Social Interaction fuels brain development and supports emotional regulation
Social Stimuli includes: eye contact, facial gestures, voice, smell, touch
Humans are social creatures and as we evolved we developed highly attuned senses to determine if other humans were friends/foe and motivation to interact with each other
Social stimuli and our processing of it affects social interaction which has two critical neurobiological purposes: 1) In a social world, helping us feel safe when there are all these people around us and 2) Release of hormones that incentivise us to interact with each other.
The key fundamental challenges associated with ASD and/or social communication difficulties are social motivation and feeling safe. We need replacement therapy for social interaction: create motivation to engage and foster predictability
Communication, executive function challenges, lack of Theory of Mind, repetitive behaviours, idiosyncratic movements (stimming) are all downstream impacts of the core difference in processing social stimuli.
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