Considering Visual Processing in "Reading Emotions"

by Dora Raymaker

Published February 20, 2009 @ 04:00PM PT

The general pattern on my news feeds is that a big story will break and for a few weeks (tops) dominate the feeds, and then the story dies out and that's that; I don't see it again. But this one story has been in my alerts for like four months, several times a week, and at this point I've seen it so many times that despite it not being of significant interest to me, I feel compelled to comment on it--New video helps autistic children read emotions (in some format or other, on various news sources all over, over and over, and they say I'm repetitive, sheesh!).

Every time I've seen the two-liner on this article, I've had the thought strike me (well, following the thought, "why am I still getting alerts for this story?"): Did the creators of the video take into account possible sensory issues with "reading emotions" from non-verbal communication?

So today I finally caved and went over to the video's web site to see what it is really about. Even though I had read about "faces of human actors superimposed on digitally animated vehicles," I was ill prepared for how deeply creepy these things are. Definitely an uncanny valley issue for me. That aside though, and ignoring a deep critique of certain theories about autism, the web site gave me no indication that sensory issues had been considered in the "reading of emotions."

The thing is, a fair number people on the spectrum report a lot of difficulty making sense of visual stimuli for various reasons. At a keynote of hers I attended, Donna Williams talked about visual sorts of aphasia, and difficulty recognizing what all the parts of a face even are let alone how they function together. She describes this also from personal experience in her books.

Lucy Blackman in her book Lucy's Story: Autism and Other Adventures describes figure/ground confusions and visual distortions, for example, "My eyes picked up different signals from the light, shade, color, and movement that passed into the retina and thence to my brain. I basically emphasized folds and depths. The other children seem to have discarded these in their visual sorting, because these shadows are only background in the world view of most human beings."

I talked a little about mono-sensing and understanding speech last week--if I have my vision "turned off" in order to actually make sense of a person's words, how am I supposed to simultaneously be processing the visual stimuli of their facial expressions? I may know full well what a smile looks like, but it does me little good if I'm blinded by attending to hearing.

Some people on the spectrum have non-verbal learning disabilities that make it difficult for them to process visual information much at all. Darius in Aquamarine Blue 5 says, "I often seemed to process only the most basic visual information. I don't know how many times I poured tea into the jar of marmalade for instance, instead of into my mug. Apparently I was capable of processing the visual-spatial idea of open versus shut, but not much more."

Autistic kids who don't have these sorts of sensory differences may learn from a video like "The Transporters." But I remain unconvinced that such a tool is helpful to those of us who struggle with with visual processing. More importantly, I would like to know why sensory differences, which are so widely reported, are often left out of tools for social and language learning. Is there sufficient engagement by the people who develop these tools with autistic individuals who are able to articulate their experiences? Is the practical experience of autism being lost in the ivory tower?