Cult Med Psychiatry (2015) 39:323344

DOI 10.1007/s11013-015-9446-7

ORIGINAL PAPER

But-Hell Fall!: Children with Autism, Interspecies

Intersubjectivity, and the Problem of Being Social

Olga Solomon1

Published online: 30 April 2015

Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Abstract Being autistic or having Autism Spectrum Disorder implies a limited

range of being social, but the in situ organization of interaction, what Maynard and
Marlaire (Qual Soc 15(2):177202, 1992) call the interactional substrate, within
which this delimitation enfolds is usually hidden from sight. Analysis of processes
constituting different interactional substrates provides a view of how one comes to be
known by and to self and others as a certain kind of being who is available (or not) for
acting and feeling in certain ways. People diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder
(American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental dis-
orders, 2013) are often described as being impaired in intersubjective understanding
of others. But the story of ASD as an impairment of sociality and intersubjectivity
becomes more complicated when animals enter into the picture. I consider two in-
teractional substrates: a psychological interview in a mental health clinic, and an
animal-assisted activity in a childs neighborhood. I aim to elucidate the practical
problems of being social encountered by two children with ASD, both nine-year-old
girls, within these two very differently organized interactional substrates. I consider
ways in which being with therapy animals provides a way of being social through
sensory modalities of knowing (Haraway, When species meet, 2008:371).

Acpa Koa oop o y oo-o ay, cpo ayoo

cepa, opayeaec o y oo eoea opaea cocooc
coaoo oe. Ho oecyaa opaa oo oe, o o
Map Mapp ( Co 15(2):177202, 1992) aa e-
paoo cycpao oece oopo o opaee peayec,
oo cpa o aaecoo oa. Aa poecco oope

& Olga Solomon

olga.solomon@usc.edu
1
USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University
of Southern California, 1540 East Alcazar Street, CHP 133, Los Angeles, CA 90089-9003, USA

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324 Cult Med Psychiatry (2015) 39:323344

coa pae epaoe cycpa a oooc o a

eoe ocoac py coo a yy oop cocoe (
e) ycoa ecoa co coce, ya opao.
po ya o e o o cpo ayoo cepa (ep-
aca cpec ccoa,
, 2013) opae
ep-cyeo oa pyx e. Ho a apa aeo
ycoec oa oae oe e e. cooca e
epaoe cycpa: cxooecoe ep cxoepaeeco
e cecc epaeecoo oe c o aoo o-
ece. Mo e - opee paece poe coaoo oe
cae y e c ayo oece x yx, oe pax
epaox cycpa. epy poecc oopx oee c
o a oooc coaoo oe epe oaoc ce-
copaoo oa (apaa, , 2008:371).

Keywords Animal-assisted activity Autism Spectrum Disorder

Humananimal interaction Intersubjectivity Psychological testing
Sociality Therapy animals

there are neural mechanisms mediating between the multi level personal
background experience we entertain of our lived body and the implicit
certainties we simultaneously hold about others. Such personal body-related
experience enables us to understand the actions performed by others, and to
directly decode the emotions and sensations they experience. () This shared
manifold space can be characterized at the functional level as embodied
simulation
Vittorio Gallese (2005) Embodied simulation: From neurons to phenomenal
experience
The question between animals and humans here is, Who are you? and so, Who
are we?
Donna Haraway (2008) When species meet

Introduction

Thomas Csordas (1993:135) has argued that the human body serves as the
existential ground of culture, not an object good to think with but a subject that is
necessary to be. But to be how? Being is neither arbitrary nor inevitable but
rather implies a range of experiential and interactional affordances1 (Gibson 1977;
1
Affordances, according to James Gibson (1977) are opportunities for action provided by a particular
object in the environment. A critical part of the theory of affordances is the idea of fit or scale: the
affordances have to be of the right scale to be perceived by the organism as relevantthat is, to fit the
parameters of the organism, its anatomy and capacity for action. Eleanor Gibson (1993) argued that

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Cult Med Psychiatry (2015) 39:323344 325

Zahoric and Jennison 1998) that may remain invisible when human-only, and
normatively developing-only human beings are considered. Some of these
affordances may throw us, to use Heideggers (1962) term, into ways of being
that we would not want to experience if given a choice; other affordances may
provide the potential space, what Agamben (2004) calls the open, for ways of
being that we have not experienced before and did not know that we could. In
neither of these possibilities we are the same being to others, and perhaps even to
ourselves, unless we and these others engage in narrative sideshadowing, i.e.,
subjunctive imagining of what could have been, and still may be (Bernstein 1994).
Both possibilities are enfolded within each other not so much in a post-structuralist
agency versus structure dichotomy (Ochs and Solomon 2004), but rather as what
Maynard and Marlaire (1992) call the interactional substrates, the in situ
organization of interaction, within which one comes to be known by and to self and
others as a certain kind of being who is available (or not) for acting and feeling in
certain ways.
Anthropology has only recently undergone a post-symbolic turn in its views on
humananimal relationships, increasingly seeing animals as parts of the human
society rather than just a symbol of it (Knight 2005:1). Animalslike Csordas
(1993) notion of the bodyare no longer seen as only good to think with symbolic
resources used by humans in their relations with other humans (Candea 2010;
Ingold 2000; Levi-Strauss 1962; Mullin 1999), but as subjects that are necessary to
be (Csordas 1993:135), entangled in shared lived experience and practical
realities of interspecies relationships (Rock and Babinec 2008:339; Haraway 2006,
2008). I consider these interspecies entanglements to describe ways in which for
some children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (APA 2013), animal
companionship is necessary to be (Csordas 1993:135) social and inter-subjective.
In my previous humananimal interaction work related to ASD (Solomon 2010b,
2012) I explored the idea that sociality is less a quality of an individual and more a
capacity realized through, and within, certain kinds of social interaction. In this
article, I develop this notion further by considering the interactional substrates
(Maynard and Marlaire 1992) that may facilitate or hinder the sociality of children
with ASD (see also Ochs and Solomon 2010). To understand what interactional
substrates (Maynard and Marlaire 1992) may throw2 children with ASD into or
out of socially engaged ways of being, I examine two such substrates: a
psychological interview in a mental health clinic; and an animal-assisted activity
in the childs neighborhood. In the former, a 9 year old girl whom I call Rosalyn
will interact with her mother and a psychologist; in the latter, a 9 year old girl whom
I will call Kid3, will interact with an animal handler, a therapy dog and a therapy cat

