Being versus Appearing Socially Uninterested: Challenging Assumptions about Social Motivation in Autism
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Plain English Summary
This heavyweight paper — with 32 expert commentaries — asks a deceptively simple question: what if autistic people who look socially uninterested are actually very interested, just showing it differently? The authors walk through four misread behaviors. Avoiding eye contact? Sensory discomfort, not indifference. Less pointing? A motor-planning challenge, not missing desire to communicate. Repetitive movements? Self-regulation, unrelated to caring about people. Repeating others' words (echolalia)? Actually communicative. The kicker: assuming these behaviors signal low social motivation creates self-fulfilling prophecies. Drawing on cross-cultural evidence and autistic testimony, the paper proposes a neurodiversity-affirming framework recognizing unconventional ways of being social.
Research Notes
Paradigm-shifting BBS target article with 32 commentaries. Centers autistic testimony alongside quantitative evidence to challenge the dominant social motivation framework (Chevallier et al. 2012). Key for this library's nonverbal/autism domain: parallels psi research in showing how unusual behaviors are misinterpreted when filtered through conventional assumptions.
BBS target article (74 pp. with 32 commentaries and authors' response) challenging social motivation accounts of autism. Reviews four behaviors: (1) eye contact avoidance reflects sensory discomfort and adaptive processing, not disinterest; (2) reduced pointing stems from motor planning difficulties, not absent communicative intent; (3) motor stereotypies serve regulatory functions uncorrelated with social impairment; (4) echolalia functions communicatively and for self-regulation. Draws on cross-cultural research, motor/sensory literature, and autistic testimony to argue that misinterpreting these behaviors as diminished social motivation creates self-fulfilling prophecies. Proposes neurodiversity-affirming framework recognizing unconventional expressions of social interest.
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- An Exploration of Sensory and Movement Differences from the Perspective of Individuals with Autism — Robledo, Jodi (2012)
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📋 Cite this paper
Jaswal, Vikram K, Akhtar, Nameera (2019). Being versus Appearing Socially Uninterested: Challenging Assumptions about Social Motivation in Autism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X18001826
@article{jaswal_2019_being_appearing,
title = {Being versus Appearing Socially Uninterested: Challenging Assumptions about Social Motivation in Autism},
author = {Jaswal, Vikram K and Akhtar, Nameera},
year = {2019},
journal = {Behavioral and Brain Sciences},
doi = {10.1017/S0140525X18001826},
}