Mouth or Eyes: How do you look at someone’s face?
July 15, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Some aspects of autism do run in families, according to a new study about how parents of autistic children process facial expressions. As noted in today’s Science Daily, neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs of the California Institute of Technology and psychiatrist Joe Piven at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied 42 parents of autistic children and found that some of the parents evaluated facial expressions in ways similar to autistic individuals. 15 of the parents were classified as “aloof”—not preferring interactions with others or having “few close friendships involving sharing and mutual support”— according to psychological testing.
The parents participated in an experiment that measured how they make use of the face to judge emotions. The subjects were shown images depicting facial expressions of emotion that were digitally filtered so that only certain regions of the face were discernible–the left eye, for example, or the mouth. The subjects were then asked to decide as quickly as possible if the emotion depicted was “happy” or “fear.” The part of the face shown, and the size of the revealed area, randomly varied from trial to trial.
An analysis of the subjects’ correct responses revealed that “aloof” parents relied much more heavily on the mouth to recognize emotion than they did on the eyes, as compared to nonaloof parents and, to a greater extent, to a group of parents of children without autism. Prior studies by Adolphs and his colleagues have shown that humans normally evaluate emotions by looking at the eyes–but studies by Adolphs and Piven have shown that individuals with autism do not.
“We found that some parents who have a child with autism process face information in a subtly, but clearly different way from other parents,” says Adolphs. “This is evidence for the hypothesis that the parents with the autistic child have brains that function somewhat differently as well”–an idea that he and other researchers are currently investigating through brain imaging studies. One area of interest is the amygdala, a region located on either side of the brain in the medial temporal lobe that is known to process information about facial emotions and may have abnormal volume in both autistic individuals and their nonautistic siblings.
Researchers suggest that the study (which is published in Current Biology) may lead to research about genes that are responsible for face-processing.
I am pretty sure I look at people’s eyes—now I will be very conscious of this.
The Dadster…never…ever…looks people in the eyes. (Drives most people nuts, who start looking in the direction he is.)
I think I tend to do both fairly equally. I pick up mot of my cues from the eyes first, I think, but looking at someone’s eyes for more than a few seconds makes me uncomfortable and I lose my train of thought.
I have long been aware of how much effort it takes for me to maintain eye contact with a person. I prefer looking at mouths. Haven’t yet thought about which I’m using when judging emotions.
Eye contact is difficult for me because I feel like *I’m* being too intense. I look at mouths or over shoulders or off to the side. Unless I’m mad about something…then eye contact is just fine.
I claim the fifth!
Cheers
I’m feeling the odd one out!!!—thinking it over, I definitely look at the eyes (esp. when I’m makin sure students are paying attention, or a motorist is about to make a turn and I want to make sure he or she sees me, and Charlie)….
Mouths are so much more expressive; the musculature just simply permits a wider range of expression. I’ve never really understood why most people look at eyes for nonverbal cues. That said, I pay much more attention to mouths for another reason: because I do a fair amount of lip-reading to augment my hearing. I’m stone deaf in my left ear, due to encephalitis contracted as a complication of the mumps when I was 8 (back in 1964 before the mumps vaccine). It destroyed the auditory and vestibular nerves on my left side.
I also have trouble maintaining eye contact when I am struggling to put words together into real-time speech. That struggle happens for me on the occasions when I am trying to translate a concept I happen to represent nonverbally internally into words. (I represent many concepts verbally, or in an easily-describable (”linear”) nonverbal representation, but some concepts I represent nonverbally in (”nonlinear”) ways that are more challenging to properly translate into words without loss of context and associations.) In any case, maintaining eye contact takes mental bandwidth — bandwidth that I sometimes don’t have to spare when attempting to serialize a complicated concept into linear language.
This is interesting to me. I mostly look at mouth, or across the wild blue yonder.. only occasionally looking people (mostly only adults) in the eye so they know I’m still attending to them. When I am giving direction to children (I’m a preschool teacher) I tend to make eye contact, but that’s easier for me than adults.
Neither…how about walls and shoulders and hands? I sometimes look at the mouth, though, but so much more body language can be obtained through looking at the way a person holds themselves, what speeds they move and with what hesitation, subtle turns of their head…lots of stuff that’s hard to articulate. I can look at eyes and figure out what’s likely to be the emotion (I took a test that said I did slightly better than average at this, with discerning four different emotions).
