I've posted things like this before, so please excuse if I seem to be going round in circles. I'm trying to understand the social communication issue, and using the discussion forum as a sounding board.
Does this make sense to others....... ?
Emoticons (smilies) are used to enhance text communications (email, on-line forums like this or chat rooms, mobile phone texting etc). They have come into being because people found pure text confusing, as they couldn't tell whether someone was joking, being sarcastic, being sad or happy.
In real life (as I understand it) facial expressions, voice inflexions and other non-verbal information qualify the purely spoken word to convey feelings or emotions.
Therefore my perception of autism, hence the need for corroboration, is that I don't have any of these natural emoticons, nor can I read them. I've never been able to generate the right facial expressions, and have often had it pointed out to me that my expression doesn't match what I'm saying. Nor it seems can I read them. I'm just relying on the spoken word.
Indeed it took me a long time to understand the need for emoticons in text, and I'm still bad at remembering to use them.
But I am wondering if a simpler way of defining autism, in respect of social communication, is "lack of real life emoticons" or lack of "natural" emoticons.
To take that a step further, consider the following:-
gaze aversion/eye contact. I used to avert, up to early twenties, but nowadays I seem to look at mouths. But is this simply about eye contact? Some people avert their gaze because they find this interface difficult, others perhaps through being criticised for doing eye contact wrongly. But is it simply about not getting information conveyed by the eyes?
Neutral facial expression. I had a constant doleful face up to mid-40s, then I learned to substitute smiling inanely all the time, really practised it, having found it works most of the time. But is that because I don't know how to generate the right facial expression to enhance what I'm saying? And does that mean I'm not reading other's facial expression correctly, or maybe not seeing it?
Neutral speech/odd prosody. This is not just about visual cues but audio cues as well. Speech inflexion is part of the "emoticon" language, as things like sarcasm are conveyed in the way things are said (not just in the eyes). Is neutral speech (lack of or odd expression) just a response to being criticised for not doing things right? This could also be a factor in telephone conversations, where voice inflexion may be important in cuing when one speaker is wanting the other to speak next.
Is the real issue with autism that people cannot do, or read, the non-verbal cues. They have no real life emoticons.
Does this sound right to others?
