The benefits of low eye contact

Like most people on the Autism spectrum making eye contact with people is not an instinctual thing for me. In fact it makes me uncomfortable and is distracting. But I have learned how to do it and I can usually even do it while sparing half a mind to pay attention to something else as well. But is it always worth it to put in that effort?

photo by Michele Laterza

Some time ago I was experimenting with wearing sunglasses to what effect taking eyecontact out of the equation would have on causal interactions like dealing with the checkout clerk. One of the first things I noticed was that more people were getting in my way at the grocery store. Or to be more accurate not getting out of my way. On subsequent observation and reflection it seems that a woman walking towards on a collision path and looking at you without meeting your eyes triggers some sort of social response and leads to alteration of of path to avoid collision.

Just to be clear, I don't think I started out making the assumption that other people would be the ones to change their path. But because of my trouble correctly perceiving and interpreting motion I take a second or two longer than most people to change my path. The fact that people were preemptively moving out of my way probably increased my subconscious belief that vectors were likely to change so that I needed to give things time to settle down.

Lack of eye contact also does cut down on surprise occurrences of chit-chat. Since I find chit-chat almost uniformly stressful the decrease in its incidence does sometimes seem like an OK trade off for unintentionally appearing less friendly. Overall I do think meeting people's eyes is a very good skill to have so you can use When you WANT to. But our goal shouldn't be to use eye contact just like neurotypicals. The goal is to communicate in a way that can be. Understood, not to put on a mask and pretend to be normal.

Cost of communication

I was reading my sister’s post on language and it got me thinking about the effort we put into communicating. In contrast to sister’s skill, I always knew I was bad at language. English may be my mother tongue but I still remember problems with English pronunciation in first grade. Occasionally I still have problems though most peoples will hear what they expect to hear and not notice it. At most a few think I have an accent. Required foreign language course always seemed sadistic to me when they penalized beginners for spelling mistakes, as I was always severely behind in English spelling and to this day rely heavily on spell checkers. And as someone with Aspergers just mastering the mechanics of speech and writing didn’t lead to real communication. I was very lucky to be introduced to genre fiction where communication was stripped down to bare essentials, and it’s causes and effects all put down in black and white were I could study it and start to see patterns.

But for someone with Asperger’s syndrome I’ve been able to close a lot of the communication gap from my side, it could have been harder to deal with. Communication always has an internal cost that we pay to move our interior codes to symbols that are recognized by others. For people with a shared language there is not just the fact that they can communicate with each other but that they made an effort to arrive at a communication destination and that destination was the same. For our first language that effort was made mainly before we can remember and driven by instinct and necessity more than choice. But that effort was still there and consumed much mental power for several years of our life.

I would like to be able to speak a second language, and maybe someday I will manage to put in the time and effort to do that. But for now I'm just glad I can speak English, the language of my family, of the place where I was born. I'm glad that the people who move here from other places do generally make the effort to meet me and people like me at the communication destination we have already managed to achieve. Sometimes cherishing the amount of communication we do have allows us to really see things that never quite made it into and generally shared symbol system.

Rosettastone - Brtitish Museum
  Photographer: Nina Aldin Thune

To me there seems to be something elitist in an expectation that people should learn a second language just because. Aware as I am of those of us who cling precariously to the edge of a first language. If a second language is just a generic prerequisites of acceptable status, it's a drain of time and effort that falls most heavily on those that are already most marginal. I also think taking a language course in college just to satisfy the language requirement, surrounded by other people that were also just there to satisfy a language requirement yielded a very porridge return as far as comprehension gained for time and effort expended. The circumstances almost guaranteed that most of us would focus on short term memorization to get artificial test answers rather than working on true comprehension.

           Languages ought to be special valued skills that open up opportunities. And they are best taught in conjunction with the opportunity to explore those new opportunities. A specific language is a specific skill and should have specific goals it can achieve and specific values it brings. Studying a language without being able to envision a use to put it to makes acquiring a language much less motivating. It also makes it less valuable. We ought to value the specialness of knowing two languages rather than wanting make it less meaningful in normality.

φίλος

Part of why I’ve been away from blogging for awhile is that I just started a Bible study at my church using Living beyond Yourself: Exploring the fruit of the Spirit by Beth Moore. There can be as much as 8 hours of homework a week. But, not only do I enjoy fellowshipping with the other women at my church doing this study, I am also being stretched and seeing some surprising insights. A couple weeks ago we were covering love and looked at ἔρως (eros, romantic love), φίλος (philos, love in friendship) and ἀγάπη (agape, divine love.)