Footnote 1 continued
human perception of the self is directly linked with perceiving affordances for acting in the world (p.
32).
2
The notion of being thrown into the world is borrowed from Heidegger (1962).
3
Because of IRB requirements, I am prevented from assigning name-like pseudonyms to the children in
my human-animal interaction study. In my previous publications (Solomon 2010b, 2012), I solved this
problem by using quasi-names like Childone (Child 1) and Boyone (Boy 1), which could be
legitimately perceived as impersonal and dehumanizing. But in this article this however imperfect

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in an animal-assisted activity session4. I will also draw upon a recording of a family

dinner involving Kid, her mother and her two younger sisters to understand the
impact of interactions with animals on Kids everyday life.

Companion Animals in Industrialized Societies

It is estimated that there are 83.3 million dogs and 95.6 million cats residing in
approximately 63 % of U.S. households. This magnitude of pet populations is
observed in many countries including France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and South
Africa (Blazina, Boyraz, and Shen-Miller 2011; Humane Society of the United States
2012). In industrialized societies, domestic dogs presently engage as co-participants
in a long list of human endeavors: tracking and retrieving in sport hunting; herding
and protecting livestock; locating explosive devices in active military combat and
counter-terrorism operations; identifying the presence of illegal substances at
commercial points of entry; carrying out search and rescue of survivors after natural
and man-made disasters; sniffing out certain kinds of cancers before any human-made
machinery can identify them; alerting people with epilepsy and diabetes of an
imminent seizure or a hypoglycemic reaction; visiting hospitals, nursing homes, and
hospices to ease human suffering; facilitating rehabilitation of prison inmates;
providing assistance for military veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder; and visiting libraries to diminish social anxiety in children
learning to read out-loud in public (e.g., LAbate 2007; McKenna 2013; Willis,
Church, and Guest 2004; Winkle, Crowe, and Hendrix 2012). Perhaps more than any
other companion species, dogs have also become entangled in the expressions of
human violence and cruelty, whether as tools of intimidation and psychological
torture of prisoners as was the case in the Abu Grabe scandal (Danchev 2006), or as
pawns in dog fighting as exemplified in Michael Vicks Bad Newz Kennels legal case
(Kim 2015, see also Iliopoulou and Rosenbaum 2013; Kalof and Iliopoulou 2011).
Linked to humans by a chain, a leash, or an invisible bond of attachment, dogs have
come to be profoundly caught up in the vicissitudes of human subjectivity, experience
and action while being dependent on humans for survival, safety and well-being
(Nowicki 2011; Rock et al. 2014).
Participating in the multiple domains of human life, dogs not only attend to human
social behavior as students of human movement (Gladwell 2006), but also engage
with humans in ontological choreography (Thompson 2005; cf Haraway 2008:88)

Footnote 3 continued
strategy does not work because the data corpus from which the other childs psychological interview is
drawn has an IRB approval that allows pseudonyms. Thus, my quasi-name for the girl in the human-
animal study is Kid, which seems less impersonal and thus more appropriate; and the pseudonym for the
girl in the Autism in Urban Context study is Rosalyn.
4
Animal-assisted interventions (AAI) consist of two modalities: Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT) and
Animal-Assisted Activity (AAA). AAT is an intervention with specified goals and objectives delivered
by a health or human service professional with specialized expertise in using an animal as an integral part
of treatment; while AAA occurs when specially trained professionals, paraprofessionals, or volunteers
accompanied by animals interact with people in a variety of environments (Delta Society 1996; cf Fine
2011).

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and problem solving around specific existential problems (Clutton-Brock 1995;

Goodwin 2009; Hare et al. 2002; Hare and Tomasello 1999; Hearne 1986; Horowitz
2009; King 2010; Solomon 2010b, 2012; Smuts 2001, 2008; Smuts and Bauer 2007).
Dogs are not, of course, the only companion animals who are entangled in
relationships with people. For the purposes of current analysis, however, the
discussion will be limited to two kinds of companion animals: dogs and cats. As
ontological amplifiers of what is human in humans (Stengers 2005), these animals
mediate human capacities for action and alter humans ways of being, imagining
and experiencing. These processes become especially visible when the humans in
question have a diagnosis of ASD (American Psychiatric Association 2013). In the
discussion that follows, I will consider these processes as they relate to the sociality
and intersubjectivity of two children with ASD, both nine-year old girls: one
thrown into a psychological testing interaction that includes only humans (her
mother and a psychologist); and the other, into an interaction with therapy animals
and their handler during an animal-assisted activity.

