- in-toeing, walking with one or both feet turned inwards
- out-toeing, walking with one or both feet turned out.
I thought that toe walking was called out two decades ago when I was in university - I remember it being mentioned in a psych class. Otherwise, that kind of includes everyone who doesn't walk with feet straight, doesn't it?
Am constantly reminding people my gait is off due to post surgery scarring internally creating a tension.
Now everyone gonna think I’m autistic. Not that there’s anything wrong with being autistic. It’s the pop science mindset of the aggregate that’s the problem.
There’s a lot of phrenology and humours type pseudoscience within these analysis. Social gossip effort to normalize what we are despite physics we cannot control making all those choices for us.
I suspect that there are signs of autism or other neurodivergences encoded in a lot of our body language, and we're really only starting to qualify what those behaviors are
But we also should be careful not to over-diagnose neurodivergence based on outward behavior. Not everyone who fidgets is ADHD
For some reason, I dislike seeing people that walk "funny". I am particularly disgusted by people that walk with their feet facing outward a little too much.
Roughly speaking, in our brains have to reconcile the internal models of the world with predictions and what we receive through stimuli. Neurotypical people can do this without issues, disregarding either one. Autistic people basically are wired to pay way more attention to external stimuli no matter how small it is.
This sort of explanation makes the most sense, and can contextualize this as well. The gait trait is basically an optimization that comes from a higher sensory sensitivity and low value of "how should I be walking".
I, too, walk funny. I distinctly remember an authority figure trying to teach me how to walk properly as an adolescent, and other people in my life occasionally comment on it. I guess I walk by swinging my legs from the top and placing my entire foot down evenly on the ground, which leads to very broad and shallow footprints on the beach. I am naturally a very slow walker and a bit unsteady.
Human locomation is surprisingly complex. Maybe not that surprising, what with roughly 20 bones and 30 muscles in a single foot. That doesn't even include the joints needed for motion and the muscles required to move your legs or swing your arms while you walk.
Allegedly some law enforcement uses gait analysis to identify and follow individual people on CCTV recordings. Gait has diagnostic value in some neurological conditions (like multiple sclerosis). Doesn't seem far fetched that a complex disorder like autism would also affect gait.
Virtually everything about you is encoded in virtually everything you do. With enough intelligence and enough data, it's probably possible to determine with a high degree of accuracy what kind of mint you prefer (spearmint, peppermint, that other one) based on hearing you talk for 30s.
In a world with AI systems that can be trained in an unsupervised way against basically all the data we can collect, the amount of information that can be accurately predicted about you is probably proportional to the number of bits of observational data about you available to to the AI, and I would suspect there is a roughly logistic relationship between bits available and the % of information it can reliably guess.
Another difference that I believe is common is how your arms move when you walk. I was diagnosed at a young age. I found out I didn't swing my arms normally when walking after someone made fun of me for it in high school. I had to consciously think about swinging my arms for a while to figure out how to do it right. I still catch myself sometimes not swinging my arms correctly when walking or one of my arms resting at a 90 degree angle (T-rex arm).
I'm not sure if it's the differences in gait that might cause people with autism to need less arm swinging for balancing or if swinging less causes them to develop those differences in gait.
Never diagnosed but have suspicions and this describes me. I had comments earlier on in life but later I joined the Army. There is a lot of marching and I was frequently told to "swing my arms naturally". Other actions told to "act normal", very frustrating because my normal/natural is what they saw as a problem. So I would try to figure out what normal is and when I would try to emulate, they would tell me I'm thinking about it too much.
Why is toe walking bad? The fastest humans and animals do it.
Facts aren't data, but as a counter to the narrative in this article: in my own experience strong calf muscles likely related to autism have allowed me to place at running events as someone with <2 years competitive running experience, and my mother to be the national champion at her age range for a decade.
Also, don't forget straight-toeing: walking with one or more feet pointing straight ahead. Yep, any of those three toe pointing directions mean you could have autism.
our school had a top female sprinter in washington state who walked "in-toe" and i knew at least one other track athlete who looked up to her and intentionally changed gait to walk in-toe in order to be more like the star sprinter
when im walking by people facing my direction (past a row of seats at the airport, into a movie theater, etc) i become self aware and try to walk as relaxed and invisibly as possible. probably only makes things worse. i think lots of people, autistic or not, are sensitive and adjust their gait unnaturally all the time. however toe-walking certainly seems difficult and i cant think of a reason id do it intentionally
I remember growing up and I always internally joked that my step dad sounded like a cyberdemon from Doom 2 when he walks. It would shake the walls. He wasn't heavy but his feet are really flat so he naturally hits hard on his heels.
I have some type of arch (I don't know if it's high or normal) but for my whole life people have half jokingly said I should stop sneaking up on them because I guess I walk really quiet.
I never measured or tried to gauge how I walk but after doing a few paces around, I would say the balls of my feet and middle of my foot hit the ground right before my heel. I would say in terms of weight distribution it feels like 70% balls of my feet, 5% middle / arch, 25% heel on each step when it hits the ground. I really feel almost nothing near the middle of the arch, maybe ~30% of the outer part hits the ground.
What does this really bring to the table as a diagnostic tool for autism?
