Autism and finger pointing

Autistic children don’t point. You have to teach them. It doesn’t seem like a very important skill when you first think about it. Really it is a symptom of a larger problem, maybe to do with not knowing where you are in space or not being able to summarise what you see in your surroundings (generalising details).

The first time I came across the problem of pointing was when I was working as an ABA tutor. The boys mother was explaining to another person what new things we were teaching him, pointing was one of them. A few minutes later she asked me to pass her something, and she pointed. I twirled about looking for the object. She laughed and said ‘Of course we’re going to have to teach Vic first.’

I know what pointing is; why people do it, how they do it, and what they mean by it. It’s locating the object that’s the problem. I never realised I was bad at it until the above incident and when I asked myself do I ever point, I wasn’t sure. I don’t think I do. If I want to show someone an object I am more likely to pick it up myself and pass it to them, or tell them as accurately as I can where it is.

Also, I don’t use my hands when I’m talking. Most people use their hands expressively when they talk. When I had my meeting with the clinical psychologist she told me she noticed that I didn’t use my hands when I spoke. This maybe another reason autistic people are less likely to point while talking.

After we began teaching pointing, I did try to find applications for it in my sessions. One very good application was using it to tell my pupil to sit or stand. Autistic people like specifics. If you say please stand by the table, this is too general. The table after all has four sides. Because of this autistic children tend to get manhandled a lot. You push and pull them about in a way you wouldn’t an NT child.

I found that by pointing at the exact spot, pointing so that I was physically touching it, my pupil responded and stood exactly where I had pointed and I got a smile from him too! If I’d pointed from a distance say two meters, or even one, he’s response would probably have been different. Distance pointing just isn’t specific enough for an autistic person. It’s the same as saying stand by the table.

I was in a supermarket recently and I couldn’t find the coconut milk. Eventually I went and asked a shop assistant. He took me back to the aisle I had been in and pointed. Of course I had no idea where he was pointing at. (We were actually stood at least four meters away from the cans of coconut milk.) Not wishing to look stupid I said thank you and choose a random shelf to look at. At which point he walked up to the correct shelf and showed me exactly where they were.

Apart from feeling daft, there was no real harm done. It is a good example though of why I prefer to work things out for myself rather than ask for help. Understanding other people is difficult. Getting the information you want out of them is not always easy. It did also make me think more about pointing. I know I should be drawing an invisible line to the indicated object. But as soon as I lose sight of the pointing hand, I am suddenly overwhelmed by everything in my field of vision and I lose the direction of the point. It’s strange.

Pointing sounds such an easy thing to do, and until recently I didn’t even know I wasn’t very good at it. I think previously I would have just cursed myself (I did a lot of that), or blamed the shop assistant for being lazy.