Pretty much the defining characteristic of Autism/Aspergers is a mind devoid of Social Awareness: being blind and deaf to social cues, not initiating social interactions (in a natural way :rolleyes:).
Think Dr. Sheldon Cooper.
Now, as I understand it, pre-speech todlers are hardwired to point at something/someone they want or wants you to see.
Is the hardwired impulse to point absent in those children on the spectrum?
Some don’t. Some do it late. Most do.
What they usually do just fine is point to things they want as a means of communicating needs*, but do NOT point to things that interest them, in order to direct others’ attention to them. They also do not tend to bring things to their caregivers to show them. This is developmentally normal for toddlers, who want to share things that they find interesting, and find it rewarding if the other person is also interested. Autistic children do not seem to have this impulse, although it varies by individual.
*In fact, because many talk late or not at all, they may use pointing to desired objects to a greater degree than other children, and may get rather sophisticated in it’s use, combining it with squints and eye gazes that can direct attention.
I worked with autistic people for many years doing Community Living Services. I probably know more than 100 autistic people all across the spectrum, and of all different ages.
It sounds like you are talking about ‘joint attention’, where someone points to something out to someone else, so that the two of them can look at it together. I think it’s a socially learned skill, because children who were neglected, or have attachment disorders are often bad at it. I don’t know much about autism, but if you google ‘joint attention and autism’, you might get some information.
My Small Boy used to take my hand, lead me to the thing he was interested in, and put my hand on it.
And, yes, that was considered a component of an autism diagnosis. He had to be taught about pointing.
All the people with autism that I work with now, know about pointing perfectly well. But that’s not to say they picked it up naturally.
This.
Its not that autism or even aspergers is an instinct replacing, its a lesser ability.
Aspergers is perhaps the nerdy selfawareness saying whatever in terse form thing, and autism is about all sorts of inabilities.
And the idiot savant thing is there, that this freed them up to think in abstract and be nerdy… such as becoming good at maths and thinking about what happens to an orange in the dark on a motorbike with wings on a conveyor belt at the speed of light with a box on it that may or may not contain Monty’s goat.
My son, who just turned six, is on the higher end of the spectrum. He will point if making a choice between options (“Which shirt do you want to wear today?”) but does not point on his own to indicate interest or steer attention (“Look at that car!”).
In a National Geographic some years ago it was stated that Autistics do not share, do not demonstrate, and a third i forget :(.
Maybe something about Theory of Mind (aka being able to imagine how someone else would feel, which is different from how they themselves would, when X happens)? People with ADHD are poorer than normal at that too.
My daughter, who was on the non verbal part of the spectrum for about 5 years pointed a lot. It was a key component of her communication at that time.
It’s hard to make any true statement that starts with the words “all Autistics…” But there are certainly tendencies, and communication difficulty is a wel known one . And if you think about it, pointing is actually a pretty sophisticated (for the age when kids start doing it) communication skill. A person makes a line from their eye to another object (which might be miles away) and … THIS is a cue for you to try to follow that line and see what’s on the end of it? That’s weird. The only way you’d ever figure that out is by * closely observing * your fellow humans and noticing that this is, in fact, a thing that they do. That incorporates two likely failure points for autistic kids - you’ll have difficulty if you’re not concentrating more on people than things, and you’ll also have difficulty if you’re not very good at interpreting or understanding body language.
I always felt that the take-the-person-to-the-object method was much more logical. And it is! It is logical. Just not very neurotypical…
I wonder if there’s some sort of bell curve there where non-verbal ADS kids learn to point out of necessity and neurotypical kids learn to point as a regular communication tool but verbal ADS children DON’T point much because they don’t need to in order to get what they need and also don’t have a standard set of communication tools.