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Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

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Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#181

Post by chneu »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #115
benreesman wrote: post #93

I'm sure everyone involved means well, but we are really starting to embrace a culture of defining "normal" down to some arbitrary amount that seems to have no floor. I'm all for making sure that effective treatments are made available to anyone they might help, but couldn't a lot of this be addressed society just...being tolerant of diversity in people? Gating everyone through "thrives in American High School" as a…

Society is tolerant of diversity in people.

Serious question: what's your skin color and where do you live?

Edit: looks like white guy from Norway which explains why you'd think that.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#183

Post by austin-cheney »

As someone who is raising an a child with ASD I do find articles like these interesting because they tend to apply exactly as described more often than not.

What’s more interesting is looking at people’s reactions. One of the characteristics of ASD, but not applied to everyone with ASD, is exceptionally low social intelligence. People with low social intelligence tend to be extremely easily offended, fragile ego. They also tend to view absolutely everything from a “me first” perspective where everything in their perspective starts from themselves but completely lacks of introspection, like an extreme non-malignant narcissism. I see these conditions in many of the comments, where some people appear to show offense and immediately start talking about themselves.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#185

Post by pjc50 »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #115
benreesman wrote: post #93

I'm sure everyone involved means well, but we are really starting to embrace a culture of defining "normal" down to some arbitrary amount that seems to have no floor. I'm all for making sure that effective treatments are made available to anyone they might help, but couldn't a lot of this be addressed society just...being tolerant of diversity in people? Gating everyone through "thrives in American High School" as a…

Society is tolerant of diversity in people.

It's only just within my lifetime that we stopped beating kids for being left-handed.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#186

Post by pjc50 »

CalRobert wrote: post #151
benreesman wrote: post #93

I'm sure everyone involved means well, but we are really starting to embrace a culture of defining "normal" down to some arbitrary amount that seems to have no floor. I'm all for making sure that effective treatments are made available to anyone they might help, but couldn't a lot of this be addressed society just...being tolerant of diversity in people? Gating everyone through "thrives in American High School" as a…

The redefinition of "autism" from "can't talk, stims constantly, maybe bangs head against the wall, serious danger to themselves" to "kinda awkward savant" seems like it has been profoundly harmful to people who want to find new therapies for those in the former group. Maybe normalizing it was a way for insurance companies and school districts to get out of funding appropriate measures for people who literally can no…

I think there's a wider band of children than you think who can end up in either of those two camps depending on how they are treated, with traditional bullying pushing them to the former.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#187

Post by teddyh »

degamad wrote: post #109
markburns wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a realisation recently that we’re pretty comfortable with regional dialect borders being an entrenched and normal thing that reach back in history a thousand years or more and that something as specific as how we move our mouths and tongues is strongly correlated geographically. But we don’t often pay attention to other types of physical and behavioural culture being as geographically entrenched as they sometim…

There are some behaviours which are classically regionally identified, but they tend to be the exception to the rule... Italians talking with their hands, the Indian head-wobble, the East-Asian squat, etc.

“A couple of the other Meltdowns are standing around smoking cigarettes, holding them between two fingers in the Slavic style, like darts.”

— Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, 1992

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#188

Post by laserlight »

cookiengineer wrote: post #149
devmor wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. I am not autistic personally but working in tech and being into field-associated hobbies, I have a much more autism-dense social circle than the average person. This was awkward for me at first because it felt like I was either constantly irritated or being irritating to others by following my standard learned social conventions. Once I changed my expectations to clarify and verify intent instead of derive…

I'm organizing a self help group for autistic/AuDHD/ADHD people and over the years I've realized that a lot of things that bother our members are based on interpretations of social contracts. "Normal" people (whatever that means) tend to forget things quite quickly, and for us it's really hard when states change and contracts change. Meaning that if e.g. in a discussion 3 months ago we casually agreed upon "I do task…

> casually agreed upon "I do task X and you do task Y"

Tangentially, I hate that people express hollow intentions, like “We should definitely hang out some time.” Why would you say that, when it's not your intention? Of course, I understand that people say such things because of social conditioning. But, such language tends to upset people regardless of neurotype. One could simply say “It was nice to see you. Goodbye.” It would be all right.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#189

Post by wccrawford »

andsoitis wrote: post #123
yndoendo wrote: post #97

I am hesitant to post this because of JFK JR and ignoring with the politicians in power against ASD. Gait is not constant in the stride. It all depends on the footwear. The constant for me is being silent while walking. Be the ball of your feet or the heels. Having auditory issues / sensitive to sound, I walk to be silent and unheard. Walking and scaring wildlife and other humans was a personally taught process. I ca…

> I want to walk up to a person and they don't know. That’s usually not cool.

As someone who constantly does this to people, I can confirm that it is both amusing and, as you say, "not cool".

To that point, I used to wear my keys on a chain, and let the chain dangle to make noise as I walked.

It still didn't work very well, though, so I eventually gave up on that. Now I have no solution for it except that I'm more careful to try to approach people from the side or scuff my feet or something as I approach.

Also...

I was recently diagnosed as having Autism, and I distinctly remember just after high school someone approaching me and tell me that I still "walk funny". They didn't mean anything cruel by it, it was just a fact.

And I realized that I do walk funny, and I can even correct at least some of it if I think about it, but generally, I like how I walk for the advantages it brings, like balance and agility. Which is probably why I taught my self to walk like that in the first place.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#190

Post by aleph_minus_one »

MangoToupe wrote: post #156
npteljes wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more like how the world is said to be working, but not how it actually works. There is a huge difference between how people express their tolerance and expectations and what they actually okay with, with no extra internal feelings. It really would be incredibly rude to say much more, and so it's not said, but it's all there in inside, coded in unspoken feelings and expectations. I'd like to draw a parallel wit…

I encourage you to examine how much of this is specific to western culture, and in particular business-oriented western culture. Expectations and tolerance vary widely from community to community even in the US, but I submit autistic individuals are likely to struggle the most in highly atomized cultures. It's a very deep and broad topic so I don't expect you to see much at a glance, but I do believe there's a reason…

> but I submit autistic individuals are likely to struggle the most in highly atomized cultures.

For those who don't know the term "atomized culture": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism_(social)

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