I'm always slightly puzzled by the amount of importance that eye contact has for people who are not on the autistic spectrum. I'm just writing here as someone who's on the autistic spectrum and is really trying to understand this.
If a child was blind, clearly they wouldn't be able to make eye contact, and I guess no-one would be trying to insist they did.
People on the autistic spectrum often find eye contact painful and distressing and overloading because of the disability, (I certainly do). Rewarding us for doing something that 'hurts' (as some methods do when trying to teach children) has always seemed a bit odd. Research suggests that we avoid eye contact because the flickering of people's eye movements causes our brains to overload, as we have a hypersensitive bit in the brain.
For me, nothing happens when I look into someone's eyes other than me thinking "Oh heck - what on earth can I do to make it stop?" If I do manage it, I can't make it 'natural', so people end up thinking I'm lying, or being evasive, or being aggressive - so it's actually more of a problem than not doing it. The subtleties that others manage automatically can't be done by me at all. I know that when other people look into each other's eyes, there's a pattern of glance, look away, glance, look away that controls and regulates the contact between them, what they think of each other. The size of the pupils shows whether they like each other or not. So much natural automatic communication happens. Not for me it doesn't. It's like living in a world where everyone else can play the piano to international standards, and all I can do after 40+ years is tap out a rather flat tune with two fingers which annoys everyone around me, perhaps more than if I just kept my hands off the keyboard.
What happens when you look into someone's eyes? What does it teach you? I wish I could understand...
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About eye contact - can I ask a question?
32 replies
amber32002 · 01/11/2008 09:29
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