How autistic and non-autistic people can understand each other better

"Autistic people often experience difficulties with social communication. It’s so common, in fact, that it’s one of the central criteria for an autism diagnosis.

For as long as we have been diagnosing autism, doctors and researchers have regarded social communication difficulties as autistic “impairments”. But in more recent years, research has begun to show that – just like autistic people have been saying for a long time – communication breakdowns go both ways.

In other words, neurotypical people can have just as much difficulty understanding autistic people as the other way round. This is now sometimes referred to as “the double empathy problem”.

In my new book, Understanding Others in a Neurodiverse World, I draw on linguistics, the study of language, to look at the double empathy problem a little more closely. And I consider how autistic and non-autistic people can better communicate with each other."

theconversation.com/how-autistic-and-non-autistic-people-can-understand-each-other-better-234320