‘A Difference in Typical Values’: Autistic Perspectives on Autistic Social Communication

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.

About the autistic author marker

Sutherland, H. E. A., Fletcher-Watson, S., Long, J., & Crompton, C. J. (2025). ‘A Difference in Typical Values’: Autistic Perspectives on Autistic Social Communication. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 27(1), 313-329. https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.1184

Publication date: 1 Jan 2025 Added to AutiHub: 6 Jul 2026 Type: Article Article language: English

This publication is integrated into AutiHub through:

Authors

Publication authors
4
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 4 (25.0%)

Abstract

Autistic people socialise and communicate differently to non-autistic people. However, definitive accounts of what this social communicative style might look like, from an autistic perspective, have so far been limited. This qualitative research explored autistic people’s accounts of their own social communication behaviour and experiences of face-to-face interactions, to better understand the autistic social communicative style. Nine autistic adults (4 women, 1 nonbinary, 4 men; aged 23-70) took part in an online, forum-style focus group over the course of two weeks, participating in discussions about how they signalled (dis)interest and (un)enjoyment during conversations; what their natural social communication behaviours were; what talking to autistic people was like, compared to non-autistic people; and anything else they thought researchers should know. From this, five themes were developed: autistic experiences of self, attention, and environment; autistic expectations about how social interactions should work; conflicts between autistic and neurotypical-normative expectations; the constant effort of compensation and masking; and finding and creating shared understandings across neurotypes. Our findings highlight the complex interplay of autistic differences/difficulties with autistic people’s social environment, and emphasise the role that neurotypical-normative environments play in constructing autism as a social communication disability.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 2 Oct 2026 14:03.

Cited references
83
With a DOI
59
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
8
21 / 83 (25.3%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
18 / 83 (21.7%)
References with detected author names
69 / 83 (83.1%)
Without detected author names
14
Without a structured title
8
Without a stable identifier
22
References with raw author names still to review
4
References with external metadata lookup issues
0
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
243
From DOI or external metadata
239
From validated raw bibliography text
4
Raw names already validated
4
Raw names still to review
5
110 / 243 (45.3%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 133 / 243 (54.7%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
34 / 243 (14.0%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 34 / 110 (30.9%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 26 / 197 (13.2%).
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