But what if there is a social learning disability?

How can a person learn to compensate for color blindness, or a musician disguise inability to read music, or a driver the inability to read signs? (I wonder if something like the graphic international road signs would be useful at cultural events?) What other analogies or principles from learning-disability research and education might be useful in the context of autism?

The “corrective lenses” metaphor (from the previous item) seems to apply here too.

The “action-as-token” level of meaning becomes harder to access.

Receptively, we have:
Even if it is available through strictly-cognitive (that is, nonintuitive) means, that makes its meaning available only as one more factor to be considered in the behavioral deliberation. Its use as a precursor to deliberation - as something to set the tone/mood/direction of the deliberation - is lost. If the meaning has substantial emotional content, its presence is bereft of much of its power, as though set decorations were placed on a stage in a heap rather than being placed to create the desired mood. They become just one more thing to consider rather than an integral part of the consideration. Along our perceptual axis, there isn’t anything to distinguish among them to construct a hierarchy.

Expressively, we have:
Inadvertent use, or clumsy imitation, of others’ actions is unlikely to have the desired results, whether they are to achieve some specific result or simply to “fit in” socially. Accidental faux pas can be, emotionally, akin to stepping on a land mine. There is this sudden, shocking, damaging change. What worked for someone else does not work for the autism-spectrum person, and s/he cannot understand why.

Last revised: June 17, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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