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Eye Contact
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Most people will think that you are not listening or you are lying or you are just plain rude if you do not demonstrate appropriate gaze. However, your child may not understand how to receive or send occular messages. The process of looking at someone makes him extremely uncomfortable and the experience may even be painful.
He may over load his sensory system if forced to activate multiple sensory pathways at the same time. My son says that he can either understand what I am saying or he can look at me, but he rarely can do both!
Gaze seems to increase when your child is more relaxed in a comfortable environment. Conversely, stress appears to interfere with gaze even more.
A study at the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin about eye contact found that the amygdala is over stimulated and the fusiform gyrus is under stimulated in autistic individuals when they made looked at facial images. The amygdala is the brain center where emotions are registered. The fusiform gyrus is the brain location where facial expression is interpreted. Therefore, this study shows that gaze may cause fear and anxiety, and that your child really does have difficulty understanding facial expressions.
An article by Jean-Paul Bovee , who is a man diagnosed with high functioning autism, expresses the view that we should not unilaterally force autistic individuals to look at the face of others during conversation.
Therefore, we should not insist on appropriate gaze, but we should still train our children with autism in social skills and communication skills.
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