Autism as Highly Selective Social Learning

"We like to learn & often learn by investigating for ourselves instead of learning from someone else."

  Evaleen Whelton, AUsome Training.

Many people have attempted to give at least partial answers to questions along the lines of “What is autism?” and “Why are some people autistic?”, and I’d like to make my own attempt here. Of course, I’m assuming that these questions are still somewhat open, rather than fully resolved, otherwise I wouldn’t feel the need to add further thoughts to the debate. There have been a number of theories proposed over the years to try and make more sense of the phenomenon of autism, including the following:

•       Theory of Mind Deficit Theory (Baron Cohen) 

•       Extreme Male Brain Theory (Baron Cohen)

•       Executive Dysfunction Theory (Ozonoff & Russell)

•       Weak Central Coherence Theory (Frith)

•       Context  Blindness Theory (Vermeulen)

•       Intense World Theory (Markram & Markram)

•       Monotropism Theory (Murray, Lesser & Lawson)

I’m not going to outline them all here, but I plan to come back to them in a later blog and discuss how they might fit in with the theory I’m outlining below. Many of them have provided useful insights, but we are still a long way from any kind of completely satisfying overall theory.

In this post, I’m describing an evolutionary perspective on understanding the place within human neurological variation of the autistic version of being human. The theory I’m proposing sees autistic neurodivergence as characterised by an innately Highly Selective Social Learning Strategy (HSSLS) when it comes to growth and development, very different to (but not worse or better than) the largely unselective and accepting social learning approach that characterises most non-autistic humans.

The following points clarify the Evolutionary/Comparative Psychology context within which this theory makes sense:

•     All social species (e.g. chimpanzees, wolves, some species of fish, birds etc…) add some social learning strategies to direct, "asocial" learning from the environment. By “social learning” we don’t mean just learning about social/interpersonal aspects of the world (e.g. communication, conflict resolution etc), though these are included; social learning in social species takes place in relation to a wide variety of important issues (e.g. seeking food sources, safe locations etc). Both direct/empirical and social/cultural strategies have advantages & disadvantages, so there is always a mixture of strategies in any population, and we see variation in the balance of strategies used across individuals, and across time & circumstances.

•     Humans use social/cultural learning strategies much more than any other species (it’s pretty much a species-defining characteristic). As with other social species, humans use both direct learning and social learning strategies because both have costs and benefits, but neurotypical humans (the majority) generally prioritise sociocultural learning strategies, especially as they become increasingly “socialised” over the course of their development. This means that a huge proportion of their learning, both conscious and non-conscious, comes from observing what others do, think, and feel in various important contexts (fashion, tastes, hobbies/interests, political opinions, food preferences, sexual taboos, religious beliefs, customs, etiquette etc). This has led to great achievements for the human species (e.g. growth in knowledge and learning, development of complex technologies, etc), but it also has dangerous downsides (e.g. conformity, rejection of nonconformists, overattachment to tradition, etc). It also leaves room for minority social learning strategies such as the Highly Selective Social/Cultural Learning Strategy discussed here. A plausible outcome in terms of the human gene pool, over long evolutionary time, could be exactly what we now see: a relatively stable equilibrium consisting of a Highly Selective primary strategy (strongly empirical + selectively discriminating) for a minority, within a Highly Unselective primary strategy (weakly empirical + selectively undiscriminating) for the majority, who see culture as a set of given “truths” to be absorbed without much question.

I am proposing that autistic people are exactly this highly selective minority when it comes to social learning, and that one of our defining characteristics is that, far more than the average, we are deeply unwilling, perhaps indeed unable, to simply accept the social models we see around us, or the information we are expected to simply take in, or the rules that are supposed to be followed without discussion as to whether they make any sense. We follow a different developmental pathway from the very earliest age, so of course it deeply affects the “typical” course of development and “normal socialisation”. We prefer being self-taught and finding out for ourselves (as Evaleen Whelton’s quote above captures), and as we grow up the culture we live in always looks somewhat “foreign” and unreal to many of us, as if we were anthropological observers. However, like anthropologists, we can often see the real patterns underneath the accepted cultural assumptions, though we are not always popular if we point them out. This means we can be good sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, and of course anthropologists. We also famously make good scientists, academics, researchers, given our Highly Selective preference for:

• information acquired directly, rather than indirectly via other people
  
• reliable sources of information, when the information is acquired indirectly
  
• quality rather than quantity of information
• information delivered efficiently, without "packaging"
• adequate time to test and process information
• freedom to choose what information to believe
  

 

Coming to the end of this initial exploration of HSSLS theory (I’ll come back to it at some stage), it strikes me as a possibility that in neurotypical humans the Highly Selective Social Learning strategy makes a temporary reappearance in many adolescents ("I want to find out for myself"), only to often fade again before the end of their twenties…

 

All thoughts on the ideas above are welcome…

 

Relevant articles:

Bushwick, N.L. (2001) Social learning & the Etiology of Autism. New Ideas in Psychology 19-1.

Chapman, R. (2021) Neurodiversity and the Social Ecology of Mental Functions. Perspectives on Psychological Science 1–13