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Anyone's Autism Come with Good Eye Contact?

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Elgee
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16 May 2023, 2:05 pm

bee33 wrote:
I usually look at people when they are talking to me (if I am facing them, and also depending on who it is and how intense the topic is) but look away when I am talking, because I have to think and looking at them is distracting. I think some people find that a bit off-putting.

Maybe I look at them too much? Not sure. Once I was with my therapist and I consciously decided to look away because I thought I might be staring, and she immediately said, "Are you okay?" because I guess my sudden looking away was weird and was interpreted by her as a sign of distress.

It's much better to talk to someone in the car because then you can't look at each other while one person is driving.

Also when I watch TV I look at people's mouths. If I consciously try to look at their eyes instead, I lose track of what they are saying.


Actually, one of my brothers looks people in the eye while he's driving when he talks to them. This includes backseat passengers. This is not only STUPID but DANGEROUS. I'm all for eye contact to impress upon people one's emotions, intent or seriousness, but I draw the line deep when they do eye contact WHILE DRIVING.

When I watch TV I often watch the mouths, the nose or in between the eyes. It's just more interesting that way. If they have an ugly nose, the nose will steal the show.



Elgee
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16 May 2023, 2:09 pm

TheOutsider wrote:
Interesting... I've never found eye contact to be a necessary component of communication. I don't need to see somebody's eyes to listen to them and I don't need to look at someone's eyes to convey a coherent message to them. I tend to have strong negative reactions to certain visual stimuli and someone else's eyes happen to be one of them. As a result, I rarely look at someone else's eyes. I've always wondered why there is so much fascination with eye contact when it comes to communicating with people.


Sometimes it's necessary to get someone's attention like a server in a restaurant. During mask mandates I would watch the eyes of people at the gym, who had their mask only over their mouth. My plan was when they caught my eyes, I'd motion with my fingers for them to pull up their mask. Surprisingly, this worked about half the time. I've also used eye contact to show my anger or disgust at someone, or as a silent way of saying, "You look stupid yakking loudly into your wireless while working out nearby other people." It really DOES communicate my feelings. I've used it to intimidate people (no, I'm not a bully, but if someone tries to harass me, I'll give them my glare).



Winters Gate
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16 May 2023, 3:42 pm

Im.afraid my autism.did.not.come with a side of good eye contact.

I find it really uncomfortable to look into peoples.eyes. Even when it's something like a YouTube video.



ToughDiamond
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16 May 2023, 4:31 pm

I don't have any great physical or sensory aversion to eye contact. I just don't understand it very well, and in some ways I don't quite condone it. I guess it's not so important in a multicultural society where everybody has different ideas on what's good form and what isn't, and I've spent a lot of my life in such a society.

One thing I can't bear to do is to continue looking at somebody's face when I strongly feel they're faking a smile or an appreciative expression, or just staring too long and hard into my eyes. I just wish they'd stop it. Doing eye contact also often distracts me from focussing on what's being said.

So in practice I use a compromise that I'm so used to that it's become a habit and it doesn't unduly distract me from the conversation. I glance at people's eyes from time to time during conversation, but I don't try to maintain it for more than a few seconds. I tend to fall back on the hope that most people will let it go at that, and that they'll have more criteria for liking a person than whether or not the eye contact is exactly in keeping with some heavily-prescriptive standard or other. In other words, I try to credit people with a bit of sense. If they're the type to get extremely wound up about that one little aspect of human interaction when there are so many more important ones to consider, then we're probably never going to be able to relate to each other very well anyway, so I've not lost much.



Elgee
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16 May 2023, 10:22 pm

Winters Gate wrote:
Im.afraid my autism.did.not.come with a side of good eye contact.

I find it really uncomfortable to look into peoples.eyes. Even when it's something like a YouTube video.


There was a study that showed that eye contact in person activated the amygdala portion of the brain in autistic participants. But I can't imagine this being the case off a YouTube video, since it's a computer screen looking back at you vs. organic matter (someone's eyes in person).

I wonder if something elsle is going on.

Can you look into the eyes of someone you're madly in love with? How about someone with beautiful eyes, such as your favorite movie star, someone you think is gorgeous, or a family member whom you love deeply?