Avoiding eye contact is disrespectful. It shows dishonesty. It shows respect. It’s polite. It is defiance of authority. It respects authority, and expresses an appropriate submissive attitude toward authority. Direct eye contact is honest and open, shows you have nothing to hide. It’s aggressive, a challenge to authority, invasive, impolite, a threat.
These statements about eye contact are contradictory because there are so many different things that can be communicated through eye contact, and there are so many different cultural/natural responses to eye contact. For numerous human cultures and animals from baboons to polar bears, direct eye contact is a display of aggression and/or disrespect.
How do you feel when someone is staring at you for a long time, and not trying to hide it? Do you interpret their stare as aggressive, hostile, defiant, invasive, or disrespectful? Or is the person caressing you or adoring you with their eyes? Romantic poetry and pop songs are full of the imagery of drowning in the lover’s eyes, getting lost in his or her gaze. The intimacy of the gaze or stare may be appropriate or inappropriate; neurotypical people seem to have an inborn ability to make that distinction.
There is a point of view that suggests that people with autism are not deficient in empathy but are in fact flooded and overwhelmed with it. It’s too much, and they have to turn away from others, and shut out the barrage of information and emotion. To look into someone’s eyes is far too personal and intense; not only the long, penetrating gaze, but the brief, day-to-day forms of eye contact. Many people on the autism spectrum can learn to tolerate some direct eye contact, which is essential in certain situations such as job interviews. But the interpretation of eye contact is subjective, and most people with autism or Asperger’s Syndrome are not keen on subjectivity; there are no grey areas, just black or white.
With my daughter, I’ve certainly seen a lot of stormy weather around the issue of subjectivity, and we talk a lot about “fact” versus “opinion.” She takes pride in having the skill to point out that something is an opinion rather than a fact. We talk about eye contact as a social skill, a part of good manners, something we use along with other tools like a nice tone of voice or a smile or polite words. It’s something to be learned and practised, but really only used in a limited way. We know it doesn’t come naturally, as for neurotypical kids, and we know it’s uncomfortable. The need to take in and interpret “eye” information also seems to distract from processing verbal information. By insisting that a child look at you when you are speaking, you may actually be shutting off their ability to hear you.
The neurotypical world assumes so much about a person and about the nature of the interaction, based on a narrow view of “eye contact.” Fortunately we live in a diverse culture that demands tolerance and acceptance of difference; and families affected by autism are at the forefront of challenging narrow views about thought processes, communication, and relationships.
Hi Lori, There's a great book called Mirroring People which talks about some fairly recent research on mirror neurons. These are neurons that fire to give your brain many of the same electrical reactions to watching somebody perform an action (smiling for example) as if you had performed the same action. In a sense you actually feel some of what it is to perform an action that you watch. It is believed that these are one of the primary ways in which infants - to borrow a computer term - load the operating system of their mind. When Mom smiles, Baby smiles back. When Mom says "ma-ma" Baby experiences what it feels like to say "ma-ma" and each time the neural pathways get closer to actually repeating it, until one day they all fire and Baby says "ma-ma" too.
ReplyDeleteThe mirror neurons of people on the autism spectrum work differently or sometimes don't work at all. Because of that we typically miss all but the most blatant of body language and facial expressions. As a teen I was keenly aware that everyone else was communicating at some level other than spoken words but I had no idea what it was or how to read it. For a while I was convinced that I was the only person in the world who didn't have telepathy!
It's not a book you usually find on lists of things for Aspies and their loved ones to read but I wish it was. I think it helps explain how we can have so much empathy and miss the cues on when to express it or simply be unable to express it appropriately at times. If you read it, I'd love to know what you think.