Autistics literally view the world differently

[tazz]

For the record, I do this. Particularly with faces, I find myself focusing on someone's nose rather than eyes or mouth.

Noses don't tend to be very expressive

 

[RemyZee]

I have this trait but I don't know why the whole prerequisite for non verbal communication necessarily always has to do with the eyes. I mean people are hung up on the whole thing of autistic eyes. I do have an issue with eyes in that they r very intense, bit body language is more than eyes. Tone of voice. How I hold my arms. Smiling and knowing when to smile. Not having any idea what another persons movements mean, holding my mouth in the correct position, an ability to not drop everything, walking normally, the truth of clumsiness, staring at people and knowing when to quit staring, laughing appropriately, accidental yawning etc etc. They are all body language, all befuddled, but people are obsessed with the eyes and the eyes. I have a hard time with eyes. But even a harder time with laughing or smiling at the wrong times. Or with severe clumsiness--if clumsy is a type of body language. This thing about eyes is real I know. Bit for me it's more pervasive and hs to do with how I navigate the physical world between myself and others. Eye contact is part, but not the only part, of the ritual anxieties that go with becoming more known

 

[FayetheAspie]

So if autistic people look at whatever is in the center and neurotypical people look at the faces then what kind of person glances back and forth over the whole picture?

 

[jsilver256]

So if autistic people look at whatever is in the center and neurotypical people look at the faces then what kind of person glances back and forth over the whole picture?

These heatmaps are just areas of more frequent probability. They do not indicate that these are the only things being looked at. It would be quite surprising if your eye tracking heatmaps would be truly indistinguishable from being random.

Humans have a "hardwired" neural model in their brain which activates on face-like regions, which was derived by experimenting on newborns to be roughly three spots - two for eyes, one for the shaded mouth/nose area.

The interesting thing about this is that newborns have very blurry vision so this hardwiring is necessarily similarly "vague." They reverse engineered the nature of detection by drawing increasingly blurry / stylized faces and tracking babies' eyes.

It makes sense that in neurotypical development, this hardwired detection evolves to be more finely attuned to particular features, expressions, and so on, whereas in neurodivergence, something goes wrong with it. So I'd guess anything that does not involve focusing on faces is a sign of neurodivergence.

 

[Boogs]

"Look at me when I'm talking to you! Show some respect to your elders!"
So I learned to look at faces.

But they don't like that, I concentrate too much on them, they get uncomfortable, it's not acceptable!!!!

"Are you challenging me? Are you being deliberately cheeky? Stop staring like that. Show some respect for your elders!"
So I don't look at eye's too much, or noses too much, or mouths too much, but I'm fast running out of face to look at!


I think there are two types of 'wiring' in the brain. There's the physical structure of the neurons and (most importantly) some of the connections between them. Some of these connections are 'genetically' encoded (thought not as a rigid 'template' but rather as seeds of patterns like a number plugged into a fractal equation to create related but different structures) and are also environmentally effected. Everyone, ND and NT is wired differently, but with specific conditions it's what and where the wiring is different that makes the difference.

Then there's the other 'wiring' that's composed of the 'random' growth of new connections, and the weighting in each of them. This is the ever mutable wiring (to different degrees depending on which neurons they are) that allows us to learn and change. This wiring, I suspect, is not so much formed from our gene's but rather much more as response to environment.

Where the former lacks a specific function or has different function to the 'normal' this is pretty much fixed from birth and development, acting as a mould or template - if you lack the access to specific cognitive function, it's not going to 'grow back' or be 'cured' and more than we can regrow a missing limb.
The latter can change to allow flexibility and learn alternative ways to function. It can try to replace other 'missing' function. This is why those with the built-in ability to use that subconscious process that can perform facial recognition and interpretation need not even think abut what they are doing when interacting with others, it's like balance for most people, it just happens. Those without that same built-in function must use their other facilities to learn ways of compensating and managing to socially function, but must expend conscious effort to do so, and hence many find it an exhausting process.

Social conditioning provides the re-enforcement to feel compelled to have to continue doing this even at that level of cost. Which is also an interesting clue into the importance of social positioning and interaction for allistic people - the fact it's such an important thing to them (and thus to autistic people too) and so necessarily informs the immense need to force all into that template of behaviour, without which they struggle to know where/how to position themselves, while it seems (to me) autistic people generally care much less about these things, they appear not to need all the subconscious reinforcements to establish communication (while NT's may be uncomfortable not looking at the speakers face and features).

 

[AuAL]

I quite like "wired".

I reused it in that post because it's actually possible to identify the possibility that someone is could be a psychopath from a brain scan. For such things I definitely prefer "wiring" to "wetware"
( Note that it's not a sufficient condition: its present in almost all psychopaths, but it's also present in many other people who behave normally. Check out "James Fallon" on youtube for some useful insights)

As far as I know neither brain scans nor genetic scans are helpful for identifying ASD.

But while I don't believe that all ASDs across the whole spectrum necessarily have a few specific things in common, I think it's probably true for HFA's.

Recent work on metabolic network analysis is interesting. See, for example, https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06102-y.pdf

 

[Judge]

Interesting, though complex reading about brainstems and ASD:

Evidence for Brainstem Contributions to Autism Spectrum Disorders

 

[SweetHoney]

I wonderuf

I find the study about the picture to be interesting. I too would focus on the middle of the picture and not on a person's face in the picture. I'm talking about the picture 30 seconds into the short video above.

Edit: As others have commented about my statement about looking at a face in a picture. The main subject of the video isn't about looking at faces, it's about a doctor saying 1) The brains of autistics are in fact "wired" (my word choice) differently that NTs. 2) Because of this, autistics literally view the world differently than

I wonder if this contributes to how I choose designs in still life photography and it feels so natural to me too.