Relevance theory and the double empathy problem in cross-neurotype communication

At AMASE's first Linguistics and Autistics event, Gemma Williams talks about pragmatics - the study of the meaning of language in social context.

Her PhD work applies relevance theory to the question of why so many misunderstandings occur between autistic and non-autistic people. This problem has traditionally been ascribed to autistic people lacking empathy, but more recent work has shown that failures of empathy and understanding go in both directions between autistic and non-autistic people.

Damian Milton dubbed this the Double Empathy problem, and it has been extensively backed up by empirical work in recent years.

Gemma's open-access paper for Frontiers in Psychology is here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/...

View the slides for this presentation here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/...

More of Gemma's work: https://linktr.ee/DjzemaLouiz