Saintlydame and other experts - eye contact

[debs40]

I posted yesterday about an extraordinarily frustrating appointment with the ASD diagnostic head yesterday who had seen DS in school.

She saw him in her office in January and he was very uncomfortable with her. She formed immediate conclusions about Aspergers which I thought were a bit hasty. I actually thhink he is quite complex and not at all 'typical' in presentation - if there is such a thing as typical!I wrote to her afterwards to tell her.

Anyway, we were really annoyed yesterday because she saw him in school and kept saying things like 'he got bumped into and didn't thump the child back' and 'he gave his peers good eye contact', and 'he seemed to enjoy playing with his friends' concluding that she had expected to see these ASD traits.

We would never have expected him to demonstrated these particular ASD traits and feel she was applying a stereotypical view of autism - DS does have friends, does make eye contact with those he feels comfortable and doesn't go around hitting people. We have never suggested that he does.

We are quite happy that DS might not get a diagnosis but we have to feel confident in that diagnosis and we don't with these peoople

Am I right in thinking that this preoccupation with eye contact is missing the point and that having such 'stereotypical' expectations of a child in every situation. Surely, these things can change depending on the environment??

I also wanted to add that she said he had clear, and profound sensory difficulties which were obvious to her and which could affect concentration in the class and could have impeded his ability to develop social communication skills.

How does this differ from ASD?

People can have sensory problems without autism, I guess.

WRT the eye contact: I agree with you and think you may want a second opinion. She's looking for stereotypes rather than subtleties in social communication.

I think these things can vary from situation. Surely even a child with AS will give eye contact in situations where they feel comfortable???

It went along with her low level expectations of what he might be like.

Absolutely. J can give great eye contact IF he's asking questions OR talking about something he wants to talk about AND it's me he's talking to AND he's relaxed.

But he wouldn't do it for a stranger in a strange environment

Agree with everything you are saying. My research is on severe autism- so doesn't necessarily hold true for HFA or AS (I haven't looked) but certainly children with severe autism can have very good eye contact and use it skillfully and for communication.

I think some of the problem comes from the way that autism is traditionally investigated. If you take someone with a communication disorder and look at eye contact etc experimentally you are putting them under a lot of pressure and you are not going to see how it is used naturally in familiar situations with familiar friends/relatives. So these stereotypes abound.

For example I have video of my son teasing, he does this through the subtle use and competent of eye contact, reaching and laughter - it is way beyond anything the books would have him capable of doing. But I have that sort of thing repeated and demonstrated by other children as well.

Of course in a testing situation/unfamiliar environment/with unfamiliar people you are not going to see that. And that's usually where assesments/experiments on autism take place.

If you want something to back up your arguments then this paper does a pretty good job:

Autistic Children's Co-ordination of Gaze and Talk: Re-examining the 'Asocial' Autist; P.Dickerson, J.Rae, P.Stribling, K.Dautenhahn & I.Werry

It's from a rather specialist book but is about skilled gaze practices.

Thanks. Will try and get hold of it.

I need to get someone else to examine DS!!