Incidentally, I can look to the side of a person’s head, looking beyond them, and get a better idea of the overall appearance of a person’s eyes and forehead. If I look too closely, then I miss the overall and get overwhelmed by all those eyes. It’s surprising how much information you can get about intent just from looking at where the eyes get directed. Of course, this is how I read non-autistics. For autistics, I have to alter my approach a bit, go for subtler cues.
Years ago after my kids were diagnosed, their father and I took part in a “shadow autism” study with Peter Szatmari (I don’t think that it went anywhere, or at least I’ve never seen any results from it). One of the main things that they were concentrating on was parental observation of faces and moods, and how that influenced social interaction.
I tend to concentrate almost exclusively on people’s mouths as I’ve been pretty much deaf for the past 20 years, so lip-reading is my how I understand people. Interestingly enough though, the kids’ father also tended to concentrate more on mouths than eyes. It’s great to see a study on this- even though my children’s father and I apparently “test out” as completely non-autistic, both of us can see things in ourselves which are reflections of some of the ways in which our children relate to the world.
I have to make myself look someone in the eyes. So, their lack of direct eye contact… doesn’t bother me. They come by those quirky gene’s honestly, add in some problems during pregnancy and delivery….
S.
Very interesting. Especially if you adopted your child.
I tend to look at the mouth and the eyes. I do know I have a very difficult time talking on the telephone. I rely a lot on ones expressions when communicating. It also about sends me over the edge when I have to communicate with someone for a long time if they are wearing sun glasses. I find that difficult and it makes me nervous.
I know I see M who you know is Autistic looking at my mouth a lot. She is also very sensitive to any little expression I make, assuming it is always about her. She too is very reliant on expressions and picks up on even the mores subtle ones that are nont meant for her, then takes them personally.
I have always had a great aversion to looking into people’s eyes, although with people I know well, it is easier. But I’ve trained myself to look at the bridge of noses, so that people won’t notice.
I also don’t try to make my son look at eyes, at least at this stage in his life (he’s 8). When he is older, I can teach him some tricks about “faking normal” if necessary.
Here’s another something that adds to the extraordinary things parents of autistic people have in common. Is it the way they hold their heads, how much television they (or their autistic kids) have watched, how much rainfall they have in their home States, or is it simply how ready they have been for their kids to be vaccinated?
It is truly remarkable how a willingness to allow your kids to be vaccinated seems to bring with it an amazing range of other side issues that give researchers (paid 80% by Pharma companies) the scope to scratch around and come up with loopy ideas.
It is not science, its arithmetic where are the autistic kids in the unvaccinated population? There are none in the UK, why can’t someone put me out of my misery and tell me there is definitely one in the USA. Or more? Speak up!
Tony Bateson
I know some. So, there is definitely more than one in the USA.
And apparently, there have been a few found wandering around in Denmark:
“One of the best studies was performed by Madsen and colleagues in Denmark between 1991 and 1998 and reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study included 537,303 children representing 2,129,864 person-years of study. Approximately 82 percent of children had received the MMR vaccine. The group of children was selected from the Danish Civil Registration System, vaccination status was obtained from the Danish National Board of Health, and children with autism were identified from the Danish Central Register. The risk of autism in the group of vaccinated children was the same as that in unvaccinated children. Furthermore, there was no association between the age at the time of vaccination, the time since vaccination, or the date of vaccination and the development of autism.”
According to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, there are at least 10 studies with similar findings. Even Generation Rescue, which is quite proud of its work, must confirm that it happens: They report a survey of theirs (telephone survey in Oregon and CA) in which they find that vaccinated children were significantly more likely to have a neurological disorder. What they don’t say but must be implied in their results is that they did, in fact, identify unvaccinated children with the neurological disorders they investigated, which included autism. Actually, in their results, vaccinated boys were 61% more likely to have autism but 224% more likely to have ADHD, so I’m surprised people aren’t rattling the cages about how vaccines cause ADHD. Note that there were 17,674 children inventoried, and only 991 were “completely unvaccinated.” There are some problematic issues with their study, but anyway…even they must admit that they found some unvaccinated children with autism.
“even they must admit that they found some unvaccinated children with autism”
Unvaccinated children as well as vaccinated children are exposed to environmental toxins.
Genetics, environment, and vaccines alone have not been scientifically proven to cause a majority of ASD diagnosis. What combination of them will?
