The AutisM spectrum
Autism is usually talked about as a spectrum disorder. That’s because it isn’t a simple condition that manifests in basically the same way in everyone. It’s not even clear that it’s a single condition at all – it might well be several similar and/or overlapping conditions. There are common themes which all autistic people seem to share, and there are lots of differences too.
Here are some of the common themes:
- Difficulty in social interaction, particularly with non-verbal communication.
- Language use, especially difficulty understanding imprecise and nonsystematic language.
- Systematising tendancies, especially with routines and wanting predictability.
- Difficulty in sensory filtering, leading to the distinct possibility of sensory overload. Some people manage this with repeated actions – stims (e.g. rocking).
- Special interests – e.g. memorising lists of facts.
But here are some of the factors that vary a lot; these are part of the reason it’s such a broad spectrum:
- Intelligence – autistic people have as wide a range of intelligence as non-autistic people, perhaps wider. And that can make a huge difference to how the autism presents itself.
- Verbal skill – lots of autistic people are non-verbal or minimally verbal. But quite a few are writers, and some are even poets (e.g. Daniel Bowman). I’m not aware of any who are chat show hosts!
- Skill at masking – typically, women are much better at masking (acting neurotypical) than men, which is part of the reason that autism in women often goes undiagnosed.
- Severity of sensory issues – some people can manage everyday situations fine; others really really struggle.
- Balance of disability and cultural difference – this is linked to the other factors. For some people, autism is mostly an intrinsic disability. For others it’s mostly a cultural difference.
There’s a wise saying that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. For that reason, I think talking about neurodiversity is actually more helpful – it’s not about saying “this condition has these symptoms”; it’s about saying that different people are different, and that autism describes some of the ways that some people are different.
Autistic Sidenote
I don’t like the word “autistic” or the word “spectrum”.
“Autistic” originally referred to people who were non-verbal to the point where they didn’t interact with others. Hence “aut-“, which is a prefix meaning “self”. Maybe it’s better than “Asperger’s” because Asperger was a Nazi and doesn’t deserve to have anything cool named after him.
Likewise, “spectrum” is an analogy from physics, which means I get picky about it. The spectrum has one factor that varies (either wavelength or frequency, depending how you count it), and it produces a range of things that look different – the rainbow or the wider EM spectrum. But in autism, there are lots of factors that vary. It’s more multidimensional than just a spectrum; it’s more like an N-dimensional colour picker. (Most computer colour pickers are 3D, but presented in 2D.)
Some people prefer the label “ASD” to autism, because it hides the words. My view is that it just adds another potentially untrue word: “disorder” and then hides them, but that doesn’t make them any less false.
What is Autism?
This article is part of a series exploring some of the basics of autism.
The series is mostly written by John Allister, from his own perspective and experience.
“Autism” describes a wide range of experiences. For me, it is a minor disability that leads to a significant difference in cultural expression… 80% of the difficulties I experience from being autistic are because of the cultural differences rather than the disability itself.