Reading the Research: Reading Emotions

Welcome back to Reading the Research! I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects to share with you. Along the way I discuss the findings with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today’s article (full version here) points out a possible fundamental difference between autistic and neurotypical people. Essentially, they had people, autistic and neurotypical, identify emotions on animated .gif-like images. Autistic people weren’t as accurate about reading emotions, especially anger.

A (Neuro)Typical Misunderstanding

Now, typically when something like this is identified, the majority look around at everyone and says, “Well, I get this, and you get this, it’s just these people that don’t get this. Therefore something must be wrong with them.” So props to Connor Keating of University of Birmingham, because instead of that very old ableist song and dance, he suggested that autistic people may simply use our facial expressions differently.

And if that’s the case, then it’s really less “autistic people are bad at reading emotions” and more “autistic people are just different.” It becomes another point in which neurotypical and autistic people must learn to support each other. This is much preferable to yet another one-sided “autistic people just have to be like us” conclusion.

I can actually personally verify Keating’s idea. At some point between “I’m kind of upset” and “I’m about to melt down” my face stops expressing emotions. My spouse has read this as “calm, everything must be okay” in the past. He’s making efforts to recognize that’s not accurate, but it’s hard for him.

Alexithymia and Graphing Emotions

Mixing in alexithymia just makes things harder. We learn our words for emotions from our parents and peers. There’s nothing innate about it. Autistic people can have a really hard time putting words to emotions, especially since we often feel things very strongly. What the science is telling us now is that emotions are actually graphable. You have a spectrum of wound up <–> calm, and a spectrum of good <—> bad. That’s all there is to it.

Anger graphs to wound up-bad, for example. Sadness graphs to calm-bad. The tricky one for me is anxiety versus excitement. The only difference is how you feel about the situation. Physiologically, they’re exactly the same: wound-up. I’m prone to seeing the worst in things, so I experience a lot of anxiety. But perhaps I could experience excitement more, if I worked on it a lot.

Regardless, I’m really glad to see research like this. Researchers like Keating give me hope that one day neurotypical and neurodiverse will find it much easier to communicate. Perhaps it will never be easy, but research like this can turn into guides and training, which in turn can become public knowledge. And with that knowledge, a better tomorrow for all of us.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter! There are links and comments on studies that were interesting, but didn’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)