Both autistic people and I say the “wrong” from time to time. Wrong is the eye of the (typically) NT beholder, of course.
Curiously the presentation of saying the wrong thing is very similar between autism and me, the mechanism is often different. In autism it is often Social Lag or the high cost to manually compute theory of mind. ADHD individuals may also say the wrong thing: that is an issue with regulation – they say things before they can stop themselves.
I might look similar, but for me it is not seeing the social signals, a very literal approach and not seeing anything wrong with what I said.
Factual Correction
“Well, axxshually…”
Correcting errors in conversation, major, or minor, is a hallmark of both autistic people and myself. NT people are more about the vibe and accuracy is secondary to the flow and social cohesion. NT people might perceive this as signaling intellectual superiority, as pedantry.
Autistic people may have a compulsion, possibly triggered by monotropism, to correct factual errors. The error can generate physical or cognitive discomfort and correcting it is a way to resolve the tension.
I am very literal and truth oriented. Social standing means nothing, facts are important – my Functional Cognitive Architecture depends on them. Correction makes sense to me. I will certainly notice inaccuracies but I may chose to ignore them if they are trivial or the cost to correct is grater than the utility (e.g. correcting a stranger). But my instinct will be to correct as per my Ethics: Truth
Hierarchy Blindness
When the boss says something incorrect or makes a poor decision in a meeting. Autistic people and I would point this out. NT people might go with it anyway but would certainly use face-saving language when addressing it.
The cost of computing social hierarchy is free for NT people but can be expensive and laggy for autistic people. This lag can mean the words come out before the state is computed. Combine this with the urge to correct and the chance of an autistic person correcting their boss is high.
Although I have no respect for Authority (specifically social hierarchy is not something I can measure) I do have some heuristics to avoid friction along the lines of what NT people do, though some of it is phrasing due to the way I treat facts – it looks polite but is not. Detecting when I should wait or use softening language is manual and doesn’t always work.
Literal Response
NT people use phatic speech as a sort of ping or handshake to confirm social availability. When somebody asks “How are you?” they don’t want to know how you are (or so I have learned!). Some types of humor, such as sarcasm, require the person to say the opposite of what they mean. Hyperbole exaggerates. White lies, well, lie.
NT people understand all of these things because of their Theory of Mind – they get the vibes and understand what other people mean even when they don’t say it.
The same lag that causes autistic people to trip over social hierarchy can cause them to miss the context of a conversation, at least in real-time.
My experience is different: I don’t have any social signal so I only have the literal words. I can sometimes pick up humor if the prosody is exaggerated (think actors on a stage). I have canned scripts for some situations – I don’t actually understand what is being done when people ask “how are you?” but I have canned responses I can use for greetings that do the job. Or I can answer the question if I don’t match it to the script.
Functional Feedback / Bluntness^Bluntness
When people ask questions they may want the answer or more often they may want reassurance. In NT society “what do you think of my speech?” is a request for compliments, not an ask for constructive criticism. Guess which one autistic people and I do?
In autistic people the bluntness is driven by three potential factors:
- social lag – manual Theory of Mind not providing the right cues in real-time
- stress/meltdown – executing manual ToM is mentally costly and the user may blurt out the factual response
- honesty – many autistic people do value honesty over social harmony due to their own preference or ethical systems
My own bluntness is similar to the last point: I am honest. I am also very literal, so I hear the question as a request for feedback. I don’t have the Social Salience to tell me that people are recoiling from my words, so I give it to them straight. I can omit information that I think will not be useful and my natural approach may use softening language, though with a different intent.
On the flip-side, I have no Shame and can receive feedback easily (I think this is difficult for autistic people to do as they are sometimes hypersalient). If the feedback is false I can ignore it and if it is true I should incorporate it and make changes, if possible. I can accept Hard Truths – I may not enjoy doing so and I may feel Regret, but I don’t feel bad about myself.
Lack of Reciprocity
In conversation people will often ask a question about your job, etc. In NT people they expect you to ask a similar question back. “How was your weekend?” is a casual request for information (and a social ping) and after answering (not necessarily literally) the expected response is “how was yours?”. If you do not respond this way NT people may find you cold, disinterested or possibly narcissistic.
For autistic people, if they slip up on this, it might be because of cognitive load from manual ToM. They forget the script.
For me, I construct a Functional Logic Model to answer the question, possibly running a shorthand precomputed model for answering factual questions. I don’t need to know how their weekend was, so I don’t ask. I am just not curious about it because I don’t need that information – it isn’t disinterest (social choice), it is lack of need.
Letting the Conversation Die
Sometimes the conversation will sort of die out. NT people are adept at small talk and can reignite it by talking about nothing (from my point of view). NT people dislike silence – it is social friction and might indicate rejection. Low density talk back and forth fills the void and comforts them.
Autistic people might appreciate silence but will also experience anxiety because they know they should be talking. Like me, they don’t know what to say.
I have no problem with silence, though I find it boring and will want to leave (or start reading a book). I don’t experience any tension. I let the conversation die because my Manual Frame Construction has not identified any new requirements.
TMI
I might reveal that I have psoriasis or that I am ND to people if I think it is helpful to the conversation. The LLM tells me this is too much information – these are high stigma pieces of data. To me they are just facts.
Whoops
Probably everybody, NT, autistic, or whatever I am, has put their foot in their mouth. You say something that you realize is a bit off color or sounds racist. NT people have real-time bidirectional signaling and (if they care) can adjust as they are speaking. They might still commit a faux pas, but if they do it is probably more up to their personality.
Autistic people can see the social signals and pick up facial changes. They may not be able to react quickly enough to correct course. They will feel anxiety about what they said and perhaps Shame.
I may not notice at all. It may be that somebody has to tell me after the fact. Other times I can pick it up as I was saying it or right after – it triggers a “whoops” feeling. This is not picking up the social signal, it is listening to my own words and pattern matching against potentially dangerous terms and subjects. I quickly apologize and attempt a rephrase (which might take a few seconds to compute). If I don’t notice the whoops, I will never know. If I do, I might regret saying it, but my correction is sufficient repair for me. If it was a big enough whoops I may feel a biological threat response and blush – I can understand I just caused Friction and feel high entropy stress but feel no social shame.
More?
Probably. I don’t pick up on these, so it is after-the-fact notices from friends and family or work with the LLM to see where there are likely failures.
For example, Factual Correction doesn’t seem like an error to me – don’t you want the correct information? What is the purpose of talking if not to exchange facts? Well, in NT people, it isn’t always that.
Luckily for me, my work is in software and explicit communication is more the norm there. I think.