Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

by Devon Price

In one study of Autistic agency, Autistic and non-Autistic people were both asked to manipulate a cursor on a screen as part of a computer game.[30] Random time lags and movement glitches were added to the game, so that players didn’t always have full control over what the mouse was doing. Players were told to attempt to win the game, and were also asked to report when they thought they had control of the mouse and when they didn’t. Neurotypical people were pretty accurate in judging when they had control of the mouse. They could tell when a mouse movement was caused by a lag or glitch rather than their own hands. Autistic players instead struggled to tell the difference. They tended to believe they were more in control of the game when they were winning, and that they were not in control when they were losing, even when the two were unrelated. In particular, this result appeared to be driven by Autistic people trusting internal cues less: they didn’t trust their own feelings of whether they were in control or not, so much as external benchmarks of success in the game.

Oh my GOD this is a nightmare and also explains my feelings at Erie and that thing in the recovery room and oh my god.