Children with ASD, Animals and Situated Functioning

If considered through the medical anthropological lens of the illness/disease

dichotomy, ASD (American Psychiatric Association 2013) is both a neuro-
developmental, life-long condition and a way of being in the world (Bagatell 2010;
Casio 2014, 2015; Chawarska et al. 2014; Grinker 2007, 2010, 2015; Muhle,
Trentacoste, and Rapin 2004; Prince 2010a, b; Solomon 2010a). ASD is also a
deeply personal and political disorder for families (Silverman 2011) because, having
been conceptualized as a disorder of affect (e.g., Hobson 2005), it casts doubt upon
the very ability of people with ASD to experience attachment, care, and the
intersubjective understandings of others. When animals are allowed, under certain
interactional conditions, into this picture, the commonly-held assumptions about
what children with ASD are and are not able to experience, feel and know become
observably disrupted (Solomon 2010b, 2012). Mechanisms of change responsible
for such disruptions are the subject of current research by a number of people
including the author, but there are indications that some people diagnosed with ASD
are more companion-able (to paraphrase Cavell 2008) and more response-able (as
articulated by Haraway 2008; Stengers 2005) when their interactions with animals
are enfolded into interactions with people (Solomon 2010b, 2012; Grinker 2010).
The companion animals transformative role in normative child development has
been considered at great depth (Myers 1996, 1997). Gail Melson, a psychologist,
writes: We can not study children in context without also considering their
involvement with other life forms, particularly nonhuman animals (Melson
2011:14). In families with pets in the U.S., parents overwhelmingly agree that the
animal is beneficial to the childrens development, teaching responsibility, instilling
empathy and providing opportunities to care for others (Melson et al. 2009).
In the study that I draw upon in this article (Solomon 2010b, 2012), however,
some of the children with ASD had dogs living in their households but their
engagement with these dogs was almost non-existent, as one of the analyzed data

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segments will illustrate below. Thus it is not the physical presence of a companion
animal, but the structuring of the interaction between the child and the animal that
likely affords the childs affective and emphatic response, allowing other people in
the childs life world to see his or her interactional and intersubjective proclivities.
As Moore (2014:265) argues, functioning becomes situated within its inevitably
relational context, often with far reaching consequences.
Regarding these far-reaching consequences, analyses of standardized psycho-
logical testing such as the Brigance subtest Knows What to Do in Different
Situations, have shown that the childrens understanding of the testing activity,
while producing incorrect answers, revealed logics or forms of practical reasoning
in autistic intelligence(Maynard 2005:500; Marlaire and Maynard 1990). Based
upon these test results, children are not only deemed to be delayed, impaired or
developmentally disabled, but they are also placed in certain educational settings and
provided with certain therapeutic services. As Marlaire and Maynard (1990) argue,
the effects of the face-to-face social organization of psychological testing, and the
inevitably collaborative nature of what counts as the test results, have not been
adequately considered. Maynard (2005:500501) admonishes against a priori
assumptions about what children and youth with ASD are able or unable to do,
think, or feel. Rather, he invites us to locate the designations of social problems and
deviance in the participants own organizing conduct, calling to respecify what a
deviance designation - in this case, the term autism as a diagnostic category - glosses
in the concrete interactions and practices of co-participants.
Next, with an eye for what becomes glossed during a psychological testing session
of a child with ASD, I consider the participants modalities of knowing (Haraway
2008) and their designations of social problems. The data segment analyzed below is
drawn from a large, longitudinal data corpus collected for a mixed methods, urban
ethnographic study (Autism in Urban Context: Linking Heterogeneity with Health
and Service Disparities, National Institute for Mental Health, R01 MH089474,
20092012, O. Solomon, P.I.) on disparities in autism diagnosis, interventions and
services experienced by African American families of children diagnosed with ASD
(American Psychiatric Association 2000). Detailed description of the study can be
found elsewhere (Angell and Solomon 2014; Solomon and Lawlor 2013). The data
segment was chosen for analysis because it illustrates the interactional substrate where
certain kinds of the childs actions, but not others, count as social.

Interactional Substrate of Psychological Testing

In a small room in an urban mental health clinic, a psychological testing session

involving a nine-year old girl with ASD, Rosalyn, her mother Rose, and a
psychologist, Clarissa is about to begin. Rosalyn was diagnosed with Pervasive-
Developmental DisorderNot Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS, APA 2000) at age
3 and with Autistic Disorder (APA 2000) at age 8, at which point she began to
receive some services from the Regional Center (see Solomon and Lawlor 2013).
This psychological testing session was scheduled to determine whether Rosalyn
qualifies for mental health services.

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There are several packets of paperwork spread out on the table in front of
Clarissa, and she will be writing on these various forms throughout the session.
Clarissa begins the session by asking Rose about Rosalyns diagnostic and
developmental history. This part of the session will take over 35 min during which
time some very intimate experiences and difficult issues associated with Rosalyns
challenging behaviors are discussed in hushed voices but unavoidably within her
hearing. In the beginning of the conversation, Rosalyn is playing quietly on the floor
with small plastic toys, a tactile, embodied, and as it turns out, imaginative activity5.
While her mother tells the psychologist about the medications Rosalyn is
currently taking, she suddenly announces: This is a mommy, this is a baby, and this
is a German Shepherd! When Clarissa hears Rosalyns announcement, she appears
amused and laughs, but does not ask Rosalyn to clarify or expand on the
spontaneous description of a dog as part of a family. Rosalyns family does not have
a dog or any other pets, but she is clearly aware of dogs being part of families.
Rosalyns mother often takes her to a therapeutic horseback-riding program that
Rosalyn enjoys. This potential entry into Rosalyns world is not, however, taken up
during the session. This is one of the first glosses that could have afforded
Rosalyns expression of being social.
The conversation between Clarissa and Rose turns to Rosalyns behavior
challenges. Rose, now in a low whisper, conveys to Clarissa that Rosalyn often hits,
scratches and throws herself against the wall, that there has been an explosion of
these behaviors in the past two weeks, and that Rosalyn has been recently suspended
from the school bus and was asked to leave the choir group. Rose tells Clarissa that
child protective services were briefly involved because of Rosalyns problems at
school. The whispered conversation continues for several more minutes. Rosalyn
opens a cabinet and finds a large blue ball. She begins playing with it, running
around the small room. A few minutes later, while her mother and the psychologist
continue talking, she walks to the table where they are sitting and begins looking at
Clarissas paperwork that includes Rosalyns file. Clarissa pulls the file closer and
says, somewhat defensively, This is for me, okay? at which point Rosalyn walks
away.
Clarissa asks Rose about Rosalyns classroom, and Rose tells her that there are
three classroom aides working with the children. Rosalyn immediately corrects her
that there are four aides in her classroom, an indication that she has been following
the conversation, that she cares that her mother and the psychologist have the
correct information, and that she would rather be a participant in the conversation
than an over-hearer. What follows next is another gloss, a missed opportunity to
acknowledge Rosalyns sociality. As Rosalyns correction does not appear to count
as evidence of her intersubjectivity, Clarissa asks Rose whether Rosalyn can
perspective take. Rose replies that she is getting better, that sometimes she may

