“Read my lips, not my body”: a thematic analysis of autistic people’s social communication preferences

Differences in socialising and communicating between autistic and non-autistic people are well documented, but primarily from the perspective of non-autistic researchers assuming an autistic social communicative deficit. However, recent challenges suggest it may be more accurate to talk about an autistic social communication ‘style’. This qualitative study attempts to better characterise this style, and to understand how differences between it and a non-autistic communicative style might produce communicative misunderstanding. Eight autistic adults (7 women, 1 nonbinary) took part in an online asynchronous focus group over two weeks. They were asked about their social values, their experiences talking to non-autistic people, positive social interactions, and encouraged to comment and feedback on the contributions of others in the group. Thematic analysis produced five themes: 1) truth and honesty, 2) invisible demands and their impacts, 3) empathy and double empathy, 3) autistic strengths and autistic positives, and 5) the role of autistic community. These findings highlight the ways in which autistic people’s different experiences of (and expectations for) social communication can clash with non-autistic people’s, producing disjunctions in understanding, and emphasise the nuance and complexity of participants’ conceptualisations of autism as difference versus deficit versus strength.