Hope, Communication & ASD

By Julie Gordon, LCSW

Social Communication is the most known and researched deficit of the spectrum. Persistent impairment in nonverbal communication, social-emotional reciprocity and maintaining relationships must to be present in order meet the criteria to be diagnosed with ASD.

If you teach eye contact and speech, will an individual with ASD be able to effectively and meaningfully communicate?

Nearly every parent attempting to discipline their child has uttered the words, “Look at me when I am talking to you!” Our brains tell us that when someone is not looking at us while we are communicating, they cannot be listening and we are not “on the same page”. For example, when we are telling a story and someone picks up their phone to respond

to a text they received, we will stop sharing the story until they are done. If the breakdown keeps happening, we will likely become annoyed and potentially give up.

We feel this way because 93% of communication is nonverbal and only 7% verbal. Our language is to enhance and clarify the conversation that is happening nonverbally. (It is also why we love emojis – the text is not adequate!)

So to truly communicate with another person, one has to shift their gaze toward their reference point, read and hear the other person’s facial expression, gestures, body position and prosodic changes in voice and then interpret what it all means in relation to what they are saying. You respond back and forth this way, repairing breakdowns and misunderstandings throughout the exchange.

It is a trifecta of Joint Attention, Social Communication and Social Cognition occurring at the simultaneously.

For individuals with ASD, all three areas are significantly impacted, creating a developmental domino effect on communication. As a result, eye contact does not occur naturally. Shifting your gaze becomes meaningless if a nonverbal gesture is not useful to you. Why would you need to shift to look at another person’s facial expression if you don’t understand what it means anyway?

It is no wonder that individuals with ASD report that eye contact increases their anxiety. We tend to use the term

“eye contact” synonymously with Joint Attention, but it is only an element of it. Eye contact makes the receiving person assume you are jointly attending: listening, processing and understanding the shared information. However, trained eye contract can create looking without those latter skills.

Instead, due to challenges in receptive and expressive nonverbal communication, individuals with ASD end up missing prosodic cues of disinterest in topic from peers, missing facial cues of confusion from partners to provide clarification, lacking context for the topic of conversation, not taking the perspective of their partner or not identifying sarcasm. The result is failed attempts and stressful exchanges.

Avoid eye contact, avoid conversation, avoid feelings of failure.

There is hope. With a qualified clinician, you can focus treatment goals on social-emotional reciprocity and nonverbal communication for the development of genuine, meaningful Joint Attention, Social Communication and Social Cognition skills. It is important to ensure that goals do not merely train eye contact or speech without context and meaning. Communication goals that focus on the trio of deficits are essential for anyone on the spectrum to build confidence and competence in relationships - you can socially communicate without language present, but you can also have language and not be communicating socially.

Julie Gordon has been in the field of ASD for 19 years. She is the owner of The Hope Source and founder of Dynamic Minds Academy.

Grow Your Own Way.

Imagine no longer having to fight for your child's needs at school!

Dynamic Minds Academy was founded to ensure that every support for ASD is built-in.

Low Ratios • Low StimulationYear Round Calendar • Built-in AccommodationsSupport Services • Highly Qualified TeachersIndividualized Paths • Balanced & Flexible Curriculum

An Innovative, K-12, Free Public Charter School Specializing in Educating Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Enroll today at dynamicmindsacademy.org