5
Grinker (2007) writes of the significance of such toys for his daughter Isabel when she attended a
museum-based preschool, the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center that had a concrete, sensory-based,
and interactive curriculum (Grinker 2007:180). Isabel loved the small replicas of animals used for a
Christmas-time exhibit so much that the museums curator donated the whole exhibit to her classroom.
This experience, Grinker (2007:182) writes, marked the start of a long fascination with biology and the
classification of the animal world.

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even ask her how she is, or if she is sick, or if she needs some water, thus framing
perspective taking in clearly emphatic rather than broader, interactional terms.
Several minutes later, as the conversation between Rose and Clarissa continues,
Rosalyn becomes increasingly restless. Rose asks her Whats going on with you?
but before Rosalyn can reply, Clarissa says to Rose She is probably bored, and
turning to Rosalyn, comments Youre doing great. Clarissas interactional move
simultaneously intercepts Rosalyns potential reply to Roses question about whats
going on with her, offering a candidate answer that she is probably bored, while
immediately congratulating Rosalyn on doing great6. This short interaction pre-
empts Rosalyns entry into the conversation between Rose and Clarissa and the
history-taking proceeds uninterrupted.
When Rosalyns sleep habits are discussed next, she tries to join the conversation
with a story that is relevant to the current topic, sleep: Mom, I had a dream, I had
a room and um- and in my dream I had a bunked bed and- and-. Rose says Why
dont you draw what this room looked like for us? and gives Rosalyn a piece of
paper and a pen. Rosalyn begins to draw. Thus Rosalyns overtures to participate in
the conversation about her sleep are again subtly glossed over and dismissed.
Approximately 35 min into the session, Clarissa is done gathering the
diagnostic and developmental history from Rose. She directs Rosalyn to sit next to
her at the table. Rosalyn has a small box with her where she keeps her two
sensory items, one of which is a small stuffed animal that has a little blanket
over it, like a tent. Clarissa asks Rosalyn Can I move your friends? and then
Can I see your picture?. Rosalyn shows her the picture that she has been
drawing. The picture has a waterfall and a bunk bed on it, as Rosalyn saw in her
dream. Without commenting on Rosalyns picture, Clarissa then begins a wordless
picture book task, asking Rosalyn to describe what she sees. Thinking in
pictures, as Temple Grandin (2006) describes it, is a visual-spatial advantage that
some individuals with ASD are reported to have (e.g., Mottron et al. 2006), but
there is a fundamental difference between thinking in pictures of your own
making and those made by someone else. Rosalyns own picture, that she herself
drew, that captures her dream and thus intimately known to her as her own
experience, does not become part of the testing, while a wordless picture book
that portrays something outside of her experience, does. One wonders what we
could have learned about Rosalyns inner world and her sociality if the testing
materials were experientially meaningful to her. This is another gloss, another
lost opportunity for Rosalyn to be social on her own terms, and to talk about the
experiences that are meaningful and important to her.
After the wordless picture task is over, the following interaction takes place that
appears to be a semi-structured clinical interview:
Clarissa You know, sometimes things make people sad. Do you ever get sad?
Rosalyn Sometimes. When its a sad day um- when- when someone is bad and-
Clarissa If someone is bad?

6
I thank Douglas Maynard for identifying this dynamic.

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Rosalyn Yeah, if they hit me, or if theyre mean to the teacher, I feel bad for my
teacher
Clarissa What other kind of things make you sad?
Rosalyn ((turns to Rose for help, uncertain)) Hmmm- Mommy?
Rose What makes you sad, Rosalyn?
Rosalyn The field trip to the Fernwood laboratory7 and Harry Potter
Clarissa Anything else?
Rosalyn When I miss my appointment
Clarissa What kind of appointment?
Rosalyn With Dr. B.
Clarissa Do you ever feel happy?
Rosalyn When I dont miss my appointment, and when kids dont hit me, and
when my mom is with me, when everybody is with me I love being with,
everybody, like at Thanksgiving
Clarissa Oh, so you like people. Do you get mad?
Rosalyn Sometimes. Its personal
Clarissa I think its really great if people talk about their feelings. Does it maybe
make you feel embarrassed?
Rosalyn Yeah
Clarissa You know, everyone gets mad. Um- can you think of a time when you
were mad?
Rosalyn Well, when my mom wouldnt let me have the food I like, like broccoli
Clarissa You like broccoli?
Rosalyn Broccoli- yuck! My mom makes it good though
Clarissa What other things make you mad?
Rosalyn When my auntie or my mom make me eat stuff that I dont like
Clarissa Is there anything else that makes you mad?
Rosalyn When I lose my sensory items um- and dont get to take it home. Ive got
to hold it and play with it and fold it like this ((shows Clarissa how she
folds the toy blanket so that her sensory item has a little tent))
Clarissa Most people get mad when they dont get their way. Does that ever
happen to you?
Rosalyn Yeah, when I lose toys, or dont get- or they- my aunt or my mom wont
get me something, then I get mad, like my uncle he- he always says Ill
get you something but he never does and that makes me mad. And like
last time when my mommy didnt mash up my green beans I was mad
Clarissa What do you do when youre mad?
Rosalyn I go to my re-focus room, um- theres- theres two, theres one at my
house and ones at my grammys house
Clarissa What makes a friend?
Rosalyn Well, you talk to them, you ask them your name, you ask them what their
favorite thing is, what their phone number is, and you ask them, you see
what they like, what they dont like
Clarissa I asked you a lot of questions, do you have any questions for me?
7
Rosalyn missed the trip because of this session.

