Autistic common ground

[RosaViolet]

In a thread about self loathing and autistic identity there was a comment about one autistic person
being a 'bad receiver' in the conversation with a NT is better than two 'bad receivers' in the AS/AS conversation.

As I was looking at #INSAR2019 I came across a few studies and conversations relevant to that point.
INSAR stands for International Society for Autism Research

So here is one:
Study at SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class research journals

 

[RosaViolet]

In that study the conclusion seem to be:

Our findings reveal that neurodivergent interactions provide opportunities for rich intersubjectivity even when faced with severe fragmentation and raise questions as to whether neurotypical norms potentially limit this possibility because they interpret such fragmentation as failures needing to be addressed – thus limiting the potential of the conversation to move on. For example, the difficulties autistic people experience in indexing sociocultural meaning ... are not so problematic when sociocultural conventions are relaxed..

Thus our findings highlight how neurodivergent intersubjectivity can potentially create rich social interactions. Certainly, a first step to allowing neurodivergent intersubjectivity to flourish (or at least not be undermined) is to recognise it as having distinctive features that can be enabling.

Abstract:

...led us to identify two features of neurodivergent intersubjectivity: a generous assumption of common ground that, when understood, led to rapid rapport, and, when not understood, resulted in potentially disruptive utterances; and a low demand for coordination that ameliorated many challenges associated with disruptive turns. Our findings suggest that neurodivergent intersubjectivity reveals potential for unconventional forms of social relating…Future research should examine the varieties of neurodivergent intersubjectivity, with associated problems and potentials, and how those forms of intersubjectivity can be enabled to flourish, particularly in autistic-to-neurotypical encounters.

 

[RosaViolet]

The definitions (translations) are:

Intersubjectivity is the process whereby people come together to create understanding

Coordination focuses on consensus, whereas intersubjectivity characterises the diversity of ways people create shared understanding

For example, an interlocutor may share information that is not reciprocated or acknolwedged by another interlocutor in the next conversational turn. This may be deemed a failure to coordinate but equally count as a moment of intersubjectivity because it is an attempt to bridge [understanding]‘subjectivities’, an act which may be reciprocated, or become useful, at a later stage of the interaction. Thus when examining interactions, it is important to explore how interlocutors create possiblities for [consensus] coordination, even if it is not consistently reciprocated immediately or if the process by which it is achieved is non-conventional.​

Intersubjectivity was measured as observable coordination in language.

Since such frameworks have been based on neurotypical interactions, our challenge was to mitigate [that].

To achieve this, we avoided prescriptive categories (e.g. good or bad behaviour) in favour of descriptive categories which described a within-interaction change in dynamic. For example, our review identified three core aspects of intersubjectivity:
(1) coherence describes the logical alignment from one conversational turn to the next,
(2) affect describes the emotional harmony between turns and
(3) symmetry, which describes the alignment of conversational turns in terms of assertiveness/ submissiveness.

we mapped out ..sequences that are either consistent or fragmented in terms of coherence, reciprocation of affect and symmetry.

 

[RosaViolet]

So I take this to mean that in spite of disruptive utterances by some autistic members, generally the community remains patient, open minded, relaxed and keeps on talking until deep connections and understanding are established, that way of communication offering broader possibilities than a conventional NT/NT dynamic where people overreact to lack on consensus...

Rapport being achieved in brilliant and wonderful ways...

 

[Jojo_LB]

I found the paper. It's quite long, and I have to take breaks from reading it.

I've always been really interested in psychological/social sciences and how researchers conduct studies because I'm used to conducting experiments or reading papers about them in the hard sciences. It's kind of fun learning about these methods in their experiments and how they quantitatively express evidence and observations that can't be expressed numerically (For example in surveys in which responses can come in the form of selection of categories, or answering yes or no and true or false, or non-numerical scales and ratings like "least to most", or "strongly agree to strongly disagree".). And this is human behavior, which is obviously so much more complex and involved than merely conducting surveys, or even taking measurements and doing multiple calculations, which is what is often done in the hard sciences. The methodology is really quite creative. This kind of stuff is truly fascinating.

It was interesting to see transcriptions of some of the interactions between the test subjects.

