Excerpted from chapter 1 of Everybody's Different: Understanding and Changing Our Reactions to Disabilities, by Nancy B. Miller, Ph.D., M.S.W., & Catherine C. Sammons, Ph.D., M.S.W.

Copyright © 1999 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Everybody defines and reacts to differences differently. Beginning in early childhood, you developed your own comfort zone for others' differences. You became accustomed to differences that you saw frequently; ones that you saw less frequently surprised you. You learned how to react from your parents, siblings, teachers, religious leaders, peers, heroes, and the media. Today, your comfort zone continues to change and grow as you learn about and encounter new differences. You are continually revising your lists of what you consider different, expanding your comfort range about some differences and becoming less comfortable with others. Daily exposure to people, television, print media, advertising, and movies influences your perceptions about differences, as do your own experiences of being or feeling different from others in how you look, move, communicate, behave, or learn.

Most people look, move, communicate, behave, and learn in general patterns that we call "typical" or "average." In fact, we actually look for and expect familiarity in other people. Our basic expectations (or expected average) of what is typical include the following:

• People will look generally symmetrical, have no missing body parts, and fall within a certain range for body size.
  
  
• People will move in coordinated ways, walk independently, and use their hands and bodies for specific tasks, such as eating and writing.
  
  
• People will communicate in ways that allow others to understand them, such as speaking clearly, writing in sentences, and using gestures, and they understand what others communicate to them.
  
  
• People will behave appropriately in social situations by blending in to crowds, standing in lines, taking turns, keeping certain social distances, and so forth.
  
  
• People will demonstrate their ability to learn by reading, following directions, using money, telling time, and working at a job.

Comparing Differences

"Differences between people . . . are statements of relationships. . . . A difference cannot be understood except as a contrast between instances or between a norm and an example." —Martha Minow

When you detect a difference that is unfamiliar, unexpected, or unsettling, you try to make sense of it. Your immediate reaction tells you if this difference is within your comfort zone. If it isn't, then you compare the person's difference with an expected average, with yourself, with someone else, with a different time, or with your concept of an ideal.

• Comparing with an expected average: How is this similar to or different from what I am used to seeing or what I expect to see?
  
  
• Comparing with yourself: How is this similar to or different from me?
  
  
• Comparing with someone else: How is this similar to or different from other people I have known or know about?
  
  
• Comparing with a different time: How is this similar to or different from other times I have seen this person?
  
  
• Comparing with an ideal: How is this different from what I think of as "perfect"?

You Notice Some Differences More than Others

Everybody notices certain differences more than others. Perhaps you are related to several people who have very short stature. This is something well within your personal comfort zone, so you might pay little attention when you see someone with short stature in your office building. Or, your special affinity for people with short stature may lead you to notice them quickly.

A basketball scout knows a lot of people who are very tall. Instead of not paying much attention to strangers who are extremely tall, however, the scout readily spots young adults who are tall because he is always on the alert for prospective recruits.

If you rarely see people who are taller or shorter than your expected average, then you would undoubtedly react to someone of either extreme, short or tall. You notice some differences more than others because of two processes: habituation and sensitization.

Habituation: Getting Used to Differences

Some differences become so familiar that they become part of your personal comfort zone, your expected average. This is known as habituation. As time passes, the differences don't change, but you notice them less and less and evaluate them differently.

For example, suppose you live in southern California. An aunt visits from out of state, and you go for a walk on the beach. You see people with pierced navels and noses, mohawks, dreadlocks, and tattoos. At the beach, people surf, rollerblade, bicycle, and "hang out." You may barely notice these people because you have habituated to their differences, which have become part of your expected average for the beach. Your aunt, however, expresses surprise, humor, shock, and discomfort at the unexpected, unfamiliar, and maybe even unsettling display of deliberate human differences.

Here's another example: Your co-worker has a speech impairment resulting from a stroke. Both of you have had to make some accommodations related to her disability: You need to make sure to listen carefully to her slower speech, and your co-worker asks you to tell the server her order when you go to lunch together. Initially these were new and awkward behaviors for you, but you have habituated to them and now do them automatically. When a new client meets your co-worker, however, the speech difference may "leap" into your awareness again as you recognize the client's discomfort.

Sometimes a whole community habituates to a difference. For example, in the 1600s, a group of English immigrants settled on Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. For the next two and a half centuries, the island had a strikingly high incidence of hereditary deafness, and both hearing and deaf people used sign language.

"None of my informants remembered any formal teaching of sign language. It was . . .just a sort of instinct. You couldn't help learning it. . . .Hearing children with no deaf immediate family members learned sign language by accompanying their parents on daily chores to the neighbors or the store, where they saw signs used regularly. They needed to learn the language to communicate with deaf adults as well as deaf playmates. . . . It was assumed that everyone in town was conversant with it." —Nora Groce

Sensitization: Tuning In to Differences

When you want or need to notice differences in greater detail than you do now, you must train yourself to see differences. To learn more, you sensitize yourself to specific details. Sensitization is the opposite of habituation. Every time you learn about a new topic, such as gardening, changing the oil in your car, or painting, you begin to see details that you have not seen before.

For instance, imagine that you are the new supervisor of a department with 20 employees. You need to learn their names and remember them. You scan the room and study each person's characteristics, such as gender, age, race, hair color, facial features, body size and shape, and voice. You are sensitizing yourself to differences that will help you remember each person.

You become sensitized to some kinds of differences in the course of daily living, depending on your current interests or needs. Have you ever noticed that after you buy a car, you see so many of that model on the road each day? An attorney selecting members of a jury panel becomes sensitized to how a prospective juror's interview behaviors might suggest how the juror will judge the client. A baseball coach observing a high school team can spot highly specific skills and subtle areas of weakness in the players. A mother whose child has asthma can detect several different kinds of coughs.