The Social Toolbox

And what this means for Autism and understanding each other

Hi everyone! It’s been a while! Instead of my typical short story, sci-fi discussion or otherwise, I want to talk about something a little different today. Something I’m calling The Social Toolbox. Before we hop into that, please keep in mind this is meant to spark your interest in the world of developmental neuroscience, but things such as the social toolbox are hypothetical and while based on research is a simplification - though I’d argue an important one!

First of all, let’s get something out of the way: We’re talking about Autism a little bit here. Why do I mention this? Honestly, people get a little weird about Autism. Unfortunately, there’s A LOT of mysticism, misinformation, and misunderstanding around ASD. I think its important to demystify the topic BUT I do not want people sending hate my way like they did the last time I talked about ASD. Admittedly, I came in a little hot, heavy, and frustrated the last time I did so I’ll hold myself to that, and please dear reader, let’s remember the humanity in each other as we move into this.

Let’s establish a couple things first. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) that can be caused by a lot of complicated things including genetic factors, illnesses during pregnancy, specific drug use during pregnancy, and more (I highly recommend you check out this article if you want to learn about this, it is a really good and approachable read: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5501015/). It can be best described as an NDD that leads to difficulty in social settings, stereotyped and repetitive behaviors, communication deficits, and these difficulties impacting day-to-day functionality. Mind you, these different symptoms can be more or less severe (it is a spectrum after all!), but one of the things that often lead to these more severe classifications is the high cooccurrence of ASD with other mental health conditions. Autism often isn’t just autism. It’s autism AND [fill in the blank]. These blank filling things can be…

• Anxiety

• Depression

• ADHD

• Schizophrenia

• Intellectual disability

• and more things I can’t think of at the moment!

The point of all the above is to make sure we’re all on the same page going into this. So, let’s actually get into it. What the hell is a social toolbox???

The concept of the social toolbox is that we have specific tools that we utilize in social situations. These tools can be facial expressions, using specific ‘canned phrases’, or having a special joke you like to break up awkward silences with. Just as important are the tools in the toolbox that we use to perceive and understand these things! The toolbox is a handy metaphor that I think is relatively simple and straightforward and I like it a lot! So, what am I getting at?

First, let me share the passage that made me think of this concept:

The study of children who develop ASD has informed our knowledge of early social development. Early social behavior has been studied by reviewing videotapes of first birthday parties of children eventually diagnosed with ASD. Osterling and Dawson [7] demonstrated that children eventually diagnosed with ASD demonstrated significant fewer pointing and showing behaviors and less looking at people and orienting to their name as compared with [Typically developing] peers. Likewise, Osterling et al. [8] found that children diagnosed with ASD or intellectual disability used fewer gestures and showed more repetitive motor movements than TD peers but only children with ASD looked at people and oriented to their name less than TD peers.

- Richard E. Frye, 2018 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40263-018-0556-y)

Reading this passage got me thinking about this idea of a social toolbox. Think about it this way: social pointing, reacting to one’s name being called, trying to show things; these are social behaviors that some children (and adults) just don’t have in their toolbox! Could they learn it? Some people can, I’m sure, but it will take some extra work (therapeutics). In a behavioral deficit such as Autism, I think a lot of what we see is differences or sometimes a lack of specific tools within the social toolbox! Is that everything that’s going? No, of course not, but I do think it is one of the more significant things that we see.

In my mind, the social toolbox is a really good way of understanding the why of what’s happening when we see social differences in people. Even without ASD, we can start thinking about anyone through the lens of “Do we have the same toolbox?” I’d say more often than not, no we don’t. You do not socialize with the world the same way that I do after all. My social toolbox is well equipped for intimate and small social gatherings, not techno raves for example! But here’s something else: I would sooner say to a friend “Hey can you pass me that?” then start pointing at an object until someone gave it to me. Why? Because my toolbox has developed over time.

That’s something else we need to take into account. Is our toolbox developing? You wouldn’t look at an infant whose crying because they don’t have a toy and say “Just tell me what you want, you’re so annoying.” Because they can’t tell you, right? But if an adult started doing that, you may be a little concerned.

So, our toolbox develops as we grow up, right?

Absolutely.

Except… what if it doesn’t? Or worse, what if it starts to ‘regress?’

Well, boy, a recently published paper looked at something like this. Of course, this paper looked at it in mice so, let’s remember, developmental time windows are dramatically different here, and these mice are not ‘autistic'. These mice have been genetically modified to be deficient in a key gene that is associated with causing ASD in humans! We love genetically modified mice for research purposes around here (I want to do a sci-fi today on ethics soon, I think this is partially a good primer for that actually)!