They all connected to each other indirectly, via video games. Some of them just spontaneously started talking about the games, or put on amusing voices, or asked for help with gameplay.

There was no pressure to make direct emotional connections. There was no pressure to even have a point to their conversations. There was no weirdness when someone just randomly said something that didn't quite fit in any context. Nobody took any offense if there was a sharp transition to something else. Everybody just kind of went along with things as naturally as they could, and it worked.

I have a lot of other thoughts on this stuff but at this hour, they cannot possibly be expressed coherently. Thanks for sharing this! I'd be really interested if more studies like this come out over the next several years, with adjustments in methods, and inclusion of additional participant variability mentioned by the investigators in the discussion section.

 

[Fino]

I haven't read all the words in this thread yet, so maybe my comment is just silly, but responding only to the first paragraph of the OP, I wouldn't think of it as bad receivers and good receivers but more like receivers on different channels, which would lead me to suspect two people on the spectrum would have an easier time communicating, since their channel would be closer to being the same.

And I'm not thinking of it as one channel for NT and one for ND, but an unimaginable number of channels, ones that I'd suppose are more similar to one another among NDs and more similar to one another among NTs.

As for that thread, the way I saw it was that everybody understood each other perfectly well but had opposite conclusions, the majority's conclusion being one that would destroy the conclusion the maker of the thread wants to continue believing.

It actually reminded me very much of conspiracy theory rhetoric. I've done a lot of research on how to dispel conspiracy theories, because of my brother, and the anger and the clinging to irrationality that forms their world-view is all very similar to the discussion that went on before the thread closed.

And so I don't think it was a gap between the communication of two, or more, autistic people, but the gap between the realities of opposing world-views.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

Ememes.
NTs finally understanding they have a natural bias.
If NTs understand how their own bias works our world suddenly looks very different.

 

[Thinx]

I guess attribution of goodness or badness does rely on the perspective of the person, and in this case, differing from the Neurotypical norms appears to be labelled 'being a bad receiver'.

The research article is interesting, though maybe also a tad conforming with stereotypes. Pretty rare to get many autistic people in one place like that. Most of my communication is between myself. Just playing with words there.

I don't do video gaming, but if I did I would do it on my own surely the point of it is to interact in the game, not with others, that's just distraction and a requirement to multi task... however, I like that they brought open mindedness about autistic communication to the research.

 

[Gracey]

So I take this to mean that in spite of disruptive utterances by some autistic members, generally the community remains patient, open minded, relaxed and keeps on talking until deep connections and understanding are established, that way of communication offering broader possibilities than a conventional NT/NT dynamic where people overreact to lack on consensus...

Rapport being achieved in brilliant and wonderful ways...

Could this site be an example of the above ?

 

[RosaViolet]

From reading the article in detail, it seem mostly to do with persistence of ASC to find common language and ability to ignore, be non judgemental about false starts, keeping on trying.

The article starts with the double empathy problem - that both NT and ASC have difficulty understanding each-other:

'Studies of intersubjectivity in autism have been primarily based on autistic-to-neurotypical interactions. These have highlighted difficulties such as shared intentionality (Tomasello et al., 2005) and reciprocating non-verbal cues (García-Pérez et al., 2007; Hobson and Lee, 1998). However, autistic divergence from the neurotypical norm for interacting (i.e. neurodivergent behaviour) can result in a gap in mutual understanding which makes empathy (Milton, 2012), perspective-taking (Heasman and Gillespie, 2017; Sheppard et al., 2016), and social perception (Sasson et al., 2017; Sasson and Morrison, 2017) difficult for both parties. This two-way misunderstanding has been termed the ‘double empathy problem’ (Milton, 2012), and it highlights the dangers of interpreting neurodivergent behaviour on neurotypical terms. Moreover, autistic interactions may be optimised differently across situations and groups'

So autistic interactions have different dynamic which involves the two findings :

Two features emerged as both potentially pervasive and consequential in explaining the patterns identified: (1) a generous assumption of common ground and (2) a low demand for coordination [consensus].'

(1) It seems to me that the assumption of common ground implies aspie keep on looking for common language based on shared cultural experiences. While it seem to me NT assume common language [=their language] and exclude people, if it is not reciprocated.