Chuck, of course they are exposed to things. But the question at hand was whether or not there are any children who have not been vaccinated but who have autism, and the answer is, “Yes.” Yes. Yes.
I’m assuming that we’ll have to go to Mars and find a child with autism there who’s never been exposed to anything except the natural Mars environment before anyone will believe that it’s not necessarily something that evil people–doctors, scientists, CDC employees, the UN, the drug companies–have done, deliberately or otherwise, to cause autism. Or, we could do the right thing and focus on real research in real models with environmentally relevant exposures to whatever seems likely with examinations at the genetic and mechanistic level and really get some answers, but…oh, wait, let’s just poison children with DMSA instead.
Hi Emily –
“Or, we could do the right thing and focus on real research in real models with environmentally relevant exposures to whatever seems likely with examinations at the genetic and mechanistic level and really get some answers, but…oh, wait, let’s just poison children with DMSA instead.”
I am geniunely curious as towards which environmentally relevant exposures you think merit research resources. Likewise, I am interested if you have specifics on a mechanistic level you think would be worthwhile for analysis.
FYI – The Madsen studies in Denmark suffer from notoriously poor methodology; and were studying only MRI and thimerosal, as opposed to vaccinated vs. unvaccinated status. The fact that they are frequently classified as ‘among the best studies performed’ is what has me so skeptical.
This is not meant in any way to say that I don’t believe in unvaccinated children with autism; of course they exist. What we have no way of knowing is if they exist at different rates than their vaccinated peers.
- pD
pD, when they identify polymorphisms, etc., that occur at a higher rate in an autistic population than in a non-autistic population, that provides just one opportunity for mechanistic studies. There are pretty well-trodden paths to follow to pursue these. And there are pretty well-trodden tox paths to follow to pursue candidate environmental agents in the context of these mechanisms. But as long as we keep throwing anecdotes at the wall to see what sticks, we won’t be plodding down those paths, or at least not as quickly.
Environmental relevance is determined by what exposures levels and exposure routes are. There’s no point in widespread testing of the effects of living immersed in seawater 24-7 if no one actually does that. Doing research on that question would be irrelevant. But using actually occuring exposures and exposure routes would be relevant…if done in the mechanistic context, or hell, even in a good model of autism without the mechanism in hand.
I read this last nite. Behind in reading here, but busy with my new blog and wanted to share
http://autismfamiily.blogspot.com/2008/07/announcing-virtual-cat.html
Did you ever find that post I did from NJ blogger? I got it from twitter and might have saved it, but think I posted it here, will do a google search for it.
I like how the blogs get comments since I dont get them at BellaOnline so wanted to be more in the mix and have discussions, etc.
FYI – I just posted link and not here so must be in moderation. It was to my new blog and I am trying to spread the word on it. Looking for feedback and a place for comments since BellaOnline does not have that. Expanding my base in the autism community, or something like that.
Hi Emily -
when they identify polymorphisms, etc., that occur at a higher rate in an autistic population than in a non-autistic population, that provides just one opportunity for mechanistic studies. There are pretty well-trodden paths to follow to pursue these. And there are pretty well-trodden tox paths to follow to pursue candidate environmental agents in the context of these mechanisms.
Hm. But do you have any specific notions on what should be pursued; i.e,. which agents, the particular biological results of a specific polymorphism that we may want to look for alternative mechanisms of achieving? Or is your idea more along the line of looking for agents that might cause the polymorphisms associated with autism? (My head hurts trying to figure out how that might work).
While there is, of course, problems with annectodes; at this point, I’m not sure if we understand enough about the disparate physiological findings in autism to know where to start looking if we exclude what has been observed. There seem to be so many things gone haywire inside these children, and great difficulty teasing out which one(s) are the ’cause’ of autism versus which ones are the results of of having autism.
I sort of thought you had some details in mind; i.e. we know mutation X is associated with autism and eventually results in calcium influx problems in neurons that should correspond with altered brain structure, now lets look for agents that also result in calcium influx problems in neurons. [and that list of agents contain. . .]
Environmental relevance is determined by what exposures levels and exposure routes are. There’s no point in widespread testing of the effects of living immersed in seawater 24-7 if no one actually does that. But using actually occuring exposures and exposure routes would be relevant. . .
Agreed, but I again, I thought you might have some specific agents, or even classes of agents in mind.
