When we talk about communication challenges in autism, it is easy to make assumptions about what those challenges look like. We might imagine someone who has limited speech, struggles to make themselves understood, or has obvious difficulty having a conversation.
But communication difficulties can be much more subtle than this.
Many autistic people are extremely articulate. They may have an extensive vocabulary, be highly educated, work in jobs that require them to communicate all day, and appear to have no difficulties with communication whatsoever. Some may even describe themselves as excellent communicators.
And they may well be.
However, being articulate does not necessarily mean that communication is effortless.
Over a series of blogs, I am going to look at some of the less obvious communication differences that autistic people can experience. These can include difficulties with spontaneous communication, interpreting what somebody actually means rather than simply the words they have used, knowing when and how to enter a conversation, needing additional processing time, and sometimes finding that speech becomes difficult or inaccessible altogether.
Of course, autism is a spectrum, and there is no single autistic communication style. Not every autistic person will experience the difficulties I discuss in this series, and two autistic people may experience communication very differently.
The purpose of this series is therefore not to describe how autistic people communicate, but to explore some of the ways autistic communication differences can present — particularly those that are easily missed in people who appear, on the surface, to communicate very well.
When you know what you want to say, but can’t find the moment to say it
One of the less obvious communication difficulties I see is something that can become particularly noticeable in group conversations.
Imagine standing with a group of people who are talking.
You are listening to the conversation while also processing what is being said. A thought begins to form about something somebody has just mentioned.
But a fully formed thought doesn’t necessarily arrive instantaneously.
You may need to filter out the other conversations, noises and activity around you. You need to process what has just been said, connect it with your own thoughts, decide what you want to contribute and then translate that thought into language.
Meanwhile, the conversation hasn’t stopped.
Other people are continuing to talk while you are still processing.
Eventually, your thought is ready. You know exactly what you want to say.
But now somebody else is speaking.
So you wait.
Then another person speaks.
You wait again.
And suddenly the conversation has moved onto something completely different.
For everybody else, the moment has passed.
For you, however, it hasn’t.
You have been holding that thought in your head, waiting for an opportunity to say it.
Standing on the edge of the conversation
This can leave some autistic people quite literally standing on the edge of a group.
They may look quiet. They may appear shy or socially anxious. Other people might assume they aren’t interested in the conversation or don’t have anything to contribute.
Internally, something quite different may be happening.
They may have plenty to say but be unable to find an appropriate opening in which to say it.
Group conversations move quickly. People interrupt each other, overlap, change direction, make jokes, respond to facial expressions and sometimes begin answering before the previous person has even finished speaking.
For someone who needs a little more processing time, there may simply never seem to be a clear gap.
And when a gap finally appears, the contribution they have been holding onto may now relate to something everyone else was discussing several minutes ago.
They then have another decision to make: Do I still say it?
Sometimes they do.
And this can create another misunderstanding.
To everybody else, the conversation has moved on. The autistic person may suddenly make a comment relating to a subject that appears to have finished several minutes earlier.
It can look as though they haven’t been following the conversation.
In reality, the opposite may be true.
They were following it so closely that they have been processing, developing and holding onto a contribution that they haven’t yet had an opportunity to make.
The interrupted thought
There is another layer to this: what happens when somebody interrupts while that thought is still being constructed?
Thinking and speaking are not necessarily separate processes. For some people, constructing what they want to say requires concentration.
The idea may initially exist as something incomplete — a collection of thoughts, associations, feelings or pieces of information that gradually come together into something that can be put into words.
If another person begins talking during that process, attention has to shift.
Now there are two competing demands: holding onto the developing thought while simultaneously processing the new information coming in.
Sometimes the original thought disappears.
This can be incredibly frustrating because the person may know that they had something they wanted to say without being able to retrieve what it was.
Alternatively, they may concentrate so hard on retaining their own thought that they don’t fully process what the other person is saying.
This can then look like another communication problem: You’re not listening to me.
But they may actually be trying desperately to do two things at once — retain their own thought and listen to yours.
Communication requires more processing than we realise
For most of us, conversation feels automatic because we rarely stop to consider how many processes are happening simultaneously.
We listen to words. We work out their meaning. We notice tone of voice and facial expression. We decide what information is important. We formulate our response. We work out when it is our turn to speak. We monitor the reactions of other people. We filter out irrelevant sounds and activity around us.
And in a group, we do this with several people at once.
When those processes require more conscious effort, conversation becomes cognitively expensive.
This is one reason why looking at someone’s vocabulary or ability to speak tells us surprisingly little about how easy communication actually is for them.
A person can be intelligent, articulate and have an enormous amount to contribute while still struggling with the speed and mechanics of everyday conversation.
Making room for a different processing speed
Sometimes relatively small changes can make communication much easier.
Allowing a little more silence before jumping in can give someone time to finish constructing their response. Avoiding unnecessary interruption can allow a developing thought to reach completion. In groups, actively creating an opportunity for someone who has been trying to enter the conversation can make an enormous difference.
And if an autistic person returns to something that was discussed five minutes ago, it may be worth resisting the temptation to think, We’ve moved on from that.
They may know that.
They may simply have been waiting five minutes for the opportunity to tell you what they wanted to say.
Understanding autistic communication isn’t about learning a list of things autistic people do differently. It is about becoming curious about what may be happening underneath communication that, from the outside, can easily be misunderstood.
In the next parts of this series, I will explore some of those less visible differences, including spontaneous communication, literal interpretation and meaning, and what happens when an autistic person who is normally highly articulate temporarily finds that they cannot speak.
