Misunderstandings occur on a regular basis: generally large ones, generally small ones. It’s a traditional a part of human communication, whether or not or not we’re autistic.
Now, I’m an enormous fan of the longstanding BBC Radio rural cleaning soap The Archers (considered one of my autistic particular pursuits!) and a current episode performed with a basic form of misunderstanding. Susan Carter is busy doing her grocery purchasing within the native grocery store. Her long-estranged brother Clive (who doesn’t reside within the village and hasn’t been seen for years) startles her along with his surprising method within the vegetable aisle. “Clive!”, says Susan, “What are you doing right here?” Clive’s reply? “A bit of buying my tea.”
The issue, on this misunderstanding, is context. Susan desires to know what Clive is doing right here: again within the village. For Susan, the context is a much bigger one. It’s about Clive showing again in her life and within the village after years of being absent. Clive solutions what he’s doing right here: on this constructing, the grocery store. For him the context is rather more rapid. He offers a solution that pertains to the current second. Why is he right here, within the grocery store? Nicely, he’s doing his purchasing for his tea…
Relevance concept is a lesser-known concept from the sector of Linguistics (the examine of languages and human communication) that has rather a lot to say about how shared context (or, extra precisely, the issues we assume to be shared context) influences how we perceive each other. Relevance concept, to me, appears a extremely great tool for understanding the difficulties in cross-neurotype communication (e.g., between autistic and non-autistic folks).
Whereas misunderstandings occur on a regular basis, they’re rather more frequent and have a way more important influence on the success of communication once they occur in cross-neurotype interactions (e.g. between autistic and non-autistic folks). Traditionally, autistic folks have been blamed for these communication breakdowns and described as not with the ability to “do” social communication, or perceive the views of different folks. We now know that, in actual fact, this isn’t true. The issue is a two-way challenge: with neurotypical folks having simply as a lot issue understanding autistic folks as autistic folks have understanding neurotypical folks. This two-way drawback is usually referred to the “double empathy drawback.” Relevance concept may help us perceive why the double empathy drawback occurs (and, because of this, hopefully assist us navigate it higher).
The issue is that phrases on their very own don’t actually imply a complete bunch. This may appear a little bit of a wierd thought at first. We’ve dictionaries, the place we are able to lookup the meanings of phrases, proper? They need to imply one thing… However as we noticed within the instance above with Susan Carter and Clive Horrobin, you should utilize the phrase “right here” however it may relate to any variety of various things. There’s all the time a component of guesswork concerned once you’re making an attempt to work out what someone means.
If you happen to’re not satisfied but, right here’s one other instance. Think about you’re sitting watching TV with a good friend or member of the family. You may see them leaning ahead and frowning and also you realise they most likely can’t hear it very properly. You see them patting the couch round them feeling for one thing, then they ask you: “have you ever obtained the flibbertigibbet?” Whereas ‘flibbertigibbet’ is a (albeit scrumptious to say) made-up phrase than has no which means and may’t be appeared up in a dictionary, you’ll be able to most likely work out fairly rapidly that they’re asking you for the remote-control (to show up the quantity).
Relevance concept tells us that with a view to appropriately guess (or: perceive) what somebody means, you want to have the ability to appropriately work out what they needed you to know (or: their ‘intentions’). You want to have the ability to think about what context is most “related” for the particular person talking, and once you’re the speaker, it’s worthwhile to have an thought of what essentially the most relevance context and interpretation shall be to your listener.
This seems like lots of exhausting work, but it surely’s one thing that occurs intuitively and at high-speed on a regular basis with out you realising. Based on relevance concept, our brains depend on shortcuts (referred to as ‘heuristics’) that assist us determine essentially the most related interpretation each time we hear or learn one thing. The heuristic (or mind shortcut) goes one thing like this:
Probably the most related interpretation is the one which prices the least psychological vitality to course of, whereas speaking essentially the most new info.
Everytime you hear or learn one thing, your thoughts will run by way of the varied attainable interpretations, stopping on the first one which fulfills the recipe above.
Most often, this calculation works very well and permits us to speak at pace, appropriately understanding what folks imply, sentence after sentence, after sentence, after sentence… But it surely depends on us (roughly) appropriately gauging how a lot psychological vitality it’s going to take the opposite particular person to course of what we’ve mentioned, and this depends on us figuring out what we’ve in frequent (and due to this fact what is clear to the opposite particular person and straightforward for them to course of).
The extra comparable two persons are, the extra seemingly it’s that our minds shall be organised in similar-ish methods and that we’ll have similar-ish methods of understanding issues. Relevance concept describes this when it comes to us having bigger ‘mutual cognitive environments’ (or, in different phrases, there’s extra overlap in the best way our minds work). The heuristic/shortcut described above does its calculation of relevance based mostly on how a lot we assume we each know that we’ve in frequent (or, how a lot we predict we each know is in our mutual cognitive surroundings).
And herein lies the issue: Autistic and non-autistic folks have very alternative ways of processing info. They usually have very alternative ways of considering, very totally different sensory experiences that form the best way they see the world and, because of this, seemingly have very totally different ‘cognitive environments’. Issues which may be very apparent for an autistic particular person might not be apparent for a non-autistic particular person, and vice versa.
The excellent news is that (in fact!) autistic and non-autistic folks can perceive one another, it simply would possibly take a bit extra effort to get there.
