BBC: Autism 'hits body language skill'

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Problems processing visual information may stop those with autism interpreting body language, harming their ability to gauge others' emotions, a study says.

Researchers say people with autism have problems recognising physical displays of emotion, but also general difficulty perceiving certain sorts of motion.

They suggest in Neuropsychologia this may contribute to problems with social interaction, characteristic of autism.

The National Autistic Society said the UK study was an interesting one.

A team from the University of Durham studied 13 adults with autism and found the patients had difficulty identifying emotions such as anger or happiness when shown short animated video clips.

Silent movies

The characters had no faces, nor did they speak, so the participants were asked to judge the emotion based on the body language of the figure alone.

Along with 16 adults with no autism diagnosis, they were also shown a number of dots on a computer screen and asked which way they were moving. A proportion of dots moved noticeably to the left or right, while the others moved randomly.

The way people move their bodies tells us a lot about their feelings or intentions, and we use this information on a daily basis to communicate with each other

Anthony Atkinson
Lead author
The performance of the autism group was significantly below that of the others in both tests, leading researchers to speculate that there may be serious differences between the ability to process visual information.

They point to an area of the brain needed for the perception of motion called the superior temporal sulcus, and cite previous research which has found that this area responds differently in people with autism.

"The way people move their bodies tells us a lot about their feelings or intentions, and we use this information on a daily basis to communicate with each other.

"We use others' body movements and postures, as well as people's faces and voices, to gauge their feelings," said Anthony Atkinson, who led the research.

"People with autism are less able to use these cues to make accurate judgements about how others are feeling.

"We now need to look further to see how exactly this happens and how this may combine with potential difficulties in attention."

It is thought as many as half a million people in the UK have a form of autism, a lifelong developmental disability which can severely affect how a person makes sense of the world around them.

Gina Gomez De La Cuesta, of the National Autistic Society, said the study was an interesting one.

"It certainly takes us on. We know of these problems with emotion recognition but to start to unpick the reasons why is helpful. There appear to be difficulties at the very basic processing level.

"But we really need to see this repeated in more people and then we can start thinking about how we act on it."

A lot of these studies and their conclusion remind me of a criticism I level at my partner on occasion. They all appear to take the view of "you don't do that my way, therefore you do it wrong". Since most of these tests compared us with NTs doing NT things, and then assess us according to how much of a difference in ability there is in that isolated action.

More and more I'm coming to an opinion within myself that we have to stop comparing ourselves with NTs and explore what a healthy, happy autistic mind is truely capable of.

In what way is being unable to correctly judge how dots are moving "bias towards the neurotypical's point of view". The dots are moving in a set way, the computer code proves this, if we can't tell correctly how they're moving that is an objective inability, not bias.

A healthy outlook accepts that AS has both advantages and disadvantages, simply accusing NTs of bias is both rude and in this case, provably untrue.

A lot of these studies and their conclusion remind me of a criticism I level at my partner on occasion. They all appear to take the view of "you don't do that my way, therefore you do it wrong". Since most of these tests compared us with NTs doing NT things, and then assess us according to how much of a difference in ability there is in that isolated action.

More and more I'm coming to an opinion within myself that we have to stop comparing ourselves with NTs and explore what a healthy, happy autistic mind is truely capable of.

The problem with your logic in this instance is that fluently and effortlessly making accurate inferences about the mind/emotional state of one’s co specifics using cues from their body language is not so much an NT thing as it a normal human function, and in fact a normal primate function, or more widely, a normal mammal function, and it makes sense to describe an inability or deficit in an ordinary skill of one’s own species as a disorder when that limitation can be demonstrated to hamper or be detrimental to the success, interests, and well being of organisms so characterized.

not true

many of the greatest contributes to mankind were supposedly lacking in what u and the majority describe as proper function or normal skills
and this is no mere coincidence as many of the limitations society inflict on certain individuals stem from society narrow minded egotism and very superficial definition of success

My comments so far as I can see are entirely true.


Your comments are completely irrelevant. This experiment tested a particular capacity and unless in your view that capacity is the “greatest attributes of mankind”, commentary about those attributes (whatever you subjectively evaluate those as being) is entirely irrelevant to what is being discussed in this thread.

The computer code proves nothing as many mathematician and programmer (I'm both) would tell you that moment in 3D space is in no way objective reality
it is illusory or relative and the space described by the code is not reality

sorry
again i mistakenly assumed that most people would make the connections between capacities and perception and what is deemed the right or proper way of perceiving reality

i have tried to paint some what bigger picture which is obviously beyond any one who can't handles more abstract and holistic way of thinking

a predator would interpret movements in a total different way then a philosopher as a predator would analyze any movement according to his eat or be eaten instincts while a philosopher might ponder or meditate on what such movement can tell us about the nature of our reality so to the untrained eye(the typical researcher) the former might look more responsive or normal and the later might appears as incapable of reaction

a level which is the behind most of the advanced art or real research

perception is not just a technical attribute

...

The research referred to is scientific. It does not take your moral objectives into account and nor should it. Frankly, if your moral objectives do not fit the facts, it’s probably not realistic to expect the facts will magically change to better suite you.

Your subjective moral views are as irrelevant now as they were when last I posted.

If you intended to demonstrate that you are so caught up in some kind of crusade to control how ASDs are perceived, such that you are unable or unwilling to have a reasoned discussion about rather simple and straightforward research and its rather simple and straightforward results, then you have succeeded very well indeed.

Gina Gomez De La Cuesta, of the National Autistic Society, said the study was an interesting one.

"It certainly takes us on. We know of these problems with emotion recognition but to start to unpick the reasons why is helpful. There appear to be difficulties at the very basic processing level.

"But we really need to see this repeated in more people and then we can start thinking about how we act on it."

The research referred to is scientific. It does not take your moral objectives into account and nor should it. Frankly, if your moral objectives do not fit the facts, it’s probably not realistic to expect the facts will magically change to better suite you.

Your subjective moral views are as irrelevant now as they were when last I posted.

If you intended to demonstrate that you are so caught up in some kind of crusade to control how ASDs are perceived, such that you are unable or unwilling to have a reasoned discussion about rather simple and straightforward research and its rather simple and straightforward results, then you have succeeded very well indeed.

With a fixed point of reference it becomes objective reality, there is a fixed point of reference in this experiment.

I'm a programmer too and I think the code provides the objective reality the dots move in. If the code says it moves left then its objectively true that from from the standardised viewpoint (sitting in front of the screen) the dot moves left.

We're not talking about perceiving reality, just a very specific part of it where autism is a disadvantage. Any advantages autism provides to other parts of reality are irrelivent to this discussion.

Or those of us who remember that Science assembles the big picture from loads of really small pictures and thus know its right and proper for the researchers to study one single form of perception exclusively. (P.S. it's bad form to make Ad Homenim attacks)


Which has nothing to do with this study, this study is an objective measure of one spesific type of perception, it did its job well and came to accurate conclusions. That there are other types of perception than what was studied is both true and irrelivent.

Low level studies are just as valid and important as high level studies.

it contains many different technical attributes, studying them is a valid scientific indevour.