    In eclectic readings that included lots of authors influenced by classical ideas I’d encountered these different greek concepts of love before. Φίλος has alway been especially compelling to me. I’d read descriptions shared interests that created bonds between people. Friends that kept in touch with each other over decades, always invested in each other's challenges and concerns. Freinds that naturally maintained contact through marriages, moves and career changes.
    And these descriptions were compelling because I didn’t have that. Oh there were girls and later women whom I liked and admired who seemed friendly and welcoming towards me. We would meet through mutual involvement in various activities. I could get to hang out with them and discuss the topic that we shared. As I grew more skilled with social interaction we could have wide ranging general interest conversations and exchanges of personal hurts and triumphs. We would do favors for each others and be ready to do more. But though I would have liked a long term bond I never knew quite how to secure it. As soon as the mutual activity would end I would feel the relationship slipping away without that structure to keep us in contact. I wanted to remain friends but had a terrible time with the logistics of staying in touch. I would make intellectual models based on the relationships around me. But they felt so artificial and unnatural to me that I would end up executing them clumsily if at all.
    This has been a hurt in my heart. I could see this wonderful human experience being offered to me but I could never reach out and grab it. Αγάπη I could have as a free gift that I didn’t have to work for, that God offers to all. But my own ineptitude kept at least the highest versions of φίλος beyond my reach and that made it very desirable to me.

    In addtion to covering positive examples of φίλος “Living Beyond Yourself” used Luke 23:12 as an example of φίλος. Pilate and Herod bond over their mutual frustration and disdain for the whole Jesus situation. This, and a couple of other examples give of how φίλος can be used in a negitive light, helped me to see that I had been exalting freindship in a way that overvalued it. That I’d been idealizing it in a way that made it a rival to divine love in my mind. This bible study has made me more content with being who I am and allowed me to focus more great gifts God has given me.

Modesty and Mindblindness

A recent blog post by my sister she mentions her natural modesty. It’s made me think of my experience with this. Or rather my non-experience since I don’t really have natural modesty. I’ve got pictures of my wrapping paper clothing stage where I must have been about 6 or 7 and I clearly haven't absorbed which are the critical areas that clothes are supposed to cover. And while some modesty rules got drummed into my head growing up, a few seem to have escaped my attention into adulthood. It was my husband who introduced me to the idea of checking that the neighbors don’t have an unobstructed view through an uncurtained window before changing in front of it.

photo by Marc Falardeau

This is not to say I had a preference for displaying skin. In fact I remember a time as a teenager when I was intrigued by the idea of full face veils and chadors. (In those pre 9/11 days I saw any symbolism as primarily complementarian rather than specifically Islamic.) When I consider things with my reason I definitely don’t have a preference for letting others see my skin and definitely a preference for not using clothing to signal openness, approachableness, or flirtatiousness and the like.

 But you have to be aware of that on going conversation to experience your clothing as communication with another at any particular moment. For me communication is always staticy and intermittent. It’s not something the I expect to happen every time I see someone at a distance or pass someone on the street. Yes, intellectually I’m aware of the possibility of information gathering, but I don’t have that sense of minds in mutual awareness of each other. What other people think does not generally overlap with what my own thoughts and don’t impinge on my feelings outside of my conscious effort for them to do so.

           This mindblindness, as far as automatic perception goes, can be very inconvenient at times when it takes me several extra second at the beginning of conversations to sharpen my attention and sync up to another person’s viewpoint. But it does have its advantages. It may take me awhile to figure out what cloths communicate, but I don’t have involuntary embarrassment about my clothing. If I realize the my shirt has a stain on it or that I’m wearing white sox with an otherwise all black outfit, I can decide to watch out for that the next time I dress and then dismiss the matter from my mind. So for me modesty is not body consciousness but a set of rules that I’ve managed to figure out.

What’s the harm in asking?

image by Laurel Fan

On a trip I was on recently the phrase “It can’t hurt to ask.” came up several times. The time that stands out particularly in my mind is the possibility of asking if I could have beef and snow peas instead of the beef and broccoli that was on the menu at a restaurant. I often have a hard time asking people for things and this seems to be not uncommon for people with Asperger’s syndrome. I’ve been encourage to overcome this phobia by phrases like, “The worst that can happen is that they say no.” It makes me wonder if they think I’m afraid of being arrested or of tripping a breaking a bone. After all, people saying no can be accompanied by a lot of other things. People getting upset, people feeling uncomfortable. People misunderstanding you and making assumptions about you. No, it’s not the sky falling on you, but there are negative consequences that can accompany some “no”s.