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Rosalyn Well, what is your favorite color?

Clarissa Well, I like blue, green and purple
For the first 35 min, Rosalyn is left to her own devices to occupy herself in a
small room while her mother and the psychologist discuss potentially upsetting,
intimate topics related to her development, behavioral challenges, and recent
experiences of exclusion riding the school bus and singing in a choir. Until
Clarissas clinical interview with Rosalyn begins, the visit was centered entirely on
information-gathering while glossing over the childs experiences during the
interaction and her persistent overtures to join the conversation. In fact, what was
tacitly asked of her is not to care about the content of the conversation, and not to be
vulnerable and intersubjectively aware when her intimate problems were discussed
within her earshot. As a person with ASD, this is what, in theory, she was not
expected to do: to understand the nuances of the conversation. Her social actions
and attempts to participate in the conversation, however, and her responses to the
psychologists questions, show otherwise.
Clarissas clinical interview with Rosalyn turns out to be an even more extreme
example of an interactional substrate within which only a very limited range of
social actions count as social. There is no orientation in the beginning of the
clinical interview regarding the rules for this next part of the psychological visit. It
is tacitly expected that Rosalyn will understand, and will be able to provide answers,
to the sequence of generic affective state questions that elicit general, in essence
anti-narrative, knowledge of the self : Do you ever get sad?, Do you ever feel
happy? Do you get mad? The format of these questions dis-invites Rosalyns
stories of an actual, perhaps recent and thus still vivid experience related to being
sad, mad, or happy, as such stories would disrupt the pace of the list-like
questioning. Rosalyns sociality, her ways of being social, become obscured
within the interactional substrate of this session.
The sequence, like most testing formats, consists of a prompt, an answer, and a
possible comment by the clinician, although a striking characteristic of this
interaction is the psychologists almost entire lack of evaluations or expansions of
Rosalyns contributions. There is a mutual, collaborative orientation to the activity,
although Rosalyn attempts to alter the rules. When asked Do you get mad?, she
tries to avoid answering: Sometimes. Its personal, displaying her awareness of the
difference between her own and Clarissas knowledge states. Moreover, Rosalyn
shows an understanding of what privacy means, i.e., that some of her experiences
should remain unshared because they are personal.
During the clinical interview, Rosalyn is asked to access her experiential history
and to extract an example of being sad, happy or mad. Fulfilling this task,
however, she insists on a narrative form, on becoming known in the only way that
humans know one another (Bruner 1998). She tells short, condensed stories from
which we learn that she feels badly when other children are mean to the teacher
and that she is bullied by them at school, that she does not like missing her doctors
appointments, that she loves being with her family, that her mother makes good
broccoli, that her uncle goes back on his promises, that her sensory items are
important to her, and that she goes to a re-focus room to calm herself.

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We also learn that she expects her mother to know when she is sad, which
evinces complex perspective-taking and an intersubjective understanding of their
intimate relationship:
Clarissa What other kind of things make you sad?
Rosalyn ((turns to Rose for help, uncertain)) Hmmm- Mommy?
As Schegloff (2003:36) observes, if those at neurological risk have the robustness
or impairment of their neurological capacity accessed on materials and in settings
largely disengaged from their familiar, taken-for-granted, idiosyncratically relevant
lebenswelt, () it is responses to the test stimuli that are being measured, not naturally
occurring actions in interaction () except for the course of action called testing. In
the next section, I will examine the interactional substrate of animal-assisted activity
that is part of a childs lifeword. The detailed description of the study from which the
data segments are drawn can be found in Solomon (2010b, 2012).

Interactional Substrate of Animal-Assisted Activity

Kid was nine years old and attended 4th grade at the time of the study. She was
diagnosed with Autistic Disorder (American Psychiatric Association 2000) at age
four at a Southern California university hospital, and had been in a special education
classroom since first grade. While Kid loved all living creatures, including bees,
spiders and snails, she did not do well with children. For example, she had no friends
at school and never interacted with the boy who sat next to her in class. Kids
younger sisters usually avoided her because of her tantrums and unpredictable
behavior. She spent hours watching Disney movies and knew them all by heart. Her
mother lived in constant fear that Kid would walk out of the house and become lost, a
concern shared by many families of children with ASD (Solomon and Lawlor 2013).
To illustrate how Kids engagement with therapy animals afforded being social,
I examine her interactions with a dog, Dodger, a cat, Grace, and their handler, Susan.
I am especially interested in her expressions of concern about their well-being. Two
interactions, one approximately 45 s, another approximately 20 s-long, constitute a
situation where Susan suggests to Kid an action involving manipulation of an
animals position in space (e.g., move the dog from Kids lap onto the ground; lift the
cat up onto a tree) and Kid responds with an indignant objection that evinces her
intersubjective understanding of the animals inner state and her concern with the
animals well-being. After I analyze these two interactions, I will also discuss a
family dinner segment where Kid shares with her mother her complex feelings about
favoring the therapy dog, Crystal, and never playing with the family dog, Bobby.

