A Distinct Communication Strategies Model of the Double Empathy Problem

The double empathy problem reframes social difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people as reciprocal rather than as deficits located exclusively within the autistic individual. While there has been ample discussion about communicative compatibility, interaction cost, and affective resonance in cross-neurotype interactions, no mechanistic model of how these processes interact has been proposed. Here we build a feedback-loop mathematical model that would theoretically reproduce the empathy degradation observed during communication in neurotypical-autistic pairs solely due to differences in communication preferences of each neurotype. Numerical simulations of dyadic interactions show the model, whose mechanism is based solely on channel preferences, can illustrate the breakdown of empathic bonding observed clinically. This mathematical model presents testable predictions regarding the verbal dimension of dyadic empathic bonding and represents a promising step towards a formal account of a broader framework of social interaction dynamics of neurodivergent individuals and possible mitigation strategies for the double empathy problem.