    There are some situations where asking for certain things really is socially inappropriate. I want to start in a roundabout way with an example from fiction. In Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance we get a chance to see the perspective of a supporting character who has seemed to be a bit of a ladies man. He explains his pick-up technic something like this, “go to a place where there are a lot of girls in a partying mood; go up to  girl and try to make her laugh, if you succeed try to get a date, if you get shot down, pick another girl and repeat. The fact you only get one date for every ten attempts is not a problem if the initial pool of usually has more than ten prospects in it. This represents an entirely different attitude from his cousin, who thinks in terms of ‘I might be able to fall in love with this girl’ before he tries to hit on them. But the thing is in all the previous books (from the cousin’s point of view) he never explained the one in ten success ratio His advice was simply: keep trying, be more persistent.

Reading about this recent real world situation at Readercon I was struck by what bad advice “keep trying, be more persistent” could be in a social situation, and how right we, on the autism spectrum are to resist it. I totally agree that the situation at Readercon is not the sort of thing you expect from someone with Asperger’s syndrome. But looking through the comments you can see that sometimes just asking for something can be extremely offensive. I think I  remember the this sentiment also on comments about the open source boob project. Asking for something implies that I think there is or at least ought to be, a possibility that they will grant me the request. In some ways it’s more presumptuous than making a declarative statement about the other person, because it skips over the part where they have an obvious opening to object.

Of course the people who advise me that “there's no harm in asking” would say well, of course you shouldn’t ask things like that. With assumptions that some things obviously too presumptuous to ask. But we some like me, who is used to constantly being wrong about what seem like obvious and straightforward implications of others actions, it makes sense to be extra wary of an action that can have such a negative reaction.

Moreover saying no can impose a cost on the refuser. There are studies showing that if you ask someone to do something outrageous first, to which they say no, it can make them more likely to say yes to another, more reasonable, request afterwards. It seems that people don’t like continually saying no. A refusal has put the assumption of community and mutuality in doubt. It needs something, like a question that can be answered yes to, or the assumed bond of friendliness might break. Actually a single no to a polite request doesn't do that much damage to friendliness. But for someone with for whom the assumption of friendliness might already be strained it can be an unnecessary liability.

So when the question of asking for a substitution at a restaurant came up, I don’t think it was inappropriate that I gave detailed thought to whether this was a reasonable request to make. I know from making my own version that it isn’t a big deal to substitute one vegetable for another, check. They had other items on the menu featuring snow peas, and so would likely have some on hand, check. The were a high service restaurant projecting an air of personalization, so dealing with customer’s special requests shouldn’t be out of their range, check. I decided I did want to ask if the substitution was possible. But I still felt the anxiety of venturing off the standard script into this whole unpredictable area. So I was very glad when another person in the party made the request for me. And yes I got to eat beef with snow peas.

image by stu_spivack

How Asperger’s influences my view of home

My wonderful sister has just started a new blog. She has a wonderful post about the meaning of home to start off with. It has a lot of good thoughts in it but I did notices that, naturally, it had a quite neurotypical perspective. There are some additional things that are important parts of home to me.

    Memories are important parts of home for me, but not because they bring back wonderful emotions or helped define who I am, but because I remember exactly how to get to the grocery store in my neighborhood. Yes, I can use a map to get to somewhere new if I really need to. But it is always an exhausting anxiety filled experience for me. I’m not really comfortable going somewhere until I have taken that route a number of times. It is only when I know every turn and every streetview that the trip ceases to feel like an assault on my senses and a trial of whether I’ll have the nerve to keep going.
    My sense of home is defined not by a country of a state but in terms of blocks I know. Moving just to another city in the same metropolitan area felt like a big shift that took me years to get used to. There are still certain stores where I still feel more comfortable going to the one nearest my childhood home.
    It’s not that people are not important. But people are fascinating and significant in part because they have unplumbed depths, they constantly revealing new things about themselves, doing something different and unexpected. They aren’t the routine things that you can place in a script you are going to use for your day and not think about again. And because I struggle so much with predictability it is the buildings and the streets that outline home for me.

