Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk
66 comments
·July 16, 2025boogieknite
oasisbob
That sounds like something a runner who knows that they have a tendency to heel-strike would do.
snickerdoodle12
Can't wait for AI-powered cameras that will let the government know you're neurodivergent.
consumer451
No need for AI. The future is now!
> RFK Jr. says autism database will use Medicare and Medicaid info [0]
[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5391310/kennedy-autism-...
Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43810561 (254 points, 80 days ago, 357 comments)
kazinator
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.
SketchySeaBeast
- toe-walking, walking on the balls of the feet
- 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?
Telemakhos
People should be careful with basing psychological stereotypes on gait, as there's already an extensive legacy framework of stereotypes based on gait—are these new stereotypes meaningfully different medical observations grounded in facts, or are they just more stereotypes? Literature on Native Americans, for example, often claims that they walk on the balls of the feet in distinction to "the Anglo," who walks on his heels. For example:
> Our sources say that Native Americans tended to land on the ball of the foot (a "forefoot strike"), or flat-footed ("midfoot strike"), rather than landing on the heel and rolling forward ("heel strike"). [0: 90]
> Our sources indicate that Native Americans commonly walked with toes pointed straight ahead or turned slightly inward, rather than turned outward. [0: 91]
I've pulled just one article here, but there's a huge trove of racial and ethnic gait stereotypes with all sorts of moral implications. It's important not to repeat that stereotyping when trying to address autism.
[0] Ranalli, B. 2019. "Thoreau's Indian Stride." The Concord Saunterer 27: 89-110. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45271429
redeux
You’re mistaking forefoot striking with toe walking. Having known someone that toe walks, it literally means they walk around on the balls of their feet, not just land on them first when they take a step. If you stand up, raise yourself on the the balls on your feet and then walk around without your heel ever touching the ground, that’s toe walking.
Incidentally(?) the only person I’ve ever seen do this was clearly neurodivergent.
munificent
My understanding is that forefoot striking is common in any culture where going barefoot is typical. It doesn't feel good to slam your bare heel onto the ground all the time. It's only tolerable if you're wearing shoes.
We should really consider heel striking to be the unusual non-default behavior here, the same as how prevalence of chairs means many Westerners have shortened Achilles tendons and lost the ability to do a comfortable deep squat which has been a fundamental human posture for longer than we've been a species.
wizzwizz4
Doubt that's going to happen. "Normal" is whatever the educators believe: just like RP is the One True English, whatever WEIRD neurotypical men do is the One True Behaviour. We've been making this mistake for hundreds of years.
mitthrowaway2
What are the moral implications of different cultures habitually walking with a forefoot strike vs a heel strike?
kulahan
Your comment doesn’t really support its own premise well - you just say that we used to stereotype people and point out what some of those stereotypes were, but not why they’re radically incorrect. You sorta just pointed out that they exist.
I’m not of one opinion or the other, I just don’t see why it’s self evident that certain groups of people wouldn’t walk a certain way.
markburns
I had a realisation recently that we’re pretty comfortable with regional dialect borders being an entrenched and normal thing that reach back in history a thousand years or more and that something as specific as how we move our mouths and tongues is strongly correlated geographically.
But we don’t often pay attention to other types of physical and behavioural culture being as geographically entrenched as they sometimes seem to be.
Accents hold some special place in being so recognisable but I think there’s no obvious reason we wouldn’t have many other layers of physical culture like this.
The signal is a bit harder to pick up but I’m sure it’s there.
I’m not trying to make any particular point for or against damaging stereotypes here.
generalizations
Basically a measure of whether or not you make an effort to emulate your peers. If you naturally walk weird and don't care about fitting in, then....you're probably on the spectrum.
hx8
That's one potential explanation for gait differences. It's also possible that muscle development plays a role, or motor control, or sensory feedback, or a confluence of factors.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing if these gait differences are limited to childhood, or if they persist into adulthood. It might simply be delaying a developmental step.
generalizations
IIRC, toe-walking is actually healthier and puts less strain on the foot. It's a very good way to run long distance, once the muscles are acclimated. I suspect some of us still do that naturally as children for that reason and therefore only adjust due to societal pressure.
hungmung
Yeah at least a few kindergarten and elementary school teachers were watching out for toe walkers since at least around the mid-90's. Source: I know people.
nitwit005
I also remember that, and asymmetric baby crawling. That was decades back.
I guess the real "news" is just that it made it into the DSM:
> Having an "odd gait" is now listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a supporting diagnostic feature of autism.
ActorNightly
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/arti...
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".
KyleJune
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.
bluefirebrand
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
cardanome
In fact people with ADHD have also their peculiar walks: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H1YsnuaYY-g
> based on outward behavior
Yes, neurodivergence can only be diagnosed based on how you work on the inside. It is not possible to diagnose based on outside behavior as people can show symptoms very differently and can mask their symptoms.
And no, you obviously can not diagnose people based on how they walk. If anything it can only give you hints or be a fun thing to talk about.
> over-diagnose
Both autism are ADHD are vastly under-diagnosed especially in women and adults. The fear of over-diagnosis makes no sense.
