Touch and the Lived Experience of Autism: A Commentary on Boldsen’s Contribution to a Paradigm Shift

Sofie Boldsen’s (2025) article, “Layers of the Skin: Three Perspectives on Tactile Sensation in Autism,” makes a vital contribution to a growing movement in autism research: the centring of autistic lived experience as an essential epistemic resource. Her work exemplifies the “corrective potential” of integrating autistic narratives into scientific discourse, pushing the field beyond reductive frameworks and toward a genuinely interdisciplinary understanding of autistic perception and subjectivity.Boldsen’s (2025) focus on tactile sensation as a point of entry into autistic experience is particularly timely. Sensory differences are increasingly recognised as central to autistic ways of being, yet much of the research in this area continues to privilege visual and auditory modalities. By turning to the skin – both as biological substrate and metaphorical boundary – Boldsen (2025) places touch at the heart of developmental inquiry. Her integration of somatosensory science, psychoanalytic thought, and autobiographical testimony brings often-competing epistemologies into productive dialogue. In doing so, she answers Pellicano and den Houting’s (2021) call for a shift from “autism science” to “neurodiversity in autism science.”Three intersecting knowledge gaps are addressed. First is the relative neglect of tactile differences in autism research. Second is the broader under-theorisation of sensory experience in shaping neurodivergent life worlds. Third is the continued marginalisation of subjective, first-person accounts in a field long dominated by externalist and deficit-based models. Boldsen’s (2025) use of autistic autobiography as legitimate evidence is particularly noteworthy here. Autism has historically lacked a phenomenology; her work helps rectify this by showing how touch structures experience, relationships, and the fragile boundaries of self and other.Importantly, Boldsen’s (2025) account demonstrates how sensory experience is not merely disruptive or pathological but ambivalent – both blessing and burden. Sensory input can overwhelm, but it can also soothe and stabilise; stim toys and texture preferences, for instance, are coping strategies as much as expressions of difference. This dual nature of sensory life reflects a more complex, non-hierarchical account of experience – one that challenges traditional divisions between pathology and adaptation.However, this emphasis on experience raises critical questions. Can lived experience play the integrative and constraining role Boldsen (2025) envisions without the development of innovative methods for empirically and systematically scaling-up phenomenological data and participatory activity (Shaughnessy et al., 2024). Autobiographical narratives, while rich, are limited by issues of sampling and representativeness. There is a need for qualitative studies to grapple with whose voice is being centred and examine how experience is shaped in diverse ways by the complex interplay of multiple social identities, such as race, gender class, ability/disability. Thus, phenomenological methods must be designed with inclusivity, rigour, and reflexivity if they are to transform autism science.Boldsen’s (2025) paper also foregrounds context as crucial: the sensory environment fundamentally shapes what the world affords for autistic people. If the social and physical world assumes a norm of shared affordances, those who perceive and engage with it differently are forced to either adapt or withdraw. This insight aligns with the neurodiversity paradigm’s call for mutual empathy and new forms of relational understanding – highlighting how the world itself must be reconfigured, not just the autistic person accommodated.Finally, the article underscores the value of interdisciplinarity – not merely as additive, but as transformative. Boldsen (2025) shows that genuine understanding emerges not in disciplinary consensus, but in the friction between different epistemologies. The field of autism research stands to gain from such tensions, provided they are navigated with openness and collaboration. Her work, and others like it, lays the foundation for integrative models that better reflect the complexity of being in the world as an autistic person – models that can inform everything from diagnostic frameworks to care pathways and educational practices.Boldsen’s (2025) contribution reminds us that the skin is not just a barrier or sensor – it is a site of contact, communication, and transformation. If autism research is to move forward, it must attend more carefully to what the skin – and the person within it – can teach us.Ethical approval was not required for this commentary since no empirical data was collected.The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.No external funding sources were utilised in producing this commentary.With reference to the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), Nicola Shaughnessy: conceptualisation, writing original draft, review and editing (equal). Emma Isabella Williams: conceptualisation and writing original draft, review and editing (equal).All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this article. Further enquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.