I have heard that for non-autistic people anyway, tuning out noise is a skill that your brain has to learn, and that’s why the health organizations recommend it limiting your time on noise cancelling headphones.
Is it different for people with autism?
Yes. The inability to filter out noise is a common experience with autism. This is one of the reasons people might wear noise cancelling headphones.
In a noisy environment, many autistic people say it is difficult to hear what’s being said. Background noises can create overwhelming listening difficulties. Conversations can become a jumble of words (as shown in the image below, created by the authors).
I often find it difficult to tune out background noise, especially to hear what someone is telling me, but it sounds different from being unable to.
Maybe there is a term for “people relating to the Autistic experience, but getting it wrong because they never lived it.”
If I had active noise cancelling headphones in as a kid, I wonder if I would be even worse at tuning out noises? That is why the research is interesting to me.
If I am on a road trip for a long time, sometimes I put in my acoustic earplugs and turn the car stereo up very loud to try and drown out the road noise, maybe that is relatable too? Idk.
I often find it difficult to tune out background noise, especially to hear what someone is telling me, but it sounds different from being unable to.
Maybe a more accurate way of describing the difficulty some autistic people experience with filtering out noise is to say it takes more effort for them than for people who do not experience issues with filtering noises. For some people that amount of effort makes it impossible, and for others they may be able to do it sometimes but not all the time, and others still may be able to do it most or all of the time, but it is exhausting and impacts their ability to do other things that day.
This is why it can be damaging to tell people to just push through it. It doesn’t help that another common autistic experience is not being able to understand you are redlining. This could be because of issues with introspection, not feeling or understanding body cues, and/or not understanding social cues + taking things literally.
I personally sit on the “it’s exhausting but if I’m well rested I can do it” part of the spectrum, and have the added compounding bonus of having challenged processing auditory information even if filtering isn’t an issue 🫠
Maybe there is a term for “people relating to the Autistic experience, but getting it wrong because they never lived it.”
Sounds like empathy, comrade. Also autism is a massive spectrum. There is no universal autistic experience (except being hot and devastatingly funny) so it’s not possible to ‘get it right’.
Personal and not widely held opinion alert: If we put aside the literal diagnostic criteria for a moment, I think the difference between someone who prefers not to eat mushrooms and my austic ass dry heaving if I feel them against my teeth is the severity of the impact. It’s not a disability unless it’s disabling, ya dig?
If I had active noise cancelling headphones in as a kid, I wonder if I would be even worse at tuning out noises? That is why the research is interesting to me.
It is interesting! I think one of the challenges is that some of these things are so hard to quantify, and some children are punished for displaying autistic traits so they learn to compensate/mask etc, to their detriment. Possibly by families who are perpetuating the cycle of forcing conformity to societal norms. There are so many things where I was like, “Wait, you mean most people don’t have trouble with [thing]?” Or I explained away issues to myself like, “oh my hearing is bad becuase I listen to loud music too much” but my hearing isn’t actually bad at all…
If I am on a road trip for a long time, sometimes I put in my acoustic earplugs and turn the car stereo up very loud to try and drown out the road noise, maybe that is relatable too? Idk.
I don’t personally wear earplugs when driving but I can very much relate to the difficulty in tolerating droning background noise for long periods! When I was new to driving (at 30 lmao) I would blast music and sing along “to help with my nervousness” but actually my nervousness was largely sensory overwhelm and controlling my environment helped a lot lol.
Yes. The inability to filter out noise is a common experience with autism. This is one of the reasons people might wear noise cancelling headphones.
https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/alert/better-understanding-of-autistic-peoples-listening-difficulties-could-improve-their-wellbeing/
I personally use ear plugs or head phones that are not powered on to filter out noises so I can focus on conversation.
Thank you for the explanation.
I often find it difficult to tune out background noise, especially to hear what someone is telling me, but it sounds different from being unable to.
Maybe there is a term for “people relating to the Autistic experience, but getting it wrong because they never lived it.”
If I had active noise cancelling headphones in as a kid, I wonder if I would be even worse at tuning out noises? That is why the research is interesting to me.
If I am on a road trip for a long time, sometimes I put in my acoustic earplugs and turn the car stereo up very loud to try and drown out the road noise, maybe that is relatable too? Idk.
Maybe a more accurate way of describing the difficulty some autistic people experience with filtering out noise is to say it takes more effort for them than for people who do not experience issues with filtering noises. For some people that amount of effort makes it impossible, and for others they may be able to do it sometimes but not all the time, and others still may be able to do it most or all of the time, but it is exhausting and impacts their ability to do other things that day.
This is why it can be damaging to tell people to just push through it. It doesn’t help that another common autistic experience is not being able to understand you are redlining. This could be because of issues with introspection, not feeling or understanding body cues, and/or not understanding social cues + taking things literally.
I personally sit on the “it’s exhausting but if I’m well rested I can do it” part of the spectrum, and have the added compounding bonus of having challenged processing auditory information even if filtering isn’t an issue 🫠
Sounds like empathy, comrade. Also autism is a massive spectrum. There is no universal autistic experience (except being hot and devastatingly funny) so it’s not possible to ‘get it right’.
Personal and not widely held opinion alert: If we put aside the literal diagnostic criteria for a moment, I think the difference between someone who prefers not to eat mushrooms and my austic ass dry heaving if I feel them against my teeth is the severity of the impact. It’s not a disability unless it’s disabling, ya dig?
It is interesting! I think one of the challenges is that some of these things are so hard to quantify, and some children are punished for displaying autistic traits so they learn to compensate/mask etc, to their detriment. Possibly by families who are perpetuating the cycle of forcing conformity to societal norms. There are so many things where I was like, “Wait, you mean most people don’t have trouble with [thing]?” Or I explained away issues to myself like, “oh my hearing is bad becuase I listen to loud music too much” but my hearing isn’t actually bad at all…
I don’t personally wear earplugs when driving but I can very much relate to the difficulty in tolerating droning background noise for long periods! When I was new to driving (at 30 lmao) I would blast music and sing along “to help with my nervousness” but actually my nervousness was largely sensory overwhelm and controlling my environment helped a lot lol.