Autism and encoding facial emotions

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Brains of individuals with autism successfully encode facial emotions, study reveals

I don't have much trouble with decoding facial expressions. It's hard to explain most facial expressions, but I just recognise them without having to consciously think. I'm more sensitive to tone of voice though.

I don't do so well in tests where only the eyes are shown. I do much better if the whole face is shown.

I pretty much don't look at faces at all, as looking directly at people's faces is so uncomfortable any information I might get from them is drowned out by panic. I rely entirely on posture and tone of voice.

I have a feeling that many of these facial expressions tests use computer manipulated images of one face. So the same face made to look angry or sad etc. This is therefore not an actual facial expression but a fake.
I believe many autists can tell it's not real and that is the more relevant information to us rather than the supposed emotion.

Just a thought. May not be relevant here.

I don't look at people's faces during conversation, at all. I'm usually facing the other direction because I don't like them to look at ME due to scopophobia, social phobia, and the whole "no eye contact" thing. I very rarely look at a person's face but I could tell you a lot about small details on the ground, or off to one side of my view.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction that's presented in the article. We see the facial emotions but we don't .... (what?) I'm not clear about what the finding means.

In my ASD test I got the lowest score my assessor had ever recorded for "Reading emotions in the eyes". It was first percentile and deemed a significant clinical risk for being conned, manipulated, exploited, etc. - which actually explains a lot about my life.

... In most social interactions, the first thing I'd do is look at people's lips and strain my ears.

Sometimes I'm not even looking at the faces or my mind in any visual processing at all -- if anything, I might as well trying to keeping it at bay.

It doesn't help that I seem to develop some kind of auditory processing issue in my recent years.

Nevermind looking at faces and their eyes, and trying to read or even remember them.

Most of my processing is simply been with doing the former.
While keeping bay with other sensory interferences, irrelevant thoughts and feelings, the complexity of translating supposed relevant thoughts into words, controlling intended wording and tone, movement, etc.

Nevermind lists of social rules, what and what is not appropriate. Nevermind body language.

Nevermind observing the rest of the subtle spectrums and subtexts, because my processing is already stretched out.



But when my sleep and hormones apparently had a fluke (read: healthy/awake like sensation at the back of my eyes, on the left side especially, as if stimulants actually worked) I do not have the same struggles with processing issues.

I can actually afford to process all these in a conscious level without trouble.


I don't have a formal assessment for body language and eyes reading.
But I do have observations of not doing eye contact.

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