What Can I Say? What Did You Say?

About the Author

Beverly Montgomery, MS CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist and the founder of Lex Communicate in Lexington, MA. She is a clinician specializing in executive functioning and social communication services provided through neuroaffirming, collaborative practice. She served as an Instructor/Adjunct Faculty at several universities and often provides training for organizations and schools.

This title is an homage to a workshop my dear friend and mentor Elsa Abele ran many times during her years of contributing to AANE. She understood the challenges that came with communication, especially social communication, and that these challenges are faced by everyone involved in an interaction. Social communication is the exchange of information between people expressed through diverse verbal, nonverbal, sensory, and contextual behaviors that are meaningful to the communicators and shaped by their neurotype, culture, environment, and intersectionalities.

While saying that we believe there is no “right” or normative way to communicate using various symbolic forms (like language or icons) is easy, living this belief can be much harder. We all have moments when we feel disrespected, invalidated, interrupted, ignored, or misunderstood. In those moments, believing in diverse modes and methods of communication and fostering neurodiversity affirming approaches to communication differences is significantly more difficult. 

There are communication differences in autism, but the specifics of these differences are individual. These can include preferences regarding:

• the mode of communication (Howard & Sedgewick, 2021)¹
• gender-identity differences (Sturrock et. al., 2019)²
• the length of conversational turns and pauses (Shen, et. al., 2025)³
• prosodic (volume, pitch, tone) differences (Asghari et. al., 2021)⁴
• the purposes or functions for which communication is initiated and maintained.

Using strategies like being CLEAR (Concise, Literal, Explicit, Accessible and Respectful/Relationship-Based) can help us support communication differences in various Autistic phenotypes and foster authentic communication (and hopefully relationships), in home, work/school and community settings.

“C” stands for being concise. Many people benefit from short, to the point language without extraneous detail. This is true for language learners, those with language differences, those with uneven or different processing speeds, those with working memory inconsistencies, those with difficulty directing their attention, young children, the elderly, and many of those with no labeled difference at all! Being concise reduces the number of words and concepts we expect the listener to hold in mind and provides an organized, coherent chunk of information to process.

The “L” in CLEAR refers to being literal. There is evidence that the literal style of interpreting language often associated with Autistic people has more to do with language than neurotype (Kalandadze, 2016)⁵ However, in almost all cases over more than 20 years of practice, my clients have told me they prefer straight-forward conversation and interactions. It’s therefore best to try to know the individual and their communication style before using idioms, metaphors, sarcasm, or figurative language. 

Members of my middle school and young adult groups agreed with this when asked. They suggested that communication partners “Say what they mean and mean what they say.” Examples they found confusing included when someone asked, “Can I ask you a question?” Given that this in and of itself is a question, there is ambiguity as to the intent of the question. They also expressed frustration with people who asked them a question but appeared to expect or desire a particular answer rather than the individual’s actual original thoughts on the subject asked about. “Why ask me if you don’t really want to know my answer?” This sentiment was shared by the young adults, who added that they found it confusing (and annoying), when people made indirect requests. Rather than feeling that this was a polite way of asking for something, these college students and young professionals felt uncertain about their ability to consistently infer the speaker’s intent.

So rather than asking for a piece of candy by saying, “Those look interesting! I wonder what they taste like,” these group members felt more comfortable with someone asking outright by saying something like “May I have one?” Asking for an opinion (e.g. What do you think of this shirt?”), when actually seeking validation was similarly cited as confusing.

The “E” reinforces this idea and stands for “explicit.” Stating expectations and intentions clearly rather than relying on implied meaning or inferencing on the part of the listener promotes clear and comfortable communication. 

When fostering neurodiversity affirming practices to communication differences between people, information should be presented with language and in a modality that thelistener can process. This is the “A” in CLEAR: Accessible. Supporting your message with visuals, writing, structure and repetition can be helpful. If the person you are communicating with has processing or regulation difficulties, being aware of your timing and pace is critical. None of us process information if we are experiencing very heightened emotions.

Finally, the “R” in CLEAR stands for Respectful. Being respectful means we honor communication differences rather than viewing them through a socially normative lens. Regardless of the individual’s level of verbal output, assume competence and don’t talk down to them. Remember that there may be times where someone can easily access spoken communication, and other times they cannot. Do not require it. If your purpose in interacting is social communication, judging or shaping the information shared by your communication partner or requiring a specific mode of communication interferes with the goal of connecting and effectively transferring information. 

I also think of “R” as representing the concept of being “Relationship-based.” This means that the emphasis is on communication and supporting the transfer of information for a variety of purposes, not on the form or mode of communication. I had a supervisor who often reminded her students about “timing, tact, and tone.” She felt strongly that she needed to prepare students for the “real world” by requiring them to think about when to initiate information sharing, the word choices used when doing so, and the tone of voice the information was communicated in. In my experience, school is the most restrictive and least “real-world” environment with the greatest artificial expectations of conformity. Overall today, we have many more choices about shaping our world as adults than we did while in school. Messages about timing, tact, and tone are important for some infrequent interactions or situations with authority figures or institutions. However in daily interactions, these reminders are often more about protecting the listener from feeling disrespected, interrupted, or criticized than about fostering communication with those having communication differences. We know that delivering these messages encourages masking, which is both necessary at times and correlated to anxiety, identity difficulties, and fatigue. 

A little boy in my office tried to explain this to a caregiver who thought he was being too loud and demanding to an adult. He told them, “I’m not a bad boy! I just have big feelings!” If we want our loved ones, co-workers, students, friends, and community members to connect meaningfully with us and share their thoughts, passions, feelings, and insights, we need to be relationally-based rather than upholding a societal standard someone must meet. We can help build self-advocacy around this by encouraging statements like:

“I’m listening even though I’m not looking at you.” 

“I can’t always focus on conveying what I need to say and how I say it at the same time.”

“I could talk about this all day, so please let me know what aspect of this topic interests you.”

“Do you have a few minutes to talk about something?” (Instead of “Can I ask you a question?”)

When we’re communicating with someone we don’t know well, we may not yet have the context we need to interpret their message accurately. In those moments, we can advocate for ourselves by checking our understanding. For example: ‘I want to be sure I’m understanding you. It sounds like you’re saying…’” 

Communication is a reciprocal, iterative process in which meaning develops dynamically and shared understanding emerges through ongoing exchange. If we want authentic relationships, continual open communication is essential.

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References

¹ Howard, Philippa L., and Felicity Sedgewick. “‘Anything but the Phone!’: Communication Mode Preferences in the Autism Community.” Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice, vol. 25, no. 8, 2021, pp. 2265–2278. 

² Sturrock, Alexandra, Natalie Yau, Jenny Freed, and Catherine Adams. “Speaking the Same Language? A Preliminary Investigation, Comparing the Language and Communication Skills of Females and Males with High-Functioning Autism.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 50, no. 5, 2019, pp. 1639–1656. 

³ Shen, Lue, et al. “Conversational Latency in Autistic Children With Heterogeneous Spoken Language Abilities.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 68, no. 5, 2025, pp. 2386–2398. 

⁴ Asghari, Negin, et al. “Prosodic Entrainment in Autistic and Non‑Autistic Adults During Conversation.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 64, no. 12, 2021, pp. 4823–4838 

⁵ Kalandadze, Tamar, et al. “Figurative Language Comprehension in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta‑Analytic Review.” Autism, vol. 22, no. 2, 2016, pp. 99–117, doi:10.1177/1362361316668652.