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Debate, Think Autism Melbourne 2026
John Munro and Siobhan Lamb split over whether masking stops costing effort
In short
At Think Autism Melbourne, Professor John Munro argued that practised behaviour becomes automatic and stops costing effort. Dr Siobhan Lamb replied that the price she pays falls on her identity and mental health.
Read it instead, 5 minutesThe transcript
The story
Professor John Munro and Dr Siobhan Lamb shared the stage at Think Autism Melbourne in May 2026, and on masking they did not agree. The sharpest exchange came when Munro told Lamb she was ignoring something important. “The more you do something, you have the capacity to learn to do it automatically”, he said. A person who has learned to mask, he argued, can gradually do it automatically, and is then no longer paying a cognitive cost. Lamb answered him directly. “I’m not paying a cognitive cost. I’m paying a cost to my identity.” The cost, she added, fell on her mental health.
The question that followed went to what she meant. A speaker asked whether Lamb was the person she was now or the person she had been four or five years earlier, and argued that how she was now was her identity. Lamb defined identity differently, as knowing that people liked her regardless of how she showed up on a given day, and that she had a place in the room however she arrived. If her story rested on acting, and she did not know whether she could show up without acting, she said, that was a mental health crisis she was heading into.
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Sources the story draws on
- Camouflaging in autism: A systematic review (opens in a new tab), Clinical Psychology Review, vol. 89, article 102080, via University of Bristol research portal (J. Cook, L. Hull, L. Crane and W. Mandy)
- 'Putting on My Best Normal': Social Camouflaging in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions (opens in a new tab), UCL Discovery repository (Laura Hull and colleagues)
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