Many aspects of this beyond autistic person’s abilities - absence of feedback mechanism, "too many balls in the air", nonlinear/asymmetrical perceptions and responses (whether “wired that way” or stress-altered).

Even the longer “processing time” to derive/decode others’ responses can introduce hysteresis. For an autistic person, focus on producing a performance can shut down detection of how things are going with it. Also, if it takes everything one has to perform an action, then of course it has to be restarted from the beginning if it’s interrupted...

The “responsibility” put upon us is to, above all else, act in the expected manner. It isn’t to be authentically ourselves, or to depart from the script except for, in the musical sense, performing scored-in four-bar solos in the right key and evocative of the approved melody. So much for "To thine own self be true"...

Last revised: June 18, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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