Neurodiverse Perspectives for Mentoring in Academia

Diverse brains in research

Understanding neurodiversity in the context of academic research mentoring holds new perspectives we can use to understand and create a healthy and inclusive environment. Neurodiversity refers to the differences between our individual brains. Neurodiversity is most commonly used to describe the differences in sensory sensitivity, learning, thinking, and processing of information among our Autistic and ADHD communities. By adopting concepts developed by these communities we can build more supportive and inclusive mentoring environments for academic research.

You may be familiar with this scenario

A bright, unique, and successful mentee suddenly seems to be less responsive, less productive, anxious, and depressed. As the mentor, you may ask them what is going on or commiserate over the difficulties of academic research. All your mentee needs to do is focus, buckle down, and get some work done! Several days or weeks of hard work show a defined increase in productivity, they are still anxious but you hope things will improve. A month or two goes by and it is back to square 1, they are just as unproductive and maybe even more anxious, depressed, and withdrawn. You go through a few more pep talks, but in the end, despite short-term improvements, you can see your mentee starting to resent academia and their research. When you ask them, they might tell you they feel alone, confused, anxious, or depressed. We might want to consider this a "mental health issue" and certainly seeking professional support is important. However, we will introduce a few ideas that may help freshen up your perspectives. Perhaps your mentee may use a different style of thinking than you do. With help from the Autism and ADHD community, we know that not everybody thinks the same way and that the ways we think occur along spectrums and styles in thinking, processing, and sensing our environments. Physiologically, while most brains are similar they are not the same. Different brains process information and sense things in different ways. This means that what works best for you, may not be directly useful for your mentee. Importantly, we know that just because someone thinks, processes, or senses things differently doesn't mean they are impaired or wrong.

Neurodiverse information processing

Rather than focusing on the domain of mental health professionals, we can use broad concepts informed by observations, experiences, and literature on neurodiversity. Much of neurodiversity can be transferred out of clinical context into information processing styles that can be used to inform how to build a healthy environment. The communication, understanding, and processing of information is the central pillar that supports the process of academic research. Differences in sensation and information processing can simultaneously be instrumental in the next breakthrough or a consistent source of confusion and conflict. By supporting unique modes of information processing and communication the conceptual landscape of research can also be diversified, producing a richer and fuller understanding.

The details in the data

Autism Spectrum includes a spectrum of higher to lower sensitivity to environmental stimuli that is linked to the way information is processed. We can use observations and concepts developed by Autistic people or in collaboration with Autistic people to inform detail-based information processing styles in academic research. Autistic people can have exquisite sensitivity or neglect certain types or scales of information. For example, higher-than-average interest and attention to details or obscure topics (sensitivity) can then obstruct the processing of other sensations, subjects, or scales of information organization (neglect). Together, this may create extremely long lags in computational tasks that appear simple but because a highly detailed analysis is conducted on highly specific areas it takes much longer or is disproportionately focused on sub-areas or specific senses. When given appropriate time and support this can lead to very rich, detailed analyses and understanding in areas of interest. Autism spectrum introduces the concept that human thinking occurs along spectrums of sensory sensitivity and analytical pattern detail. Recognizing and supporting these differences could be a key step for helping your mentee bloom into their intellectual potential and provide new rich perspectives into areas of their research.

Positive approaches: A good learning environment requires asking "why is this a challenge" and then taking supportive action. Improving support might involve providing a more quiet location to work, the correct level of lighting, and collaboratively establishing timelines to accommodate sensory needs and sensitivities. By identifying the methods of analyses we can carefully consider the best levels of detail to analyze a data set. Sometimes an analysis pattern isn't "wrong" but rather has an impractical level of detail. By building skills in traversing from broader concepts and organizing frameworks to more detailed trends in data and individual observations, we can make the most of novel analysis patterns that consider wider ranges of detail. Doing this together can build reassuring systems that provide consistent scientific approaches that support learning for everyone involved.

What am I supposed to focus on?

When people do not process information the same way the subject that deserves the most focus becomes ambiguous. People with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) provide insight into differences in focus because they filter information differently. Specifically, the amplitude and distance of physical, conceptual, and emotional space are less defined. This allows conceptual jumps that could be either brilliantly innovative or appear irrational. Similarly, the jumps between areas of interest may initially appear random. By more freely traversing conceptual space, focus can jump and then burrow down into a subject at the expense of more obvious priorities. This is a wonderful skill for exploring and defining new connections, however, this can be a big challenge when completing sequential or repetitive tasks. Just like hyper-detailed analyses, differences in focus can be supported to cultivate the unique perspectives they can generate.

Positive approaches: First, help your mentee pick a project with several built-in interests, that way they can jump between these subjects without hurting their overall academic progress. Agree on clear units to complete, bite-sized pieces to finish at given intervals, a figure, a graph, or a spreadsheet. Agree on these units, then confirm this using tools like applications, calendars, or sticky notes.

Mindful meetings locations

Challenges with mentor meetings can even start with the meeting location. Many academic offices have windows where the mentor sits in front of the window. This means to the mentee, the mentor is backlit by the sun, and combined with the rapid-fire questions of a mentor this can suddenly transform into an interrogation. Add in sensory sensitivities to light and detailed social cue analysis and a backlit mentor can seem almost like torture. When meeting with mentees you can start by confirming whether lighting, background noise, and seating arrangements are conducive to supporting both you and the mentee.

Mindful meeting conversations

Social information can be experienced differently by neurodiverse people. Properly modulated, highly detailed social observations can provide wonderful insight into the emotional, intellectual, and physical states of other people. However, when stressed, highly detailed observation of social interactions can fragment and lead to the amplification of negative words, connotations, or tones within the communication. Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria describes the response and feelings many neurodiverse individuals have following the amplification of negative social signals. Misinterpretations or hypersensitivity to negative social signals can lead to feeling rejected or isolated from a particular social group. This can lead to misinterpretation of seemingly positive feedback from mentors. Imagine the following phrase: "It's okay that you forgot that control, the next time you should include it so we can more accurately interpret the data." In this example, a detailed looped analysis may be conducted dozens of times just on "you forgot that control". The rest is only analyzed once and is effectively ignored. Key contributing factors to this type of processing include stress that reduces the ability to fully analyze social signals and feeling isolated from important social groups.

Positive approaches: Be aware that the more stressed a mentee is the more likely they may misinterpret and disproportionately amplify negative parts of feedback. Accuracy and directed focus are more valuable than "sugarcoating" feedback. Sugarcoating warps your feedback and may lead to hyper-analysis on why you are sugarcoating. Provide clear constructive feedback on how you perceive gaps in their analyses then actively discuss with your mentee how to fill in these gaps. Where possible lead them down several avenues and encourage them to map out the full model for testing the question at hand. This can help redirect the amplification of negative social signals and channel mentees toward constructive thinking. Additional attention to strengthening a mentee's sense of belonging to the social group could also reduce the magnitude of misinterpretations and feelings of isolation.

Last bit of insight

Inclusive and supportive practices include building an ecosystem of physical and social support that connect mentees and mentors to broader levels of the physical, academic, and social communities. In a stressful workplace, sometimes there are some challenges that cannot be addressed immediately. The neurodiverse community has experienced a phenomenal improvement in focus, stress regulation, and modulated mood from self-regulatory physical activities. Simple activities like walking, running (anything to get the pulse up), or taking a bathroom break just to splash water on your face. By supporting the regular and purposeful engagement of breaks we can provide safe outlets for stress release while working on making the overall research environment supportive of wider styles of sensation and information processing.