The ability to communicate or interact with others within a societal framework. It encompasses social interaction, social cognition, pragmatics, and language processing

Experts say that only 7% of what is communicated is through the actual spoken word. The remaining 93% is communication by facial expression, body language and gesture ( Argyle 1970)

It is not surprising then that many autistic girls struggle to extract meaning from the many interactions they encounter on a day to day basis. Whilst they might smile and nod and give the impression of understanding, the reality is often very different.

The following are a broad set of indicators that an autistic woman or girl might display.

• Tone of voice, facial expression and body language which convey so much information are often missed- women and girls will be confused as to what is expected of them.

• Inference is really tricky. Women and girls will understand the literal and struggle to see anything not explicit- asking them to explain why somebody might have done something or how somebody might be feeling is very challenging.
• Language will be the same, despite the environment, whoever the listener is- this may come across as formal language within a less formal situation.
• Phrases heard during conversations may well be learned and repeated at opportune moments or learned but used incorrectly – last famous words!
• Conversations may lack any background information- listeners often are given no clue about what or who they are hearing about.
• Women and girls can often find it difficult to summarise or draw out the main point of a conversation or text- this becomes increasingly evident during GCSE English!
• Conversations will often be manipulated and controlled to allow girls to speak about what they know about. This often looks like talking at someone without asking for any sort of acknowledgement or opinion from the listener. Actually this is much less stressful for a female with ASC as they are not required to respond with an appropriate comment to someone else’s conversation.
• Not picking up on non verbal signs that their audience isn’t interested or even listening.
• May offer none or unrelated random contributions to discussions, In the classroom this could look as though they are “considering” when really things are going over their head. “ I think the same as her”.
• Talking over other people with no understanding that this could be rude.
• Confusing fact and fantasy- telling lies to appear more interesting and be one of the crowd.
• Misunderstanding the use of metaphor / simile or sarcasm.
• Some autistic girls and women don’t always recognise social boundaries and overly share ( sometimes inappropriate ) information, talk openly to strangers, or correct adults and authority figures.