The “Double Empathy Problem”: Direct and Indirect Communication Modeled Using Lewis Signaling Games

Abstract

Autism was previously seen as involving impairment in social communication, theory of mind, and ability to read social cues. Recently, more neurodiversity-affirming frameworks have been introduced that characterize barriers to communication and lack of social understanding between autistics and their neurotypical peers as being a two-way street: the double-empathy problem. Misunderstandings do not exist purely due to a deficit in autistic communication, but due to two different communication styles that are not interpreted by each other as easily. While this has proved an interesting area of research, attempts to mechanistically model this are lacking, despite the wealth of game theory examples that already exist to model cooperation, competition, and coordination between agents with interdependent strategies. This paper models real-world examples of social situations using Lewis signaling games. Within each pairing, pooling by the sender of different states into the same signals and pooling by the receiver of different signals into the same action represent the type of indirect communication, and responsiveness to indirectness, that are often employed by neurotypical people. In contrast, separating strategies, in which each state is assigned its own distinct signal and each signal triggers its own specific response, represent more direct, specific, and straightforward communication. This work is not meant to make direct conclusions about autistic-neurotypical or autistic-autistic communication, as actual human interactions are far too complex to be governed by the simple strategies outlined in the paper, but rather to serve as an example of the basic principles that could govern or influence such interactions.