But-Hell Fall!

Kid has just walked Dodger, a Yorkshire terrier, on a leash two blocks from her
house. She sits down with Dodger on the sidewalk to rest. Susan, Dodgers handler,
has been following closely behind and she sits down next to Kid who is holding
Dodger in her lap.

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Susan ((to Kid)) You know what Dodger likes to play too? Ill show you a trick,
hold on. You have two shirts on, right? This is where he likes to be ((puts
the dog between Kids shirts, so that his small body protrudes under her top
shirt))
Kid ((laughs)) Tickles!
Susan This is where he likes to spend his time. He feels like a baby, huh? ((pats
where Dodgers body protrudes under Kids shirt))
Kid Good boy! Dodger- that tickles!
Susan Thats his favorite place to be though. Its his favorite place
Kid Maybe he wants to be warm.
Susan ((nods)) Yes he likes to be warm. And he likes to be by your heart.
Kid And he knows how to keep me warm
Susan Yeah, he is keeping you warm too. He has a fur coat! ((a car goes by within
several feet from the sidewalk where Kid, Susan and Dodger are sitting))
Kid ((embracing the dog under her shirt)) And he does not have to be scared, he
is inside. Right here
Susan Yeah, he is not scared, he is right with you. Because he knows you will
protect him. ((pats Kids shirt where the dog is)) His little nose is right here.
((points to a place near Kids shoulder))
Kid ((laughs))
Susan Hell put his head out of the top sometimes
Kid ((laughs))
Susan Sometimes. Say Hi Dodger ((Dodger head emerges out of the collar of
Kids shirt near her neck)) Here it is! ((to Kid)) Uhhhh- not too far, not too
far! ((to Dodger)) Stay
Kid ((to Dodger)) Stay
Susan ((to Dodger)) Good boy (several seconds pause))
Kid ((holds Dodger in place so he does not get out of her shirts collar)) How to-
get him out?
Susan Well, hell come out the top if you let him!
Kid But-hell fall!
Susan He wont fall. Ill help you, okay? You let him drop down. Watch. Just let
him drop down to the bottom
Kid ((laughs, lets Dodger drop down into her lap)) Tickles! ((laughs))
Susan Here you go
Kid has just walked together with Dodger down the street, which requires
coordination of attention, gate and speed (Solomon 2012). It would be reasonable to
expect that, while walking, Kid has experienced a sense of togetherness with the
dog. When Kid, Susan and Dodger sat on the sidewalk, a significant rearrangement
of the participants bodies took place. Susan suggested to Kid something that
Dodger likes to play, i.e., hiding underneath a persons shirt. Children with ASD
are often tactile-defensive, and it was significant that Susan asked if Kid had two
shirts on, so the dog could be between two layers of clothing.
Having Dodger sitting quietly between the layers of her shirts and becoming
almost a part of her own body affords Kid a somatic mode of engagement with the

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dog, what Haraway (2008:371) calls sensory modalities of knowing. This closely
connected, jointly embodied, sensory experience of holding Dodger under her shirt
becomes a ground against which Kid begins to wonder and reflect on the reasons
why this is his favorite place to be. The collaborative co-construction of these
reasons by Kid and Susan is reminiscent of a What Do You Do When (WDYDW)
task of the Briggance test described by Maynard (2005), but in reverse, as a
guessing activity that has several plausible (and thus correct) answers for one
question: why being under peoples shirts is Dodgers favorite place to be. This
interaction is also where, as Haraway (2008) writes, the question between animals
and humans here is, Who are you? and so, Who are we? (p. 371). How Kid
understands who Dodger is and how he experiences the world will have dramatic
consequences for who Kid is as a social being, and who this dog and this girl are to
one another, as a we.
First, Kid suggests that Maybe he wants to be warm, an intersubjective and
sensory oriented interpretation of Dodgers preferences that also acknowledges the
dogs theory of mind and his agency to meet his own needs. Susan adds that he
likes to be by your heart, a more affect-infused interpretation that implies Dodgers
emotional connection with Kid in a concrete, rather than metaphorical way: Dodger
is literally by Kids heart. From here, the affective tenor of this interaction increases.
Kid picks up the affective connection theme while building upon her previous
proposition (Maybe he wants to be warm): And he knows how to keep me warm,
which implies Dodgers concern about Kids well-being, i.e., her staying warm.
Susan confirms, Yeah, he is keeping you warm too. He has a fur coat!
Intersubjectivity is often thought of in terms of reading minds, but what is
happening here is reading bodies. A car drives by, just feet away from the
sidewalk where they are sitting, and Kid can likely feel Dodgers small body tensing
and shifting position because of the loud noise. She tightly embraces Dodger under
her shirt with both arms. She also immediately incorporates this experience into the
guessing activity, commenting: And he does not have to be scared, he is inside.
Right here. Susan confirms and amplifies Kids intersubjective interpretation,
making it more personally relevant: Yeah, he is not scared, he is right with you.
Because he knows you will protect him. This interaction has become not about
keeping each other warm anymore, but about the moral responsibility for anothers
safety and well-being. It is important then that when Kid asks How to- get him
out? and Susan suggests that Dodger can come out from the top if you let him,
meaning that he will jump out of Kids collar, Kid indignantly objects: But- hell
fall!
This short interaction illustrates that having an embodied experience of the
other (the dog, in this case) affords sensory modalities of knowing (Haraway
2008:371), and the implicit certainties we simultaneously hold about others
(Gallese 2005:271). Throughout this interaction Kid, who does not have friends at
school and does not interact much with her sisters at home, evinces nuanced
intersubjective understanding and moral reasoning related to the others well-being.
During another visit, when Susan brought in two cats, Kid expressed similar
concerns about the animals well-being, as can be seen in the following example:

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But Theyll Get Stuck!