In a paper made available online on Christmas Eve of 2025, Ford et. al found that in a specific genetic mouse model, autism-like behavior in these mice was actually delayed in onset until adulthood (120 days old), with adolescent mice (30 days old) showing distinctly different behaviors from the adult mice that were slightly different from the non-mutant mice (wild type mice), BUT not autism-like in their behavior. But here’s the weird thing: Molecularly speaking, these mice were genetically, neurologically, and even hormonally different from their wild type counterparts BEFORE autism-like behavior ever started. For more on this research paper, I encourage you to have a look here: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1mKOL15hTu0p5e (this article is free to view for the first 50 days, so if you’re here in the first 50 days, have a look!).

That is… well, that’s just weird. How does that even happen? What does that even mean!? Well, this is just my opinion and hypothesis, but I think this is where the social toolbox comes in! Again, we are talking mice here, not humans, but I think mice - given their fast development - are a microcosm of the development of the social toolbox. For example, something not present in the above paper is the use of USVs in early life (check out my Sci-Fi Today article on USVs here). Mice use USVs for a number of reasons, but in early life, they use it to communicate to both their mother and their siblings in the nest. As they get older, they call in this way less and less until they start to use their calls for completely different things entirely. Things like mating or warning about predators for example!

This is how a mouse’s social toolbox grows. And what we can see both through the above paper and through many investigations is that in Autism, the social toolbox isn’t the same. I could get into the nuances of different underlying molecular differences leading to different ‘kinds’ of autism, but I really want to focus instead on what we see as people in social interactions. My toolbox is different from yours, which is different from someone else’s, and different from another person’s.

I think it’s important to understand that, make sense of it, and also acknowledge it. I also think it’s important to better understand how these toolboxes may differ. It’s kind of why I do what I do, honestly.

The above discovery of molecular differences preceding behavioral ones is significant because it means that although behavior has not been impacted how we expected it to yet, the molecular changes have already been set in motion. What does that mean? Personally, I think this means that those molecular differences are impacting a different part of the toolbox that wasn’t observable in those studies, and as behavior develops and becomes more complex, some of the tools needed for that are lacking, or certain tools we’d rather not have (like anxiety maybe) start to become our regular hammer.

To use a more human example, We’re looking at how a baby uses words to communicate when we should be looking at pointing or gesturing. Basically, the components are already there, but they’re going into something else! Of course, that part is hypothetical. I’d want to see more, do more, learn more before confirming that entirely, but I think that could be something.

So, what now?

Honestly, I really really really want to encourage you to think more about this stuff, better understand communication and the toolboxes we have, and how you can expand your own toolbox! The above paper is about ASD, I know, but whether you have an ASD diagnosis or not, understanding how our social toolboxes differ, how this impacts our communication, and what this means for people with vastly different toolboxes is worth thinking about.

I can’t tell you what to take away from this, but I can encourage you to use it to extend empathy, take some time to better understand people you may struggle to understand, and most of all, remember the brain is a complicated place with a lot of tricky factors, and moving pieces at work that we may struggle to understand at times.

Please do have a look at the actual research, and consider learning some more! That’s all from me for now. Think about your brain and other people’s brains, and think about the complex web we weave every time we socialize with each other! The world is a beautiful place, and it’s all the more beautiful when we connect with each other, understand each other, and reach out in a way that is meaningful and beautiful. I encourage you to read the couple of sources I used, and please take the time to parse out the fact from the opinion as well, as there is a key difference that I hope is clear even in what I’m saying now. This is a vastly complex topic that I’ve fallen in love with investigating, so have a look at the early stuff! It only gets more complex from here!

Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you all soon with a story or two, and maybe even a Sci-Fi Today! There’s a lot of cool stuff percolating in my head. I just need the time to actually act on it! See you soon!

Amaral DG. Examining the Causes of Autism. Cerebrum. 2017 Jan 1;2017:cer-01-17. PMID: 28698772; PMCID: PMC5501015.

Frye, R.E. Social Skills Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Potential Biological Origins and Progress in Developing Therapeutic Agents. CNS Drugs 32, 713–734 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40263-018-0556-y

Thomas James L Ford, Byeong Tak Jeon, Hyunkyoung Lee, Woo-Yang Kim, Autism-like behavior Increases with age and is predated by molecular changes in Arid1b haploinsufficient mice, Neuroscience, Volume 594, 2026, Pages 162-171, ISSN 0306-4522, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2025.12.041.

(Final note: I was going back and forth on if I should post this, if it was appropriate, if it was the right thing to do, etc. etc., but then I saw this article from the NIH, and I decided I should just do it: https://www.fic.nih.gov/News/GlobalHealthMatters/january-february-2024/Pages/use-opinion-piece-to-promote-research.aspx

Simply put, this is sharing important information with an audience of people who wouldn’t otherwise see it, and I think that matters! So hey, thanks for being here, and see you soon)