Can you spot autism in under a second?
What do you think?
Maybe you're
pretty sure you already know the answer
or just think it's a dumb question in general.
But actually, there's an important lesson
worth exploring here, and the answer might surprise you.
Hi, everyone.
Paul Micallef here from Aspergers from the Inside.
I make weekly videos sharing the human side of autism.
So make sure you hit subscribe to get the latest content.
Can you spot autism in under a second?
So to answer this question, let me start with a story.
So a couple of years ago,
I was walking down a crowded city street
and I saw a little girl in a pusher
out of the corner of my eye.
And before you know it, I caught myself smiling.
And upon further investigation, I realise, I'm smiling
because I've realised instantly that she's autistic.
And I'm smiling because I recognise that bouncing motion.
That's the kind of thing that I would do.
OK, so by this stage, my rational brain is catching
up, and there are huge doubts forming in my mind.
I've just seen something possibly a passing shadow
out of the corner of my eye.
And suddenly I've already decided
that this little girl is autistic.
I mean, seriously, does that make sense?
So I look over again to see if my theory is correct.
And I notice that she's looking up up at the sky,
sort of with the sun on her face,
and she's got her hand and it's in front of her face.
And she's moving her fingers between her face and the sun.
I also notice
she had a necklace with a little pendant
that looks remarkably like a chew toy.
And on closer inspection, she is way too big for that pusher.
It's probably designed for a two or three year old,
and she must be at least five or six.
And then, as if I needed any more proof or,
you know, maybe my brain was just looking for proof.
But the way she smiled and the way she was looking around,
I was just 100% sure in my own mind.
I mean, I could have been wrong.
I'm not a diagnostician.
I'd observed this girl
for about three or four seconds, by this stage in total.
I was so sure I was so excited that I could
that I could pick it with with half a sideways glance
that I wanted to go up
and speak to her mother and share this news.
I didn't do that for various reasons,
which you can probably guess.
I mean, firstly, I wasn't even sure
that she had an official diagnosis,
so that might not have been the best message
to hear from a random
stranger in the street in the middle of the day.
Secondly, even if she did have a positive view of autism,
the idea that it might be so bleedingly obvious to
everyone, well, everyone
meaning me in that situation
might not have gone down so well either.
So why am I telling you this story?
The point of this story is that our brains
have the ability to make very, very, very quick
decisions based on minimal data.
We often call this a first impression.
Do I like you?
Do I trust you? Are you a friend?
Are you someone I should be wary of?
How cautious do I need to be around you?
All of these things are judged unconsciously
in the first split second after seeing someone
or meeting someone for the first time.
So we usually call that a first impression.
And you know what this system
is designed to hone in on and pick up on first?
Differences, anomalies,
Is there anything strange about this person?
Is there anything about this
person that doesn't quite add up, that doesn't quite
meet my expectations?
Do they have a funny inflection in their voice?
Is their eye contact a bit funny?
Is their posture not quite as I would expect.
All of these things add
up in the back of our mind
in a split second to come up with a first impression
regarding someone that we've just met
and know absolutely nothing about.
Even for someone like me who is extremely logical
and rational and has done a huge amount of work
around self-awareness
and becoming aware of my own emotions and my own reactions
and my own judgments,
it still took my brain a couple of seconds
to catch up and realise what I was already assuming.
So in answer to the question, can you spot autism
in under a second, what we can spot in
under a second is any form of difference.
Now, some of us are more outwardly different from others.
That means that
if you can appear normal in all of the expected ways
in the first couple of seconds of someone meeting you,
they might not immediately notice anything strange
about you at all.
And you have what might as well be called a passing privilege,
because you can pass through normal, everyday society
without anyone noticing that you are any different
to anyone else.
Not all of us have that privilege,
and I have many friends who would immediately stand out
as different due to their posture
or tone of voice or facial expressions
or any number of other things that people would generally
pick up on as being immediately, obviously different.
In fact, I remember one time I was chatting to a young man.
