Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article vindicates any person who's ever had difficulty with eye contact. That includes many autistic people. It especially includes me. Turns out, the participants in this study couldn't tell if their conversation partners were looking at their eyes or at their mouths.
This suggests, rather strongly, that demands for autistic people to make eye contact are unreasonable. We make themselves uncomfortable or dis-regulated in order to have a "respectful" conversation, but this is now shown to not be nearly so important as it's preached to be. Merely paying attention to a less pain-inducing part of the body makes for a sufficient amount of attention.
This is excellent news to me. Any Applied Behavioral Analysis institutions should take note as well, and adjust their curriculum appropriately. It can be difficult to teach autistic children to make eye-to-eye contact, and apparently, this is wasted effort.
I've mentioned in the past how uncomfortable eye contact makes me. It's like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat. The more familiar the face, the softer the swing of the bat. Still, it's not something I'd do on purpose... except that Western culture assumes you're lying, shifty, inattentive, untrustworthy, passive, and lack confidence if you don't make eye contact. So I've had to make myself. I assure you, it's no fun.
The word choice for Western culture's opinion of eye contact is "reverence." I find this highly appropriate, given what I've had to go through lest I appear disrespectful. I have never experienced the "magical connection" when looking into a crush/significant other's eyes. The intro to the article mentions this, as does media and even some people I've met. I don't expect I ever will experience this, honestly.
I look forward to trying this new mode of "eye contact" next time I'm out. Do you find yourself making use of this "eye contact" method unconsciously? I think I have, when I'm very tired or overwhelmed, but I just figured they would hopefully forgive me my apparent inattention.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
This suggests, rather strongly, that demands for autistic people to make eye contact are unreasonable. We make themselves uncomfortable or dis-regulated in order to have a "respectful" conversation, but this is now shown to not be nearly so important as it's preached to be. Merely paying attention to a less pain-inducing part of the body makes for a sufficient amount of attention.
This is excellent news to me. Any Applied Behavioral Analysis institutions should take note as well, and adjust their curriculum appropriately. It can be difficult to teach autistic children to make eye-to-eye contact, and apparently, this is wasted effort.
I've mentioned in the past how uncomfortable eye contact makes me. It's like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat. The more familiar the face, the softer the swing of the bat. Still, it's not something I'd do on purpose... except that Western culture assumes you're lying, shifty, inattentive, untrustworthy, passive, and lack confidence if you don't make eye contact. So I've had to make myself. I assure you, it's no fun.
The word choice for Western culture's opinion of eye contact is "reverence." I find this highly appropriate, given what I've had to go through lest I appear disrespectful. I have never experienced the "magical connection" when looking into a crush/significant other's eyes. The intro to the article mentions this, as does media and even some people I've met. I don't expect I ever will experience this, honestly.
I look forward to trying this new mode of "eye contact" next time I'm out. Do you find yourself making use of this "eye contact" method unconsciously? I think I have, when I'm very tired or overwhelmed, but I just figured they would hopefully forgive me my apparent inattention.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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