Communication energy drain | measuring autistic burnout | disclose at work?
Thinking Person's Guide to Autism Newsletter (TPGA) is a weekly roundup of autism-related science, news, and culture that you won’t find anywhere else. This information is curated by the TPGA editorial team, with autistic representation, and written by Emily Willingham.
Communication energy drain
Autistic people aren’t the only ones responsible for missteps in nonverbal communication, which also drains their cognitive resources unequally
If you’re autistic, you’ve probably had something like this experience: You’re communicating with someone who’s not autistic. You’re doing the mental work of pulling the expected words together, maybe relying on patterns you’ve copied from others and trying to adjust as you go. You’re working hard to “get it right” based on the flood of unspoken information coming at you from the other person. What are their eyes doing? Why did they just tilt their head and lower their voice? Why did they just look over your shoulder when you were in mid-sentence and change how they were standing? Are you being boring? Are you missing their cues? Anxiety starts sapping brain resources you need for communication, and things feel like they’re breaking down.
A new study published July 11 in Plos One suggests that maybe you’re not the only one who should be asking themselves these questions. Communication breakdowns are two-way events, and the non-autistic person may not be very good at reading your cues. And, they may never have heard that they need to work on it, too.
For the study, a team that included autistic researchers looked at online discussion threads at the wrongplanet.net forums (probably familiar to some readers). The 27 threads they focused on involved posts about nonverbal communication – the parts of communication outside of speech, such as eye contact, facial expressions, and body movements. In their analysis of these posts, the researchers identified five big themes, or key concepts.
1. More time and energy
First, autistic adults need more time and energy to figure out all of the nonverbal communication our bodies express, which can be distracting and exhausting. As discussion posters noted:
“I find myself fascinated by the grand hand gestures some people use. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to study people’s moving hands and not hear the words they’re saying. My father “talks with his hands” a lot and it can be very distracting” [paraphrased].
“when I am speaking there are so many annoying things to think about- my voice tone, how much eye contact to make, looking at their body language. there is just too much going on there.”
2. Sharing responsibility for miscommunication
When miscommunications happen over nonverbal expression, non-autistic people share responsibility for them. From other discussion posts:
“It’s ironic that no one can interpret my own tone of voice correctly. My family don’t pick up on my nonverbal communication” [paraphrased].
“In my teens people used to keep telling me to cheer up when I was in a perfectly good mood.”
3. Differences in understanding
Autistic people experience negative effects because of these differences in understanding, such as this poster:
“in the army I was harassed over my lack of appropriate body language. I was called ‘tone-deaf’ and ‘robotic.’”
4. Approaches to non-verbal communication
Autistic adults have a lot of different ways and approaches to try to figure out nonverbal communication, some of which might be familiar:
“Writing is better because it is just communication stripped to the bare minimum and I can focus my attention without distraction.”
“I taught myself to by observing people who used hand gestures. I now do it nearly automatically. I think hand gestures can be a very effective tool for getting your point across.”
5. Variable reading of non-verbal cues
Autistic people can vary depending on where they are and over time in their reading of nonverbal cues:
“It depends how stressed I am…If I’m relaxed I can have more facial expressions” [paraphrased].
The study authors say that the results lead them to “advocate for solutions that shift the responsibility for effective communication onto all members of society. For example, sharing and accepting preferred communication modalities, and checking in about whether a message was received correctly instead of making assumptions.” They note that “improving understanding and acceptance among non-autistic people would greatly ameliorate communication difficulties faced by autistic people.”
Related reading: Autistic therapist Fennel Hoppe, who also is diagnosed with ADHD, talks in The Seattle Times about autistic special interests and the heavy thinking load involved in trying to figure out the “right” things to do in conversation.
Question: What are your experiences and strategies related to nonverbal communication (for example, body language, voice, facial expressions)?
Science news you can use
Can autistic burnout be measured? A group of researchers in Australia used a new survey, the AASPIRE Autistic Burnout Measure, to try to figure out if it could be useful and accurate for autistic people. They found that the survey could at least identify autistic people currently experiencing burnout and those who were not. Find more on autistic burnout at TPGA.
