Two sources of bias affecting the evaluation of autistic communication

Abstract

We support Jaswal & Akhtar's interrogation of social motivational accounts of autism and discuss two sources of bias that contribute to how others construe autistic people's communications: (1) an experience-based bias that limits our ability to discern the speaker's action as communicative and (2) a prejudice against the credibility of certain speakers that limits a listener's willingness to believe their testimony.

Stretching the Social: Broadening the Behavioral Indicators of Sociality

“…People often generalize inappropriately from their own behaviors to determine what counts as social or communicative behavior in others; this is an experience-based bias that constrains the ability to view others' unconventional or idiosyncratic behaviors as attempts to communicate and connect (Li & Koenig, 2019). But we should keep in mind that communication and connection are reciprocal processes; this seems obvious but tends to be ignored when one member of a dyad is autistic (Dinishak & Akhtar, 2013;Gernsbacher, 2006;Heasman & Gillespie, 2018;Milton, 2012).…”

“…In several studies, nonautistic people misperceived the social signals of autistic people (for a review, see Milton, Heasman, & Sheppard, 2018). Thus, researchers need to not only look beyond typical indicators of sociality, but also recognize that their appraisals of others' sociality (including prejudices and inaccurate assumptions; Li & Koenig, 2019) can have cascading negative effects (Akhtar, Jaswal, Dinishak, & Stephan, 2016) and even become self-fulfilling prophecies (Jaswal & Akhtar, 2019a). If developmentalists are truly interested in all of human development, it is imperative that we broaden what counts as social behavior.…”

Autistic autobiography and hermeneutical injustice

“…When it comes to neurotypicals, Hacking writes, "there has been a language for the intentions, desires, and emotions of other people for all of historical time " (2009b, 56). While this language for describing experience "crafted by and for neurotypicals" (56) goes back to our distant ancestors, it has evolved and will keep 1 E.g., Dohmen 2016;Hens, Robeyns, and Schaubroeck 2018;Li and Koenig 2019;Legault, Bourdon, and Poirier 2019. 2 Hacking himself does not explore the implications of this work for understanding the epistemic injustice autists suffer.…”