How much of our manifestations are due to lack of experience

Post Reply New Topic

I'm wondering if there's any way to account for what degree (and kind) of our manifestations are due more to lack of [social] experience, rather than the ASD/HFA condition per se.

Because maybe - due to neuroplasticity - earlier social acceptance and interactions in our youth, with some guidance and prodding, might have set our "wiring" on another trajectory and made our brains more NT-like. Hence the corollary to the argument for early intervention. I've always raised the notion of a "minimum passmark" to being accepted in social circles, and for so long in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, the vast majority of us weren't achieving that "passmark" (due to lack of intuitive nonverbal fluency, comprehension of social norms, etc., at a passable level.)

Then again, too much unconditional acceptance could be detrimental - I call this the "paradox of acceptance" - if people accepted us too much _as-is_ early on in life, it may create false expectations that we carry forward later in the other contexts, like the working world, where unspoken norms and politics etc. abound, and people may not be as enlightened as the chance acceptance group we once found ourselves in

I am reminded of the Amelia Bedelia books that I read in my early childhood years ago; today she would be regarded as someone with ASD/HFA, due to her literal interpretation of what people asked her to do. I also remember this one book where Amelia was a child, her peers asked her to "jump rope" and so she jumped back and forth over a skipping rope lying on the ground. Rather than ridicule her and outcast her, the other girls joined in and did the same as Amelia, saying (sincerely, not sarcastically) "hey! this is cool, this is fun, it's good to try something different!"

Ah, if only life were more like the experience of Amelia...
But it ain't meant to be.
If we had an experience like hers, it might colour our expectations of later life, where we can do literal interpretations and not be bogged down by ambiguous social norms, and there'd be no consequences...ya right.

So, anyway, when it comes to lack of experience - it comes down to us achieving a "minimum passmark" for interaction with NT peers, we can't be too "out there" or violate one too many social rules, or that will cause a vicious circle of development hindrance. But as far as disentangling the lack of experience from the ASD wiring per se, I don't think there's an easy way to do that - it's not like you could do so quantitatively, with a linear regression model with influencing X-variable inputs, for example.

It is more likely that lack of experience is due to how ASDs manifest in each individual.

Yes there can be a lack of experience. But some experience could be forgotten if it was not considered important.

Think about the inner development of each particular autistic person. What does the early individual deem important, and what is let go in order to devote more time and energy to the important matters?

Something like the facial expressions of an NT listener while the autistic speaker is talking may be less important in early years. Emotional self regulation or semantics may be more important at that time. By the time the autistic person gets around to feeling that facial expressions are important, they may be far behind. This can make them fall behind in other skills, and cause lots of problems.

But the thing is- this autistic person would have developed OTHER skills early, like the emotional regulation in this example, and therefore have an advantage in those areas. They could even leverage those skills to catch up on other things.

OK, *this* totally seems like it fit my experience as a kid in the '80s, when early in that decade, while beginning primary school I would have meltdowns or what they called "hyper fits" at the time (b/c of the 'H' in ADHD, which was a very common misdiagnosis for Aspergers), and so I spent the rest of that decade, right into high school, in exhibiting emotional restraint and not getting overly flustered about things - in particular, motor skill activities like riding a bike, tying knots in boy scouts, some artistic and athletic pursuits, etc., etc... b/c I realized earlier in that decade that other kids would deliberately try to push my buttons if they knew I'd have a meltdown, and so I prevented a lot of that - BUT - at the same time, I had to have the patience of Gandhi to avoid reacting to people who would make derisive remarks to me when I'd fail at something, or misunderstand something - so, yes, as you allude to, I had to prioritize what was important but then in my young adult life, in college/uni I realized in hindsight that I made people uncomfortable by my odd interactions, doing or saying things at the wrong time, not realizing looks of unease or "what's up with him" and if I was more nonverbally fluent then I would've spared myself certain fates like being outcast or being an "incel" (not that that term was used in the '90s, but you know what I mean).

At least, I wasn't going to be arrested for missing or misinterpreting facial expressions or transgressing social norms - whereas if I had a total fit and started cursing and breaking things, or breaking someone's jaw for insulting my condition, I might get tased by the cops and/or expelled from campus, or other unpleasant life-altering consequences

Good question. I don't know.

Well, I'll tell you one little anecdote - back in the 90s, when I was 21 and I went on a date with some girl I met on this "telepersonals" phone system (yeah, before Internet dating took off in the early 2000s...) I called her the day after, and she casually mentioned "my boyfriend" in the conversation. Naive me didn't realize that was code for "not interested in you / you're not my type". I just thought, why the heck is she telling me this NOW??? It doesn't make any sense, she must be mentally ill, and imagine how her unsuspecting boyfriend would feel I wasn't diagnosed with Aspergers at the time, that didn't come till 2001. But it begs the question, was my naivete due to Aspergers or lack of [dating] experience, or a combo of both???
hmmm....