Your statement, it turns out, is a perfect argument of the often not understood problems with existing vaccine studies; which involve only presence or absence of a specific preservative, or the presence or absence of a single stimulated immune challenge from a series of challenges. They do not, in fact, test the environment everyone is exposed to.
Thanks!
- pD
Mouth, eyes–>vaccines.
Okey-dokey.
I tried to be a better observer, of this behavior and I tend to, when within close speaking distance, to flit between mouth and eyes. From this end, continuous eye contact feels too *volitional*, but on standing further back the focus is more on the eyes of the listener.
Data point of one.
Mouth, eyes–>vaccines.
Fair assessment and sorry. No more from me on this thread. [but I didn't start it!]
Though I work with computers all day, it’s eyes for me when folks are around.
- pD
pD, yes, I have specifics in mind, as do plenty of other people who do real research in this field.
Your criticism of vaccine studies is a standing critcism of all toxicology studies. It’s nothing new, and anyone who has actually done toxicological research knows that replicating the “environment” is not possible. I didn’t say we should replicate the environment, I said we should use environmentally relevant exposures and exposure routes, and those are two different beasts.
I generally don’t get into deeper-level science discussions with people who don’t have the background because it leads to miscomprehension and digressions that I find tedious. I especially don’t like to do it online. Sorry.
Also, sorry if that “sounded” rude; there’s a reason I give birth to children on the spectrum.
Emily -
generally don’t get into deeper-level science discussions with people who don’t have the background because it leads to miscomprehension and digressions that I find tedious. I especially don’t like to do it online. Sorry.
Hehehe. No apologies necessary.
(my curiosity is geniune, btw)
OK!
- pD
pD, I believe you, and I’m sorry if that comes across as rude. It’s just not the best interface for “teaching,” you know?
ok. if you get amanda peet and jenny mccarthy in the same room to talk about the V-word, will they look at each others’ mouths or eyes.
I honestly have trouble looking at both eyes on a face I’m not very familiar with at the same time. I’ll focus on one eye or the other, or the mouth or somewhere else. But trying to watch an entire face at once throws me quite a lot. I think the most common incident where I use eyes for non verbal communication is that silent pact between the distracted driver and the invisible bicyclist that the cyclist won’t be killed while crossing the street. Such agreements are so unstable that only the sacred pact of eye contact can ensure fulfillment.
Otherwise I tend to avoid eye contact altogether, especially with people I haven’t met before.
“Environmental relevance is determined by what exposures levels and exposure routes are. There’s no point in widespread testing of the effects of living immersed in seawater 24-7 if no one actually does that. But using actually occuring exposures and exposure routes would be relevant”.
Not necessarily. Genetic susceptabilty plays an important role in gene-environment interactions that result in increased susceptabilty or resistance to disease after an exposure.
Microdeletions in the gene CCL31 have been found to increase susceptability to HIV after an exposure.
http://www.phgfoundation.org/news/861/
There is no sharp line where all individuals exposed to an equivelant amount of an environmental pthogen will all be effected or where no one will be effected..
RAJ, once again, your point seems to be in a different country from my point. All I can say to what you’ve posted is (1) Duh, and (2) nothing I said would be counter to that.
MY further comments seemed to have got lost in the fog of words. I say again there are no unvaccinated autistic kids. Please tell me if you know of any we can invite their parents input into this debate. But don’t tell me about Madsen nonsense. Madsen herself is related to an established figure in vaccination and the Danish Institute involved in this research makes and sells vaccines for export, at that time 80% of its profits coming from DTP type vaccines, please.
Just speak to me if you are a parent with an unvaccinated autistic child or get someone else to speak to me if you wish to remain anonymous.
Tony Bateson
And now the whole study has been turned into Parents of Autistic Children Are Often Aloof Themselves—-and that word keeps reappearing.
@Tony Bateson, while the comment thread wandered into issues besides the study, there are plenty of other posts here on which to discuss vaccines. Very best.
I can’t handle eyes, unless they are of someone I am very close to (this limits me to my girlfriend, two best friends, and parents). I find the experience too intimate-feeling, and very intense. Photos of eyes don’t do it to me (I have a mild heterochromia and enjoy learning about it, which involves a lot of photos of eyes), but being in person and having to maintain eye contact is difficult. I tend to look at one eye alone, or ears, or mouths. Hands, too, sometimes.