Kid and Susan sit on the ground with a kitten, Grace. The kitten has a collar and a
leash on and Kid is holding the leash.
Kid ((to the cat)) Kitty, kitty!
Susan ((to Kid)) You know what little kittens like to do? ((moves the cat closer to
Kid))
Kid Yeah?
Susan They like to climb on trees
Kid But theyll get stuck!
Susan Huh-huh. What if we picked a short tree like that! ((points to a small tree
behind them))
Kid Yeah?
Susan Should we go see if she wants to climb in that tree?
Kid But they are afraid!
Susan Uh uh. They love trees
Similarly to the opening in the previous example (You know what Dodger likes
to play too?), Susan begins with a question about the cats preferences (You know
what little kittens like to do?). After hearing that little kittens like to climb trees
Kid has two objections that reveal her intersubjective understanding and concern for
the cats safety: But theyll get stuck!, and But they are afraid!.
Similar to the previous example, these anticipatory, projected understandings and
concerns evince Kids sophisticated ability to predict not only specific events (Hell
fall, theyll get stuck), but also the animals experiences of these events (He does not
have to be scared, they are afraid). As was suggested elsewhere (Solomon 2010b),
these examples show that sociality may be less a quality of the individual and more
a capacity realized through certain kinds of social interactions that are unremarkable
and ordinary only within certain interactional substrates, and entirely invisible and
unrealizable in others. Kids awareness and embodied understanding of Dodgers
and Graces feeling states (feeling warm, not being scared, being afraid,
getting stuck) may not be realizable during standardized testing that involves
questioning about hypothetical emotions as we saw in Rosalyns session. Moreover,
perhaps humans are not available for the kinds of actions that Dodger the dog and
Grace the cat allow Kid to carry out with and onto them (put them under her shirt,
place them onto a tree trunk to climb), and so the intersubjective understandings of
these animals are also experienced and expressed differently.
Analysis of Kids family dinner data revealed that she was having conflicted
feelings about her affection for one of the visiting therapy dogs because she felt that
her familys dog, Bobby, with whom she never played, was jealous. Crystal, a
beautiful white Australian Shepherd with whom Kid spent the most time during the
visits (see Solomon 2010b) was her favorite therapy dog. Kid frequently commented
to Susan: I just love Crystal. Once, while interacting with Crystal, Kid said to
herself, as if continuing an internal conversation I love Bobby, I just love Crystal
too!

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A discussion of this problem took place over a family dinner:

Mother Do you like to play with Crystal?
Kid Yep!
Mother Do you want her to come back and play with you?
Kid Yes but Bobby is a little angry at her
Mother Why do you think Bobby is angry with her? ((pause, no answer)) Why do
you think Bobby is angry?
Kid Because I never want to play with him!
Mother ((shaking her head)) How come you dont want to play with Bobby?
Kid I do like him! But I love to play with Cree:::::stal
Mother Ohhh
Kid So thats why Bobby is angry at Crystal
Mother Ohh, so thats why you think that Bobby is mad?
Kid Yes
Mother So maybe you can play with Bobby more! Maybe you can even teach
Bobby some tricks
Kid ((getting off the chair to leave the table)) I can try right now!
Mother ((emphatically)) No, not right now!
First, we can glimpse Kids capacity for intersubjective reasoning, or what
Maynard (2005:500) calls logics or forms of practical reasoning in autistic
intelligence. In Kids lifeworld, dogs experience emotions, a dog can experience
anger at another dog because he feels left out, and there is a moral obligation,
however unfulfilled, that Bobby should have a human playmate, or more
specifically, to have Kid as his playmate. Second, this interaction involves complex
problem-solving around the narrative fact (Bruner 1998) that the family dog, Bobby,
does not receive the same attention and admiration from Kid as the visiting therapy
dog Crystal does. Another interpretation of this interaction may be that Kid is
experiencing a moral dilemma: to continue playing with Crystal who is planned to
come back for another visit, she not only has to like Bobby, but play with him, and
maybe even teach him some tricks. Considering the ambivalence that Kid
expresses to her mother (I do like him! But I love to play with Cree:::::stal), her
desire to leave the table immediately to carry out the plan that they have just devised
is striking. The dinner, however, is not finished, and her mother stops her from
leaving. Could the same story be told if human protagonists were involved, e.g., that
Kid never plays with her sisters and they feel neglected? Or are the dogs seemingly
transparent, imaginary inner worlds more accessible to Kid? In any case, the
evidence that she can frame the problem of the neglected dog in such intersubjective
terms is significant.

Discussion

Given the limitations that ASD is thought to impose on sociality, it is important to

understand how childrens interactions with companion animals afford intersubjec-
tive experiences that humans-only interactional substrates may not. Understanding

