Does Taylor Morris now have ASD?

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I do not know if this effect could be observed using footage from the time period. The grainy quality and low frames per minute rate make me dubious about the utility of any attempt to observe flattened expression in these two. Just about anyone appears to have flatted expression when not pulling faces in old footage.

I've never really observed them. I also would expect glasses would present a complication as they would create additional movement in the area and might obscure movement to a degree also. I personally have not seen any footage of Jobs or Speilberg where the face was in the right frame of reference to even look for such. I have never actively observed Gates to look for such, and had no idea about AS on the occassion I did see an interview with him where his face was in the right frame of reference to be observed to look for flattened expression. There was certainly something "different" about the way his face moved, but whether it was flattened expression I would not know without viewing the footage with the intent of looking for it.


Not necessarily. Acting is about a representation and entails many styles and kinds. It is unusual for acting to entail simply talking to a camera in a natural manner. You might note that newsreaders tend to have a restricted range of facial movement and expression when compared to someone acting. Someone portraying dismay in a comedic role is likely to do so very differently from someone portraying dismay in a dramatic role. Different camera angles, different cameras and other elements make various levels and styles of expression look different and often the aim is to create an overall mis en scene that conveys atmosphere and emotion. The face itself is only part of this and what works to covney emotion in one shot/scene/from a particular angle/perspective and with a particular capture device/focus, etc will not necessarily work the same way when these variables are altered.

In fact it's not improbable that some people with AS would be very good at performing in an acting capacity because they have had to explicitly learn to convey emotions/states of minds and are therefore better at controlling these things in a way that works well on film.

Also I note that you seem to be generalizing flattened expression as though it characterizes all people with an ASD (based on your comments that no one with an ASD would be a good actor). Some people with an ASD manifest flattened expression, some manifest gauche over the top expression, and some manifest both of these things. As no one symptom in the communication domain is necessary for a finding of AS for instance, it is possible (although in my view unlikely) that someone with an ASD could be uncharacterized by this particular symptom.


It's not impossible that there is a minor racial influencing component, but there is definately a cultural component. Amongst "caucasian cultures" there is a lot of variance in non-verbal dialect, just as there are variances in verbal language and variances in dialect within a language.