit perplexed by the social radar idea as I don't fully recognise this as being such a strong issue in among the plethora of neurotype difference I experience. I wonder if this is quite complex (as you do suggest) for some of us who bump along with almost anyone unless you have to spend a LOT of time or get TOO involved! It must be a neurologically driven preference/defence for some of us to seek to avoid something we're okay at but which overwhelms us on a sensory level??

Thinking aloud...

Reply
Caroline
15/2/2017 04:07:38 pm

Thanks for your comment Sonia, I absolutely think that "talking through ideas and viewpoints might be more satisfying in trying to gain some pointers for interaction with NT" is useful, and this is the sort of thing I offer in my "Exploring Identifying as Autistic" programme.

Like you I tend to "bump along with anyone" but that is really much more the case since I discovered I'm autistic. I also think that people such as yourself who are professionally successful tend to gain a confidence which allows them to be authentic, and also to move in circles where they are respected and understood.

To me the lack of social radar is evident in groups and the fact that most autistic people have been bullied at some point, due to just getting it wrong, most autistic people I know are familiar with making more frequent social faux pas than non-autistic people.

Reply
Planet Autism
15/2/2017 03:38:00 pm

Yes, I think it's also very insulting that autistics must conform to the NT way of being just to be accepted and 'get by' in society. Why should be be fake? Of course it would be undesirable to go around being rude, but there needs to be more acceptance that people shouldn't treat as outcasts others that communicate in a different way. The expectations are unfair from the outset. An autistic will have to cognitively process a huge amount of additional information as it is, just to calculate in their own mind how they are meant to behave, to memorise and appropriately utilise certain phrases or types of communication. So to have an imposed social skills set added on is cognitive overload and disadvantages the person. What might be better is to explain how NTs function and why. Then leave the autistic to judge how to use that information if they choose to.

Reply
Caroline Hearst
15/2/2017 04:21:14 pm



Thanks for your comment, I agree with what you say. What I think is valuable for all of us to do our best understand how people with different neurologies function differently as that gives everyone more understanding and choice of response.
I also think that all sorts of apparently non-social traits of autism actually impact on social functioning.

Reply
Sonia Boue
15/2/2017 04:18:43 pm

Yes and yes. Choice is the way forward. Information is what's needed. I really like your explanation of why this is overloading. It's really helpful.

Reply
Jenny
15/2/2017 04:32:40 pm

I have spent a lifetime trying to fit in, trying not to look weird socially. I go to extremes: am silent or talk too much; try too hard or not at all. Nothing works and I'm constantly kicking myself under the table, mentally speaking. It's self-consciousness followed by the exhausted lapse into "f*** it, whatever". I try to mask but I just don't think I'm that convincing. I've never done "social skills training" but this is exactly how I envisage it. And I find I don't need "social skills" around other autistic people so that is an artificial environment if ever there were one.

Reply
Planet Autism
15/2/2017 04:44:28 pm

I have found that despite doing my best I am still discriminated against by cohorts of professionals who simply don't have autism awareness. I can be polite, lucid, well-researched, extremely logical and still be misjudged and misrepresented. So all the social skills training in the world wouldn't undo suhc underlying autistic traits as desire for justice, persistence, verbosity etc. which cause many autistics (most especially when parents) to be misrepresented as 'difficult'.

Reply
Caroline Hearst
16/2/2017 09:42:13 am

I find this very interesting, Planet Autism. It seems to me what you are talking about here is a power imbalance. Where you say that autistics are "misrepresented as difficult" - I would reframe as "difficult" is clearly in the eye of the beholder. So the problem if an autistic person and a person in authority both find each other difficult is that the person in authority is able to use this difficulty as a reason to take actions which have an adverse effect on the life of the autistic person.

I actually think it could be possible for social skills training to modify specific traits such as verbosity (which in this case is not necessarily a bad idea as people who know me would agree) however this can come at the price of authenticity without (as you say) examining the underlying difference in disposition.

Planet Autism
16/2/2017 12:13:23 pm

I don't think I even see it as a power imbalance Caroline. It's simple discrimination. Verbosity may not have been the best example. But even using that one as an example, to a certain degree, verbosity is an arbitrary term (and meant in the written rather than verbal) and said verbosity can be generated by the failings of the recipient to communicate well in the first place, with the autistic. I agree 'difficult' can be in the eye of the beholder, but to explain further would mean digressing a little too much off the topic of your post. Suffice to say, that there are many autistic mothers out there being grossly discriminated against and their autistic differences misrepresented as parenting flaws and character deficits. This directly breaches discrimination and equality laws. So whilst your post is about social skills being taught, it's worthwhile to note that the very notion of NTs teaching autistics social behaviours which they deem 'skills', is the thin end of the wedge, of a serious problem of autistics being treated as inferior by NT standards and how large this problem can loom in their lives down the line. It needs a sea change of attitude towards what is termed normal or a social skill.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Communication
    Diagnosis
    Disability
    Empathy
    Employment
    Language
    Masking
    Neurodiversity
    Non Verbal Communication
    Non-verbal Communication
    Sensory Issues
    Socialising
    Stigma
    Support
    Theory Of Mind
    Therapy
    Women

    Get Updates

    Blog posts in alphabetical order of titles


    Autism -  ordinary or extraordinary?
    
    
    Autistic people can be social


    Autistic women, do we even exist?

    Autism and social skills

    Difference, disability or Gucci diagnosis?

    Context or content?

    Does language affect our attitudes to autism?

    Everybody has an autism spectrum condition

    Is everyone a bit autistic?

    Mild autism?

    Sensory Issues

    The A Word, drama with explicit autism

    To mask, or not to mask, that is the question.

    The S word (stigma)

    What do we do with effective support?

    What you want always wanted to know about autism but were afraid to ask

    Who are the autism experts?

    Who decides if I'm autistic?

    Who or what is TOM and what does he or it have to do with autism?

    Why quicker diagnosis of autism is useful now, but hopefully won’t be needed in future


    Other blogs

    Autism age. Incisive blog by Cos Michael who specailises in autism and aging.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    December 2020
    August 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    April 2018
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    September 2015
    May 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013

get updates
Picture