Home » Health & Wellness » Autistic Behaviour » Peripheral Perception in Autism: What is more important - eye contact or understanding?

Peripheral Perception in Autism: What is more important - eye contact or understanding?

© Olga Bogdashina

"Alex, John and Vicky 'hear better' (i.e. react to the instructions) if the instructions are 'addressed to the wall'. Alex and Helen often use their peripheral vision and seem to see what is going on without directly looking at it. Alex cannot tolerate when someone is looking at him directly and makes them turn away ("Don't look!" "Turn away!). He even complains if the cat is looking at him." (From Teacher's Diary)

One of the characteristics of autism is avoidance of eye contact. It is an example of peripheral perception, as it turns out that avoidance of direct perception is not restricted only to vision but also includes other sensory systems.

One of the theories to account for this feature is that people with autism use peripheral vision because their central vision is hypo while their peripheral vision is hyper. However, autistic individuals claim that often they do not use their direct/central perception because "it hurts", i.e. it is hyper. They describe eye contact as uncomfortable, overwhelming and even painful, which makes them more nervous, tense, and scared. (Though sometimes the problems autistic people have with making eye contact may be nothing more than intolerance for the movement of the other person's eyes.)

Direct perception in autism is often hyper. It can cause sensory overload resulted in switching to 'mono'. They actually hear (= understand) you better when they are not looking at you!

Perceiving sounds, visual stimuli, etc. directly and consciously may often result in fragmentation: the person can interpret the part but lose the whole, and incoming information is interpreted piece by piece. Donna Williams explains that when taking things indirectly, peripherally, the fragmentation does not happen; things are more cohesive, they retain context, whereas the mind-jolting senses of direct vision and direct hearing can not be consistently relied on as meaningful primary senses (Williams, 1998).

Some autistic people seem to be hypersensitive when they are approached directly by other people. For some, if they are looked directly, they may feel it as 'a touch' - sort of 'distance touching' with actual tactile experience.

Autistic children often seem to look past things and are completely 'absent' from the scene. However, it could be their attempt to avoid experiencing a visual/auditory stimuli directly. This strategy gives them the ability to take in sensory information with meaning. Avoidance of direct perception for them is another involuntary adaptation that helps them to survive in a sensory distorted world by avoiding (or, at least, decreasing) information overload.

The copyright of the article Peripheral Perception in Autism: What is more important - eye contact or understanding? in Autistic Behaviour is owned by . Permission to republish Peripheral Perception in Autism: What is more important - eye contact or understanding? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.