Study claims lack of eye contact missed social significance.

Post Reply New Topic

Toddlers with autism don't avoid eye contact, but do miss its significance

No, studies like this are example NT's not asking Autistics about our experiences. I am not denying missed social significance, but nearly every autisic discussing eye contact describes it as physically or psychologically uncomfortable to painful. We try and pass by looking near the eye at places like the mouth precisely because we find eye contact negative, not because we are missing the social significance. How can we be missing the social significance when many of us had people yelling at us "Look me the eye" our whole lives? The ABA techniques developed due to this misunderstanding is further going to traumatize autistic kids.

Actually, the article does acknowledge that many autistic adults find eye contact aversive. The question is whether very young autistic children feel the same way, or whether they don't make eye contact for a different reason.

But the experiment that supposedly proves it isn't aversive for young autistic children leaves a lot to be desired in terms of methodology. The experiment involves having children watch carefully-made videos which draw the child's attention to someone's eyes and then measures how long the children continue to look at the eyes of the person in the video.

Problem: Looking at the eyes of someone in a video is very different from looking at the eyes of someone in real life. A person, of any age, could have an aversion to the latter but not the former.

I don't quite agree with the following:


Being yelled at to "Look me the eye" doesn't give us the ability to read whatever social information NT's gain by looking at someone's eyes.


That does concern me too. And, it seems to me, even those who are not traumatized could be cognitively harmed.

It is disturbing, to me, that too many autism researchers don't even consider the latter possibility, but simply assume that teaching autistic kids to do eye contact couldn't possibly result in anything but unalloyed good.

Perhaps some autistic kids might actually benefit from being trained to do eye contact. But, for others -- especially those with attention and sensory integration issues like mine -- I'm concerned that eye contact training could harm the kids' ability to pay attention to the verbal content of a conversation.

You misunderstand the point I was trying to make. Being often yelled at to look people in the eye will “teach” the autistic that eye contact is socially significant. That is different from being able to “read” the information being communicated at a specific moment or as in my case pre diagnosis understanding why it is socially significant.

"missed social significance" is correct

But it is not worth the effort

Numerous idiots had the nerve to ask me "what the f**k are you looking at?"

I agree. I've seen similar problems in research into recognition of facial expressions; which often seem to make the assumption that ability to read an expression in a photo to which you've explicitly had your attention drawn, and where a limited range of multiple-choice responses are available, equates with the ability to do it for a fleeting expression which is part of an over-abundance of stimuli fighting for one's attention in a real conversation.