Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

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> And if so… by how much? Similarly in autistic-autistic pairings how much eye contact is required for autistic people to communicate well with each other?

As a neurotypical person, this is actually pretty interesting to me as well. I live in the US and here we are always taught to make eye contact when speaking to someone, as it shows as sign that you are "engaged" with that person. It's something so ingrained in you from a young age here that you start to think that this is how all humans should communicate.

Neurodivergent people just tend to ignore those social constructs, makes me wonder if we as neurotypical people play all these social games and a neurodivergent person just looks at all that as window dressing that isn't required.

> Neurodivergent people just tend to ignore those social constructs, makes me wonder if we as neurotypical people play all these social games and a neurodivergent person just looks at all that as window dressing that isn't required.

I can only speak for my own view, which is that I find making eye contact uncomfortable, and I find that when I do make eye contact it seems like I must be “doing it wrong” because it seems to make others uncomfortable too. Granted I may be reading others’ reactions wrong, the possibility of which contributes to my own discomfort!

> a neurodivergent person just looks at all that as window dressing that isn't required.

This seems like a hypothesis that we could test. For instance, by rationally explaining the practical utility of eye contact, to detect earnestness or deception. Then ask them to attempt this, and see if they can bring themselves to even try. My guess is most neurodivergents who avoid eye contact will find that eye contact remains too uncomfortable to even attempt it. This would show that their eye contact avoidance is not merely a matter of them not seeing any utility in a pointless social game.

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