Watching lips when people talk.

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If I'm looking at someone's face when they are talking to me, I've always generally focused most of my attention on the lips because it helps me understand what they are saying better. I tend to do this with characters on TV or in movies as well though not as much.

I hadn't known until recently that this was...

1. Unusual
and
2.Something done by a very large percentage of those on the spectrum.

I'm curious how many people here naturally do this.

Funny, my son's speech therapist the other day said to us..."he really focuses on your lips when you talk..."

I have that habit, too. Sometimes, I don't know in what situations, I look at or into the eyes of the person I am talking to. It is mostly like lip-reading, although I don't have a real hearing problem. It bothers me when I watch a movie in a forein language, without subtitles, but with voice-dubbing instead (such as a American movie on a German channel, where the English speech is replaced by German speech). The lips make different movements from the speech. That irritates me most of the time.

I stop doing that, when the other person stops talking and I talk instead (the person asked me a question, and now I am answering it). Then I stop looking at the lips, but look at the whole face. Then I try to read signals, to have a clue what they are thinking of feeling while I am talking.

I don't know how women interpret this, when you talk do them, and watch at their lips (especially when the setting is slightly romantic). I have read somewhere that they would think, you want to kiss them.

Last edited by hans66 on 08 Jul 2010, 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes! A lot of the time i don't like looking at a person's face at all(particularly if they are standing very close to me), but when i do look at their face i'm usually looking at their mouth. Anyone else think this might be partly due to auditory processing issues? It might be easier to understand what someone is saying when you can also see their mouth moving with the sounds. I think that looking at someone's mouth sometimes helps me understand what they're saying in a noisy situation.

I look at the person's lips, because it's easier for me to understand, what the other person is saying.

If I look at the person's eyes, I miss more than half of what they're saying.

I look at the whole face, but focus mostly on the lips.

I look at lips, but it never occurred to me that I had a good excuse for doing that. I was very embarrassed by it. Yes, it does help me understand what people are saying. What a relief!

I once read an article in one of my mother's magazines, entitled 'How To Tell What He's Really Thinking'. It said that if a man watched your lips whilst you were talking to you, it meant he was attracted to you and was fantasising about kissing you. I find this really funny because it might just mean that the man is autistic and will later just wander off, leaving them woman to think "What did I do wrong?"

But yes, I do this - if I try to stare at the eyes of the person I'm talking to, I get a sort of interference in my head - sort of like white noise - which distracts me and makes me forget what the person is talking about. I can make some eye contact, but if I try and force myself to do it I get distressed and tearful, especially if I don't know the person.

It's articles like this that make me think even NT people don't understand social nuances.

Ha Ha! My first girlfriend was deaf, and had to read my lips. She had to re-teach me to keep my face pointing towards her's. I learned from her to focus on lips.

Sometimes that is true in my case , but most of the times, that is not the case. It helps me understand better (regardless of the other person's gender or attractiveness) what he/she is saying. OTOH, I wonder whether I can see when a woman is watching my lips when the space between her and me is about a yard, and it is sure that it is an NT woman.

I alternate between lips and eyes.

when I look at them i like to watch there hands

If somebody is talking to me, that generally means they're looking at me, which means I'm not looking at them. It is too difficult for me to look at people who are talking to me, doesn't seem to matter where. It is an indescribable intensity.

I find the image of the lost and confused woman so hilarious! I hope I never did that. I always watch the lips, and sometimes suspect that I have some kind of selective deafness because my hearing is actually very acute, but I don't hear the same conversation that other people tell me happened.

I mostly look at the lips when someone is talking. If I'm not watching their lips, I'm not looking at them at all.
I absorb what people are saying if I can see their lips while they are talking to me. Also if I'm not watching lips I will not retain what the person has said.
If I try to look at their eyes I feel like I'm in a tunnel and their voice is all I can hear and it's so loud I can't understand them.