Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that becomes appearant early in life. These children (and adults) struggle daily with this disorder's effects on social functioning, including language and communication, learning, and unusual behavioral patterns.
An interesting study focused on understanding some of the ways that autism affects a person's view of the world, and how that in turn can make social situations so dreadfully complicated for them.
Interpretation of social situations often requires your eyes to "scan" or search another person's face for clues to what that other person is thinking, saying, or feeling.
The figure below, taken from this study, shows the importance of understanding the
manner in which the speakers are conversing, rather than just
what the speakers are saying.
This is crucial to understanding social scenerios, and is the reason why people with autism have such a hard time in public.
Figure: Visual Focus of an Autistic Man (Red tracing) and a Normal Comparison Subject (Yellow tracing) when shown a film clip portraying a flirtatious exchangeFrom the Article:
"The figure shows the visual
scanning paths of the two participants during this 7-
second shot. The data are shown collapsed onto one still
image. From the scanning pattern in this figure, the viewer
with autism (red path) seemed not to understand the inviting,
flirtatious nature of the interaction—or the impact
of these behaviors on Martha’s husband in the back, since
he did not once glance at the action in the background. In
contrast, the normal comparison viewer’s visual scanning
does track the important social clues.
"Defining and Quantifying the Social Phenotype in Autism
Am J Psychiatry 159:6, June 2002
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