Boldsen Sofie
Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 25;13:874268. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.874268. eCollection 2022.
Autism research has recently witnessed an embodied turn. In response to the cognitivist approaches dominating the field, phenomenological scholars have suggested a reconceptualization of autism as a disorder of embodied intersubjectivity. Part of this interest in autistic embodiment concerns the role of sensory differences, which have recently been added to the diagnostic criteria of autism. While research suggests that sensory differences are implicated in a wide array of autistic social difficulties, it has not yet been explored how sensory and social experience in autism relate on a phenomenological level. Given the importance of the sensory dimension of social encounters in phenomenological analyses of autism, this question must be considered crucial. This article investigates the role played by sensory differences in autistic social experience. Through a phenomenological analysis informed primarily by the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with particular emphasis on the relation between intersubjectivity and perception, I argue that sensory differences affect the way other people appear in autistic experience on a pre-reflective level. By drawing on autistic young adults' experiential descriptions of social encounters, this article identifies three aspects of how sensory differences affect social experiences in autism. First, social encounters manifested as sensorially disturbing, chaotic, and unpredictable events. Second, the embodied expressions of others appeared unfamiliar, threatening, and promoted a sense of detachment from the social world. Third, deliberate practices were employed to actively seek perceptual and social meaning in these disorienting social encounters. This analysis stresses the importance of understanding embodied intersubjectivity through its sensory dimensions. In addition, it indicates an important avenue for future research in exploring the potential role of practice in maintaining an intuitive grip on social meaning. By approaching social encounters as sensory and perceptual events, I emphasize how social difficulties in autism are inherently world-involving phenomena rather than a cognitive deficit reducible to the autistic person.
自闭症研究最近出现了一种具身转向。为了回应主导该领域的认知主义方法，现象学学者建议将自闭症重新概念化为一种具身主体间性障碍。对自闭症具身性的部分兴趣涉及感官差异的作用，这种差异最近已被纳入自闭症的诊断标准。虽然研究表明感官差异与一系列自闭症社交困难有关，但尚未从现象学层面探讨自闭症中的感官体验与社交体验是如何关联的。鉴于在自闭症的现象学分析中社交互动的感官维度很重要，这个问题必须被视为关键问题。本文探讨了感官差异在自闭症社交体验中所起的作用。通过主要受莫里斯·梅洛 - 庞蒂哲学启发的现象学分析，特别强调主体间性与感知之间的关系，我认为感官差异在一种前反思层面上影响着他人在自闭症体验中的呈现方式。通过借鉴自闭症青年成年人对社交互动的经验描述，本文确定了感官差异影响自闭症社交体验的三个方面。第一，社交互动表现为感官上令人不安、混乱且不可预测的事件。第二，他人的具身表达显得陌生、具有威胁性，并引发一种与社会世界脱离的感觉。第三，人们会采用刻意的行为来在这些令人迷失方向的社交互动中积极寻求感知和社会意义。这一分析强调了通过其感官维度理解具身主体间性的重要性。此外，它指出了未来研究的一个重要途径，即探索实践在保持对社会意义的直观把握方面的潜在作用。通过将社交互动视为感官和感知事件，我强调自闭症中的社交困难本质上是涉及世界的现象，而非可归结为自闭症患者的认知缺陷。
