The Uncanny Valley and Autism: Why Social Communication Falls Short

What Is the ‘Uncanny Valley’?

The Uncanny Valley is a term that describes what happens as robots or cartoon characters look more human like. Contrary to expectations, there isn’t a linear relationship between how human-like robots and cartoon characters are and how endearing they are to people. Instead, there comes a point where it is almost there, but not quite right. Instead of liking the character, people find it creepy or even scary. At best, it puts people off. Read this article for detailed examples of this phenomenon.

A Similar Phenomenon in Autism

A similar thing can happen in autism, when autistic people try too hard to emulate the social skills of people who are not autistic. They almost get there but not quite, and the effect can be very off putting. We have witnessed this happen in autistic people. When we explain this phenomenon to the autistic individuals we work with, many recognise the pattern immediately, but others refuse to believe it could be happening to them and believe that if they don’t put all this effort in, nobody will want to talk to them.

The problem is that in autism, there are barriers that prevent people learning social interaction. These make it impossible for an autistic person to pass as non autistic. Whatever they do, there will remain an element of difference. These commonly include difficulties with:

• Taking in and understanding information- Getting thoughts out, which can be to the point of being non speaking (generally called non verbal)- Tunnel focus- Social emotional reciprocity

Because of these barriers, autistic communication tends to:

• Involve literal understanding- Be focused on the exchange of information and not emotion- Lack guile and sophisticated deception- Lack social games

This is why autistic people tend to be able to communicate more easily with each other — even when their autisms are very different — than with non-autistic people. People often feel they are being patronising or rude when speaking to another adult at the simpler autistic level.

For many autistic people, talking is purely about imparting information. It is not about building relationships via exchange of emotion, which is what social chit chat is about.

Getting Information In

Difficulties with taking in and understanding information create a formidable barrier. Often for autistic people, just managing to get the literal meaning is quite an achievement. This can be because of processing issues or very different ways of thinking. When processing issues are involved, there is no processing capacity left for facial expression, body language, hidden meanings, or deep context. Though for people with delayed processing, this understanding can come later. That means hours, days, weeks, or months later. When different ways of thinking are involved, just translating what is being said to the person’s internal representation leaves nothing left for understanding facial expression, body language, hidden meanings or deep context. So for example, Temple Grandin has to translate to and from pictures, other autistic people think non linearly in the form of diagrams.

Some autistic people have interests that they like to talk about, often to the frustration and boredom of non-autistic people. By talking about their interest, they have something to talk about and use this in an attempt to connect with other people. By sticking to something they know lots about, it is more likely that some sort of conversation is possible.

Getting Information Out

Clearly, having difficulty expressing your own thoughts and ideas is going to create an almost insurmountable barrier. Even worse when your mouth has a habit of saying things you did not intend to say. Sometimes the information is there, but the speech is not. This can be overcome to some extent by pointing to a letter board or typing, but this can be very laborious. Some autistic people have demonstrated a high level of understanding of social interaction, but just cannot engage with it.

For some autistic people, even those who are able to speak, it is just too difficult to translate thoughts and ideas into words. This can be because thinking is non linear and that just does not translate well to the linear form of words. This can be a difficult problem to solve. We have found that communication with the aid of ‘Scapple’ can work well in these situations.

Sometimes, the production of thoughts into words is just too slow, too laborious. Sometimes a remembered quote can be produced. But this is an extremely frustrating difficulty for both the autistic person and those around them.

Tunnel Focus

Tunnel focus combines the ability to focus intensely on something with the inability to switch attention onto something else easily. Focus is normally narrow. Social interaction tends to involve rapid switches between topics of conversation and this is extremely difficult, if not impossible for autistic people with this difficulty.

Social Emotional Reciprocity

While being unable to engage in social emotional reciprocity does not by itself render someone autistic because there are ways of emulating this, this does create an additional substantial barrier for engaging in social interaction.

Some autistic people are able to engage in social emotional reciprocity, but others are not able to do this. This is independent of the issues we have discussed so far. The key to being able to engage in social emotional reciprocity is the ability to exchange packets of emotion during conversation. That requires being able to process the emotions of self and others in real time.

When we do social skills training, the first thing to establish is whether the client can do social emotional reciprocity. This is not difficult to establish. Training is different based on this criterion. However, if social emotional reciprocity is missing, social chit chat will always appear boring and meaningless even once the purpose is understood.

Those autistic people who are able to engage in social emotional reciprocity get closest to non-autistic social interaction. But because of the barriers it goes wrong : some might learn to flirt, but then (quite obviously to a bystander) overdo it. Similarly for banter and other forms of social interaction: some learn how to turn a conversation to their special interest to make it easier for them to engage in conversation.

However, it is important to recognise that because of the barriers briefly explained above, which form the basis of autism, meeting the social-communication level of non-autistic people is not possible and they should be aware that trying too hard causes them to fall into the uncanny valley.

#What If the Barriers Are Not Easily Identifiable?

On the face of it, it is simple. Autism is about social-communication difficulties. There are barriers which prevent autistic people learning social interaction and they cannot get all the way there. Attempts to reach non-autistic communication fall short and cause them to fall into the uncanny valley. That much seems clear.

But as soon as we try to understand what is going on, and what exactly those barriers are, the picture becomes messy. Processing issues are relatively straightforward to identify. But when there are no clear processing difficulties, what is actually getting in the way?

The answer is not simple. It depends on how someone thinks, learns, and experiences the world. There are too many ‘if’s’, ‘but’s’, and exceptions to state one universal cause. Similarly there is no one good way to communicate with autistic people. It is important to get to know what works for them.

If we are to have any meaningful understanding, or support autistic people more effectively, we need to be willing to live with this complexity. We welcome further discussion, questions, or examples if you have your own experiences to share. Please contact us through our contact form if you wish to discuss this topic.