By the time that you're evaluating gait, you're evaluating a lot of other things, too, since autism usually starts appearing during childhood. Obvious things, like trouble socializing, learning, and processing stimuli.
I'm not a doctor or involved in any sort of diagnosis, treatment, or curing of diseases or conditions, but given that the current head of the US Department of Health and Human Services is a whackjob when it comes to autism and other neurodivergent conditions, I don't see any benefit in offering a way to label people as this or that based on how they walk.
I've had an autism assessment recently, and I did mention gait because toe walking was a bit of a meme for a while. The assessor did note it but it was only a footnote, they focused on the other questionnaire items.
I was recently diagnosed. They told me multiple times that it's very hard to diagnose an adult because we have so many coping mechanisms at a high level.
This is just one more tool they can use to help determine that diagnosis. Their tests/questions covered a lot of ground, with a large focus on things from childhood.
I think the research on this is not really about diagnosis tools, but about understanding autism. What even is this disorder that makes you have such wide effects as not being able to look people in the eyes to walking weird to even pooping weird? Why does it make you like some stuff more than other stuff, too?
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[ 0.92 ms ] story [ 1477 ms ] thread- in-toeing, walking with one or both feet turned inwards
- out-toeing, walking with one or both feet turned out.
I thought that toe walking was called out two decades ago when I was in university - I remember it being mentioned in a psych class. Otherwise, that kind of includes everyone who doesn't walk with feet straight, doesn't it?
Now everyone gonna think I’m autistic. Not that there’s anything wrong with being autistic. It’s the pop science mindset of the aggregate that’s the problem.
There’s a lot of phrenology and humours type pseudoscience within these analysis. Social gossip effort to normalize what we are despite physics we cannot control making all those choices for us.
Shoes are evil. Barefoot all the things.
I think I might be a bit autistic...
But we also should be careful not to over-diagnose neurodivergence based on outward behavior. Not everyone who fidgets is ADHD
They've all mentioned parents shopping around for autism diagnosis for their children who have ADHD.
Apparently ADHD isn't cool, but autism is weirdly seen as "better".
Over diagnosis is already happening. Just like adhd and ocd.
I'll quote a Bible teacher: "Wanting others to be like us is devilish."
Roughly speaking, in our brains have to reconcile the internal models of the world with predictions and what we receive through stimuli. Neurotypical people can do this without issues, disregarding either one. Autistic people basically are wired to pay way more attention to external stimuli no matter how small it is.
This sort of explanation makes the most sense, and can contextualize this as well. The gait trait is basically an optimization that comes from a higher sensory sensitivity and low value of "how should I be walking".
Allegedly some law enforcement uses gait analysis to identify and follow individual people on CCTV recordings. Gait has diagnostic value in some neurological conditions (like multiple sclerosis). Doesn't seem far fetched that a complex disorder like autism would also affect gait.
In a world with AI systems that can be trained in an unsupervised way against basically all the data we can collect, the amount of information that can be accurately predicted about you is probably proportional to the number of bits of observational data about you available to to the AI, and I would suspect there is a roughly logistic relationship between bits available and the % of information it can reliably guess.
I'm not sure if it's the differences in gait that might cause people with autism to need less arm swinging for balancing or if swinging less causes them to develop those differences in gait.
haha couldn't be me...
Facts aren't data, but as a counter to the narrative in this article: in my own experience strong calf muscles likely related to autism have allowed me to place at running events as someone with <2 years competitive running experience, and my mother to be the national champion at her age range for a decade.
when im walking by people facing my direction (past a row of seats at the airport, into a movie theater, etc) i become self aware and try to walk as relaxed and invisibly as possible. probably only makes things worse. i think lots of people, autistic or not, are sensitive and adjust their gait unnaturally all the time. however toe-walking certainly seems difficult and i cant think of a reason id do it intentionally
I remember growing up and I always internally joked that my step dad sounded like a cyberdemon from Doom 2 when he walks. It would shake the walls. He wasn't heavy but his feet are really flat so he naturally hits hard on his heels.
I have some type of arch (I don't know if it's high or normal) but for my whole life people have half jokingly said I should stop sneaking up on them because I guess I walk really quiet.
I never measured or tried to gauge how I walk but after doing a few paces around, I would say the balls of my feet and middle of my foot hit the ground right before my heel. I would say in terms of weight distribution it feels like 70% balls of my feet, 5% middle / arch, 25% heel on each step when it hits the ground. I really feel almost nothing near the middle of the arch, maybe ~30% of the outer part hits the ground.
What does this really bring to the table as a diagnostic tool for autism?
By the time that you're evaluating gait, you're evaluating a lot of other things, too, since autism usually starts appearing during childhood. Obvious things, like trouble socializing, learning, and processing stimuli.
I'm not a doctor or involved in any sort of diagnosis, treatment, or curing of diseases or conditions, but given that the current head of the US Department of Health and Human Services is a whackjob when it comes to autism and other neurodivergent conditions, I don't see any benefit in offering a way to label people as this or that based on how they walk.
This is just one more tool they can use to help determine that diagnosis. Their tests/questions covered a lot of ground, with a large focus on things from childhood.