There are very hard criteria for an diagnosis and it requires that every other explanation for the behavior is excluded before a diagnosis can be made. The reality it that it is a huge struggle for anyone with autism or ADHD to get any form of help or even diagnosis.
Medication for ADHD works extremely well. Not for everyone but for like 70% and that is insanely good. Still there is so much fearmongering against it. But anti-depressants that can have much more serious side-effects and don't even work that well? Yes, they giving them like they are candy. Insanity.
Struggle mentally in any shape or form? Oh, you must be depressed? What causes the depression? We will not dig deeper. Have your pills and be happy! But stimulants, no those are of the devil!
Not to say that some people don't have just depression but the double standard is infuriating and often undiagnosed neurodivergence causes depression.
dns_snek
> There are very hard criteria for an diagnosis and it requires that every other explanation for the behavior is excluded before a diagnosis can be made.
Is this standard truly being upheld? Most stories I've heard from people in US & UK go something like "I filled out some forms, hopped on a call/saw a psychiatrist for 30-60 minutes and walked out with a diagnosis and a prescription". Sometimes people even joke about how their psychiatrist talked to them for 10 minutes and concluded that they definitely have ADHD, and while that might be the case, it doesn't seem like many professionals are being particularly thorough about the differential diagnosis and ruling out other causes.
Personally I had to undergo relatively rigorous testing where they went through my entire medical history and administered about a dozen different neuropsychological tests which took about 5 hours total, over 2 months, multiple appointments, and then another month for them to analyze everything and come back to me with the diagnosis.
Of course that doesn't mean that ADHD is overdiagnosed or that those diagnoses are wrong, but it doesn't seem like many places are being as rigorous as they're supposed to be? Am I missing anything?
cardanome
I don't really know the situation in the US. Here in Germany it is for sure rigorous.
I had three appointments and lots of questionnaires to fill out at home that were designed to exclude all kind of conditions. And with a diagnosis I was still far away from getting a prescription, that is whole other hurdle.
As for the US, well the CDC says in the section for conditions that must be met:
> The symptoms are not better explained by another mental disorder (such as a mood disorder, anxiety disorder, dissociative disorder, or a personality disorder). The symptoms do not happen only during the course of schizophrenia or another psychotic disorder.
https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/diagnosis/index.html
So it is pretty clear on that.
dkga
“Prescription”?
yieldcrv
kind of like coughing
sure, people with the common cold do it
but so do people with at least 100 other ailments
gcau
>Both autism are ADHD are vastly under-diagnosed especially in women and adults.
How is this known or proven?
cardanome
We can do science and extrapolate data:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8870038/
> As of 2018, 2.94% of 10- to 14-year-olds had a diagnosis (1 in 34), vs. 0.02% aged 70+ (1 in 6000).
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8870038/
> The ratio of males to females with ASD is generally quoted as 4:1,[..]The true male-to-female ratio appears to be 3:4. Eighty percent of females remain undiagnosed at age 18, which has serious consequences for the mental health of young women.
unethical_ban
Seeing shared experience is one thing, but I don't trust Shorts/Reels to be an authority on anything important like medical diagnoses. It should be like wikipedia: She should have a link to a scientific paper or doctor corroborating her entertainment skit.
As I read through your entire comment, I see you might agree. And yes, I've seen that woman on Reels before, some of her observations I can confirm, such as "body double" or whatever it's called where you are more productive when interacting with someone else, even if they aren't helping you with something.
Aside: I don't think my PCP is the #1 person to talk to regarding variations in ADHD treatment. I have adderall, which can help sometimes focus me on a task and bypass the anxiety of talking/typing through issues at work. But I loathe using it daily. I wonder if any other medication works differently. Ritalin is different but similar.
elric
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.
boogieknite
and i use gait analysis to identify law enforcement. they all walk like theyre holding invisible barrels against their hips
paulpauper
It's not some. now they all use gait analysis . higher resolution and frame rate makes this more reliable.
sys32768
It could also just be a sign of undiagnosed funnywalkism.
tibbar
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.
hooverd
Maybe I'm just avoiding the worm.
msgodel
Huh. My last girlfriend told me I had "the gay walk" and never could figure out what she meant. I wonder if this is it.
EvanAnderson
I emailed and spoke on the phone w/ my wife for a over a month before we met face-to-face. She told me, years later, she anticipated I'd have a particular gait. When we finally met I did not disappoint. She has described it as an "effeminate" gait.
We recently moved into house with wood floors. I experience my daughter and wife's gaits in new way. Their footfalls have a distinct "thud-thud-thud" with the landing of their heels first, whereas mine are a lot lighter. My daughter definitely didn't inherit my gait, even if she did inherit some of my psychological and mental eccentricities.
paulpauper
interesting, have someone videotape you walking
cindyllm
[dead]
FirmwareBurner
> I had "the gay walk"
Alright, that's enough HN for me today, I'm outie. Have a great evening y'all.
Weryj
Hey, I'm the innie, lets see what HN has today… oh my
kridsdale1
You’re going to love today’s perk: a cake.
racedude
Same rofl
northhnbesthn
Upvoted for account profile description.
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