This is based on these sentences:

'Thus in playing with voices, players are able to develop shared language on the basis of their shared cultural resources which allows them to creatively [approach] to novel problems....a generous assumption of common ground, such as by sharing very specific voices, can lead to rapid rapport, with very closely aligned intersubjectivity.'

So if we substitute: 'sharing voices' for 'developing shared language on the basis of their shared cultural resources'
We get this:

...A generous assumption of common ground, such as by developing shared language on the basis of their shared cultural resources, can lead to rapid rapport, with very closely aligned [common understanding].

So it might be NT/ASC need to search for a common language, rather than assume it is the NT one

 

[RosaViolet]

The article also busts so to speak the stereotype that autistic conversation is too logical and that seemingly 'irrelevant' utterance are incoherent and problematic. It demonstrate the contrary.

Citation:
'Autistic interactions have been characterised as overtly logical .., but we also found displays of positive affect[emotional harmony] to be common .., with laughter, encouragement and joking widespread ... It was also possible for coordination [consensus] to involve high symmetry .. despite low coherence and [emotional harmony] , such as when players vented their frustration...

.. [There is] the tendency for autistic children to drift between topics leading to ‘irrelevant’ responses ... However, .. this tendency is made unproblematic by the low demand for coordination; indeed, it allows the players to build rapport and knowledge, since they are free to drift between individual and cooperative ways of verbalising their relationships to the situation, even if to the neurotypical observer this process may appear disjointed to begin with.'

[sounds like aspies collaborate and get along fine, even though it looks not as smooth (‘incoherent’) and argumentative, and NT would struggle to initially make sense of it]

'However, these were not always problematic precisely because participants demonstrated a low coordination threshold and were able to move on quickly from disconnected and disruptive turns.

Accordingly, the generous assumptions of common ground made by neurodivergent participants allowed underlying sub-cultures to be identified, leading to the rapid construction of shared understanding, rapport and humour. When generous assumptions of common ground fail to result in reciprocated turns, it may appear egocentric to the outside observer, but when reciprocated, it can lead to increased affect, symmetry and coherence, creating a rich intersubjective space for shared understanding.

The generous assumption of common ground and the low demand for coordination are more than two isolated features; they potentially fit together into a functional system that allows rich forms of social relating which can explain how rapid changes in interaction dynamic are possible. It allows autistic participants to continually experiment with ways of relating to their situation incurring minimal detrimental impact to their social identity when references are not shared. It is the way that these two features fit together to allow distinctive ways of building shared meaning that we describe as a feature of neurodivergent intersubjectivity.'

So this autistic low demand for consensus, actually is a high tolerance for disagreement and misunderstanding and results in keeping on trying.

While it seems in NT mind low consensus and low coherence creates 'detrimental impact to their social identity when references are not shared', so they react negatively and cut communication.

 

[RosaViolet]

I don't know whether it is possible to reverse engineer a good interaction with a NT from this...

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

A generous assumption of common ground, such as by developing shared language on the basis of their shared cultural resources, can lead to rapid rapport, with very closely aligned [common understanding].

So it might be NT/ASC need to search for a common language, rather than assume it is the NT one

The link is in my signature. The start of an attempt to do this.

Attempting to define the emotional purpose of conversation, which is often missed by both sides.
Literal assumptions - it does what it says on the tin.
Emotional/ social/cultural assumptions - often a response is based on this assumption,not the meaning of the words.
This can be a subconscious process.

People can get angry when their assumption of reciprocation is not received in a way they do not understand.
They can then react to the assumption,not the literal statement, which can cause further confusion.

The ememe is a way to try to label this misunderstanding.
Hopefully picked up by better people than me.

 

[Aspychata]

l don't feel a need to interact much with NTs, l actually enjoy the diversnerdy(new word, lol) of interaction of aspies.

 

[Aspychata]

First of all, the subjects are in the most perfect setting, video gaming backdrop. Because of this, the subjects are predisposed to actually interconnect with the other subjects. This study would have been more interesting to me if it was juxtaposed with a unnatural setting, l would be curious in the interaction of the subjects. Would culture references come into play? Would similarity in personality traits bind subjects together in communication. But l like the rater who quit out of boredom.