I
think most people find small talk to be inconsequential. A casual conversation over the
water cooler about last night’s game, a simple
how was your weekend-type question, a spontaneous discussion about the weather, news or
daily events—for most folks, this type of “small
talk” is something they do while on autopilot.
Why, then, is small talk such a reliably stressful
event for those on
the autism spectrum?
together. This, in turn, creates pauses and delays
that just make small talk more of a chore than it
is for most other people.
Sensory Overload
In addition to social data, there is a lot of surrounding sensory
input during each
interaction. The lights
in a room or the random sounds of any
given location are
things that autistics
can be sensitive to,
making it difficult for
them to concentrate
on an already confusing discussion. Most
people can integrate
both verbal and nonverbal conversation
without having to do a lot of extra mental work
to naturally filter out extraneous sensory data.
Autistics, however, process this information in a
different way and can receive more input than is
comfortable or easily manageable (which is why
I don’t even think these issues are deficits—I
would say that individuals on the spectrum are
frequently seeing far more than most people).
"Even the most trivial
discussions do not
feel trivial; they feel like
I know that, in
my case, even the
most trivial discussions do not
feel trivial; they
feel like elaborate
obstacle courses
that are mentally
exhausting, even
when they go
well. This is the case for a variety of reasons, but
a few stand out more than others.
elaborate obstacle courses
that are mentally exhausting, even when they go well."
Information Overload
Even if people don’t realize it, every conversation contains an overwhelming amount of information. There is more involved than simply
what people say; there is also the huge number
of ways in which they say it. This is because
non-verbal communication is a crucial part of
the average person’s social vocabulary. Things
like gestures, vocal inflection and eye contact all
play a role in our conversations, even though
most people are not consciously aware that they
are using them. Many autistics can have a hard
time understa