Asperger's Syndrome and Communication

It’s surprising how difficult as Asperger’s syndrome can make simple conversations. When I have a specific subject I know something about, I can be clear and talk for hours on that subject. But a simple questions like, “Where are you going?” or “What are you doing?” locks me up and makes me confused. I find it hard for me to figure out how to put words together. When I think about the question, “Where are you going?” it is confusing in a number of dimensions. In the dimension of time, should I answer with right this second I’m going toward the kitchen to pick up my purse that I left there, or I’m going to go to the store? It is also ambiguous in relation to the specificity dimension, should I just say I’m going to the store or I’m going to Safeway or I’m going to the Rivermark Safeway? Should I also include why I’m going there? Sometimes I don’t have a specific plan. So I have to compile the whole plan in my head before I can sort through it to pick out the specific information asked for. I feel very pressured it can take three or 4 seconds to figure this all out and I can feel as that time is passing the pressured answer the question in the proper rhythm for the conversation

Starting a conversation with a specific bit of information I want to convey can be just as hard in its own way.  It was a hard-learned lesson that I couldn’t just come up to somebody and start talking about whatever I want, that I need to pay attention to their mood, their concerns, and the social appropriateness of the moment. But the lesson just bit deeper for all its difficulty. Though I know now that I have to wait for an opening to introduce my subject, I am still not very good at spotting an appropriate opportunity. Often by the time I evaluate a moment consider all the angles and decided it is appropriate, the conversation has already moved on. Sometimes it helps to plan a specific trigger situation and plan specifically what I’m going to say. But then I can get so caught up in concocting an appropriate plan that I never get it correct to actually carry it out.

Catching the Ball

I was down in Southern California this weekend visiting relatives. With travel and new places and new people I was really noticing my asperger’s syndrome a lot. At home my coping mechanisms are so routine and so practiced I don’t really have to think about them. But traveling I was very aware of all the things I was struggling with. One thing I noticed was how poor my physical coordination was under these circumstances. I literally did worse in a game of catch then a 4 year old. I think the base problem is a vision one. But not of perceiving  is there at any one time. If I have my glasses on then, as long as something stays still and I focus on it for a second, I can see it fine.  Of course most people can see things better when they look at them paused. But I seem to have a harder time using short cuts to get usable information out of a generalized glance or a moving object.

When I look at an array of objects, say things on a desk, I’ll look at each object individually, a box, a pen, post-its. But until I’ve looked at everything and have it all absorbed, I can give a generalized statement like there is no pencil. To do that I’ll have to look at each object and identify it enough to know it is not a pencil. If I know specifically what I’m looking, say a long yellow no. 2 school pencil, for I’ll be able to eliminate some things quickly, wrong color, wrong general shape. But if I could be looking for any pencil from slick mechanical to a worn down stub I’ll have to pretty much identify every object on the table in order to eliminate the possibility of a pencil. If someone moves one of the objects on a desk I feel like I have to re-identify not only the object that moved but also every other object on the desk, especially those around either it’s new or old position, before I once again feel like I’ve seen the desk. (This means I have a strong disinclination to move things around more than necessary.)

Moving objects are even worse. If I let myself truly mindfully look at them, I start the identification process but then objected has moved and I click over and start the identification process from the beginning, over and over again without every really absorbing the object I’m focused on. The background gives the impression of flipping between a zoom lens coming towards focus and away from focus without even having a stop on in focus. The whole thing is very nausea making.

Most of the time, especially in places I’m habituated to, I can manage to withdraw just enough attention that the identification process never fully engages and I can get my mind to accept using what I saw last second to take the place of fully absorbing what I see this second. This works best when the motion is slow or relatively far away so that less of my visual field is involved in the motion. Things that make it harder include watching something coming close to touching something else, as that makes the motion more attention grabbing, and also watching my own body move as that too tends to focus too much attention of the movement. I have a habit of putting something down on the counter by looking at the counter while I begin the motion and then looking away set-down. This cuts down on the queasy making visuals but can also lead to occasional spills.

Of course flinching my eyes closed at the sight of my hand reaching for a flying ball was pretty disastrous. Luckily the kids didn’t seem to mind that my only ‘adult’ like contribution to the games was things like saying that in a room with breakable object the ball should only rolled, not thrown. Even though I’ve come so far, all through the trip I was very aware of how my capabilities were more like the kids then like the adults.