He must have been maybe 19-years-old,
in a non-work situation, and he asked me, you know, what
I did, you know, doing a very good job of small talk.
And I told him about the blog, and I told him
that I was volunteering in the autism space.
And his eyes widened and he looked at me and he said,
did you know I'm actually autistic as well?
No one knows. Right.
I'm telling you
because you work in this space, and you're autistic yourself,
no one else knows because I'm so good at blending in.
And I did a pretty good job
of hiding my reaction and I didn't want to tell him
straight away and burst his little bubble.
But it was immediately obvious that he was
a little bit different to those others around him.
There were several signs that he didn't notice,
but that were obvious from the outside.
For example, when you're standing in a group,
sometimes you can tell if someone is the odd one out.
They're standing just not quite in the same pattern
as everyone else.
You can also look at his attention and his eye contact.
While most people were engrossed in the conversation.
He was paying enough attention to keep up
with the conversation.
But you could tell that he was also looking around
and you could tell that
he was thinking and processing a lot more than the others
who were just acting on instinct
and going along with the conversation. Right.
So even in his situation with an intelligent, high
masking, high functioning autistic individual,
there are still usually clues that people can easily
pick up on.
Ironically, it can
sometimes be
those more subtle cues that are actually more detrimental
I mean, if someone obviously had a speaking delay, for example,
you're unlikely to hold that against them
and think that they're
trying to lie to you or trying to dismiss you.
Whereas if someone can't make eye contact, if someone
is clearly very intelligent and clearly thinking
about everything that they're doing,
and is still being a bit weird, it's easy to think, well,
I wonder why they're standing a little bit out.
Do they not want to be part of this group?
Are they trying to send me a subtle message?
And because it's not obvious the neurotypical population
often read into different
behaviour, things that are just not there at all.
So again, can you spot autism in under a second?
Well, most of the population would not identify
that what they are spotting is autism,
but they would spot certain traits and certain
characteristics that they would identify
consciously or unconsciously as different, a bit weird
or at the very least, a little bit suspicious.
So I've personally found it very helpful to notice
what parts of my behaviour seem a little bit strange
to other people.
I mean, I previously thought
that I did a very, very good job of fitting in when I had to.
I thought I had fairly good social skills.
I thought I could adapt to different situations
and behave
appropriately and engage appropriately,
and everyone thought it was fine.
And that was kind of true.
It's just that I would gravitate towards people
who didn't judge my differences in a negative way.
And don't worry, there are plenty of people
who are open minded enough to accept a few eccentricities.
But I was absolutely kidding myself
if I thought no one was going to notice anything odd at all.
And from an advocacy perspective, it's incredibly
important to recognise the power of those snap judgments.
So by recognising the effect of those first impressions,
those snap judgments,
then we have the ability to start analysing them
and looking past them to give people a second chance.
Maybe the reason my friend didn't respond to my text
message wasn't
because they're angry at me or because they don't want
to speak to me.
Simply questioning is the assumption
that I've come up with actually true or not,
and testing that and getting a bit of evidence for that.
Then we can move past snap
judgments on odd behavior to actually get
behind what is really going on here.
Most discrimination is not overt or deliberate.
We all have unconscious biases that we need to deal with.
And unfortunately, as we all know, one of the most tragic
outcomes of these kind of snap judgments
and first impressions
and making assumptions on behaviour
that might not necessarily be accurate
is tragic loss
and damage to relationships with the people we love.
So can you spot autism in under a second?
Well, if your brain knows what to look for, the answer
is sometimes, yes.
Can everyone spot autism in under a second?
Most people are not going to know
that the difference that they unconsciously perceive
has anything to do with autism.
Even if you think you're
doing a fabulous job of masking all of your differences
so no one could possibly see them.
In fact, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Do people notice you're autistic straight away?
Do people notice you're different straight away?
Or can you fly under the radar
so that they don't notice at all?
So anyway, I should probably leave it there.
Thanks for watching.
I hope you've enjoyed this video.
I hope we can all learn to recognise the impact
of our snap judgments and first impressions.
And I'll see you again next week. Bye.