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the internal worlds of children and adults with autism has always been a pressing
problem for family members (Silverman 2011; Solomon and Lawlor 2013). The
childrens situated expressions of intersubjectivity have to be considered seriously
because the conclusions that psychological tests provide about the childrens
intersubjective experiences are often taken as the only evidence for the childs social
capacities in all contexts.
The indication that the inclusion of animals facilitates sociality, affective
engagement and joint attention of children with ASD (Martin and Farnum 2002;
OHaire 2013; Redefer and Goodman 1989; Silva et al. 2011; Solomon 2010b,
2012) presents a puzzle for a current understanding of autism. One way to account
for this puzzle is that companion animals generate particularly configured
interactional substrates within which they are reliably responsive to the childs
behavior and may become an object of an action carried out by him or her (e.g., the
child lifts up the animal or places the animal in his or her lap, or on the ground, etc.).
Such an interactional substrate is unique in that it differs from the childrens
quotidian environments in which they themselves are usually acted upon by others.
It has been shown that the bodies of children diagnosed with ASD are often
manipulated and managed in response to the perceived deficiencies inherent in the
childrens behavior by neurotypical peers and institutionally authoritative adults (e.
g., teachers, therapists, aides) (Solomon 2011). Their bodies also may be
constrained in other ways: parents of the children who have a tendency for
elopement and wandering (Solomon and Lawlor 2013) use special harnesses when
in public (e.g., in a supermarket) to keep their child securely attached to them.
Perhaps we can think of the kaleidoscope of interactional substrates as an
interactional ecology, i.e., a multiplicity of courses of social action that are
possible and culturally ratified to mediate proximity and engagement with certain
kinds of interactants but not with others. For example, to walk together, a dog is
often on a leash but a human is not, a seemingly trivial observation. But what
methods of attachment make it possible for the humans to continue walking with
one another? What is the structural ecology of social action, i.e., the preferred
courses of social actions to mediate proximity and joint attention with a kind of an
interactant who has been diagnosed with ASD? We know that children with ASD
often are thrown into highly constrained interactional ecologies, but when therapy
dogs and an occasional therapy cat enter such an ecology, its constraints are
reorganized and the children have more opportunities for agentive action and
intersubjective engagement.
This analysis has at least two limitations. First, the fact that Rosalyn and Kid are
girls with ASD, a disorder that disproportionally affects boys (e.g., Lord and Spence
2006), is not addressed in the article. Difficulties detecting ASD in girls has been
long recognized and whether ASD is expressed differently in girls is currently being
considered (Cridland et al. 2014). Baron-Cohen (2003:361) proposed The Extreme
Male Brain Theory Of Autism that is intended to account for the model of sex
differences in the mind. He argues that empathizing, i.e., the drive to identify
another persons emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate
emotion (p. 361), is characteristic of females to a greater degree than of males.
Alternatively, systemizing, i.e., the drive to analyse the variables in a system, to

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derive the underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system (Baron-Cohen
2003:361) is more characteristic of males than of females; and ASD is an extreme
case of the characteristically male pattern. Such a dichotomously gendered view,
however, may obscure the experiential complexity of affective experiences in ASD.
As described elsewhere (Solomon 2010b, 2012), boys with ASD also become
affectively attuned with therapy dogs, and through them, with other people. In a
commentary titled On being autistic, and social, Grinker (2010) has argued that
the common stereotype of the person with autism as male, nonverbal and
unaffectionate, has given way to the notion that what is called autism is not one
condition, and that people with autism have strengths and weaknesses. Sociality that
extends beyond the human world and that is manifested in embodied, sensory-
based, empathic understanding of animals, should be studies further in people with
ASD of both genders.
Second, there are limitations inherent in an ethnographic approach to
understanding interspecies intersubjectivity (Madden 2014). While I see both the
children and the animals that I describe in this article as minded (and bodied, I
should add) social actors (Arluke and Sanders 1996:41; see also Sanders 2003),
and the ethnographic approach should, in theory, take animals seriously by
attending to their experiences (Madden 2014:279), I limited the discussion to an
anthropocentric focus. Others have systematically examined the experiences of
animals, e.g., service dogs, in interactions and relationships with children diagnosed
with ASD (Burrows, Adams, and Spiers 2008a, b). The focus on the childrens
experiences, however, prevailed in this article.
In summary, I examined ways in which the childrens social actions related to the
displays of affect and intersubjectivity are afforded by an interactional substrate
involving animals. The ontological choreography (Thompson 2005; cf Haraway
2008:88) involving therapy animals may also be seen as a dance of three partners
(Gabe et al. 2004), the child, the animal, and another human in the childs lifeworld.
This dance involves a range of embodied, sensory experiences, and heightened,
agentive physicality involved in manipulating the animals bodies, coordinating
with animals in activities such as dog walking, holding the leash, or simply touching
the animals. In this interactional substrate, for children with ASD, being with
animals is a uniquely different experience of being social compared with the
experiences of being with humans-only (Solomon 2011).
Following Maynard and Marlaire (1992:196), I do not intend to engage in ironic
impugning of psychological testing; neither do I intend to glorify animal-assisted
interventions. Rather, I argue that interactional substrate is a useful concept to
understand the problem of being social in ASD, i.e., how, in some interactional
substrates, children with ASD may be more social than in others.

Acknowledgments I am deeply grateful to the children and their families who participated in this
research, and to Susan Kraft, the animal trainer extraordinaire who contributed her unique understanding
of children with ASD. I would be remiss not to thank the animals, those who participated in this research
and those who have taught me at different times about interspecies intersubjectivity. An earlier version of
this paper was presented in June 2014 in a panel Interactional matrix of communication in autism
organized by Laura Sterponi and John Rae at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis at
the University of California, Los Angeles. I thank two anonymous reviewers, and Ariel Casio and

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Douglas Maynard for their generous feedback on the final version. I also thank my colleagues at the
University of Southern California, Mary Lawlor, Sharon Cermak, and Kate Crawley, and my academic
family of origin at UCLA, Elinor Ochs, Alessandro Duranti, Marjory Harness Goodwin, and Charles
Goodwin for their encouragement of this research. The study Autism in Urban Context: Linking
Heterogeneity with Health and Service Disparities was supported by the National Institute of Mental
Health (Grant # R01 MH089474, 20092012, O. Solomon, P.I.). The content of this article is solely the
responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute
of Mental Health or the National Institutes of Health. The study Animal-Assisted Therapy as Socially
Assistive Technology: Implications for Autism was supported by the Cure Autism Now foundations
Innovative Technology for Autism Bridge Grant (20062007) and the James H. Zumberge Faculty
Research and Innovation award (2008). I am also deeply grateful to the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of
Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy that provided support for both studies.

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