To disclose or not to disclose at work. The question of whether or not to disclose an autism diagnosis at work is not an easy one to answer, but one pair of researchers has tried. In a paper published in Human Resource Management, they report that only some job candidates gain an advantage from disclosing an autism diagnosis: “male candidates.” They found that if the diagnosis was not disclosed, there was no effect of gender on which candidates were chosen. But with disclosure, respondents were “less favorable” toward candidates whose names implied they were women. Related: Autistic software engineer Jade Wilson describes for Business Insider her experience in the workplace, currently at Microsoft, and some adjustments that have worked for her.
Does satisfaction differ for autistic people with versus without intellectual disability? No, not according to this study, published in the journal Autism. The factors that influenced self-reported satisfaction differed between the two surveyed groups, however. For those with intellectual disability, important positive factors were low parental stress, access to needed services, and social participation. For those without intellectual disability, doing things for themselves was highlighted.
New posts at TPGA
Space Law, Race, and Neurodiversity: Autistic Advocate AJ Link
We live in a country & society that is built on racism. The neurodivergent community isn't free of that racism—per Autistic advocate AJ Link.
Getting a Colonoscopy While Autistic! — THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM
People who tell you that colonoscopies are hard may not know how tough you are. Many autistic people are used to life being hard.
People you should know
Anthony Tilghman writes about the need for Black fathers to speak up about autism. “Even fewer people talk about the role of fathers—especially Black fathers—in this journey. Too often, we’re pushed to the margins of the conversation or expected to stay silent. That ends here.”
Jorge Gutiérrez was diagnosed as autistic after his son was diagnosed at age 3. The Emmy-winning animator and director told an interviewer at Cartoon Brew why he said “Thanks, Autism!” in his one-man show: “– because this unique wiring helps me power through the emotional rollercoaster of our beloved and cursed industry. When rejection hits (and it always does), I don’t tend to spiral. I think my way out. I channel that energy into making something new, something better, something even more me. And no, it’s not always easy — but it’s always worked for me.”
UK rapper Giggs joins with his son, ML, in a remix of the song “Own Motion,” about life as an autistic artist. Both men are autistic, and ML’s “openness about his diagnosis [and] … his willingness to speak publicly inspired his father to reflect on his own life, which eventually led to Giggs discovering that he too is autistic.”
Jonathan Paton, an autistic barber and army veteran in the UK, has launched a mobile barbering business for autistic clients, the BBC says in a video report. He travels to people’s houses to give hair cuts to young customers for whom a familiar environment lessens the stress of the experience. Seems like a pretty good model!
Jada Thompson, writing at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, has a reminder: “There’s nothing wrong with you.” She says, “If you get anything from this, and I hope you do because there are some hidden gems here, know that your autistic experience and your intellectual disability don’t make you broken. It doesn’t make you less human. It doesn’t make you weird. This society needs to do better when it comes to accommodating our disabled experience. Keep shining.”
Bits and bobs
Studies of prevalences of autistic people in the Middle East and North Africa show a wide, highly variable range of values, from 0.01% in Oman in 2009 to 6.50% in Iraq in 2024.
Researchers use 20 or so questionnaire measures for assessing sensory processing in autistic people, which is a pretty important subject, and they all have limitations, say the authors of this assessment in the journal Autism.
From the “never put to rest” files, antidepressants once again turn up as bogeymen in discussions of what “causes” autism, this time thanks to the current secretary of Health and Human Services. Relatedly, another (very large) study from Denmark shows no link between autism and a vaccine ingredient (aluminum this time).
Autistic adults in Japan describe their experiences in a report published in the journal Autism. They all report experiencing bullying and feeling different from an early age, and experience stigma that the authors say may arise from “negative attitudes towards autism/disability and Japanese social expectations and rules.”
Another confirmation that the autistic brain develops before birth, “beginning by the mid-fetal developmental period,” in an overview published in Psychological Review.
Thanks for reading, and keep shining!
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About the Author
Dr. Emily Willingham is a 2022 MIT Knight Science Project Fellow, and the author of several books, including the upcoming If Your Adolescent Has Autism: An Essential Resource for Parents from Oxford University Press, and has served as a regular contributor to Scientific American and other national publications.