Autism as Gradual Sensorimotor Difference: From Enactivism to Ethical Inclusion

Abstract

Autism research is increasingly moving to a view centred around sensorimotor atypicalities instead of traditional, ethically problematical, views predicated on social-cognitive deficits. We explore how an enactivist approach to autism illuminates how social differences, stereotypically associated with autism, arise from such sensorimotor atypicalities. Indeed, in a state space description, this can be taken as a skewing of sensorimotor variables that influences social interaction and so also enculturation and habituation. We argue that this construal leads to autism being treated on a par with other sensorimotor atypicalities such as blindness or atypical height. This leads to our conclusion that, insofar there is an ethical call to inclusion in our public sphere regardless of contingent bodily difference, an enactivist take on autism naturally leads to extending such inclusion to autism. Moreover, our analysis suggests a concrete way forward to achieve inclusion of autistics: by being more attentive to autistic sensorimotor specifics.

“Comforting, Reassuring, and…Hot”: A Qualitative Exploration of Engaging in Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadism and (Sado)masochism and Kink from the Perspective of Autistic Adults

“…Several participants discussed how participating in BDSM and/or kink had provided them with opportunities to have their sensory needs fulfilled, and experience sensory joy, but also meant risking sensory distress or repulsion. The embodied experience of being autistic diverges from that of neurotypicality, with a high percentage of autistic people experiencing sensorimotor differences 49,50 including in interoceptive (internal sense, e.g., hunger, thirst) and proprioceptive (sense of where your body is in space) processing. For some participants, BDSM/kink provided a unique opportunity to explore their sensory preferences via physical sensations (e.g., touch, pain) and engage with specific textures (e.g, of fabrics of clothing and props) to foster sensory joy and avoid displeasure.…”

Letting Tourette's be: The importance of understanding lived experience in research and the clinic

“…This research direction has been advanced in the case of autism. 55,56 The 'lack of inhibition' approach to Tourette's clearly lacks some compatibility with the Tourettic lived experience. A 'neurogradualist' approach could help integrate the brain difference model with lived reality.…”

“…This means that Tourette's is not only a neurological phenomenon but must also be seen as a particular mediation between an individual's sensorimotor atypicality and a social environment that is optimized for neurotypical individuals and invites neurotypical behaviour. This research direction has been advanced in the case of autism 55,56 …”

Addressing the autism mental health crisis: the potential of phenomenology in neurodiversity-affirming clinical practices

“…This view, however, has become increasingly untenable under the scrutiny of research demonstrating both that autistic people do exhibit empathetic understanding of one another and that neurotypical people also face problems with ascribing mental states to autistic people, which constitutes the ‘double empathy problem’ ( Milton, 2012 ). An increasing number of recent accounts signify a departure from cashing out autistic differences in terms of such cognitive divergence, while approaches that prioritize the perceptual differences, well-evidenced to occur in autism, are gaining ground ( Markram and Markram, 2010 ; van Es and Bervoets, 2022 ).…”