Today’s episode challenges long-held misconceptions about autistic individuals’ emotional intelligence and empathy. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, highlights how recent research, particularly studies by Brewer et al. (2022, 2023), demonstrates that autistic people are capable of accurately recognising emotions and understanding appropriate empathic responses, often with greater self-awareness regarding their accuracy than non-autistic individuals. Dr. Hoerricks emphasises that perceived differences in emotional processing are often due to caution or distinct internal representations, rather than a deficit. Furthermore, she critiques the slow acceptance of these findings within the research community, suggesting a bias towards deficit-based models despite accumulating evidence of autistic competence. Ultimately, Dr. Hoerricks advocates for a shift in perspective, moving away from “what’s wrong with autistic people” to understanding how societal systems misinterpret their signals, underscoring the importance of listening to autistic voices.

Here’s the link to the source article:

https://autside.substack.com/p/new-research-confirms-what-autistic

Let me know what you think.

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