An article on the BBC website describes a small study that suggests a new direction for social skills training. Working with 13 adults with autism and 16 without, a group of researchers at the University of Durham in the UK assessed subjects' ability to identify emotion on the basis of movements. They also evaluated awareness of motion in general.
The performance of the autism group was significantly below that of the others in both tests, leading researchers to speculate that there may be serious differences between the ability to process visual information.This small study is just a starting place, but if its findings hold true in larger groups it may provide a very useful direction for therapy and direct instruction.They point to an area of the brain needed for the perception of motion called the superior temporal sulcus, and cite previous research which has found that this area responds differently in people with autism.
Luckily, people with autism are not unique in their need for instruction on how to read and transmit messages through movement -- and quite a few websites, books and videos already exist on the subject. In addition, videos such as those available from Model Me Kids, are designed specifically to teach kids and teens on the autism spectrum how to assess the meaning of stances, facial expressions, group movements, and more.
You know, the movement thing is interesting. I wonder where one would think body language mainly is? Facial or body? If some one is coming after my kid in an aggressive manner, and he doesn’t run away is a clear example but how about depth perception and clearly not seeing the potential danger of jumping? The two are very visual examples yet both are missed by my kid. My son can label pictures and TV all day long, and I’m not sure why that doesn’t happen if you’re standing right in front of him but he simply can not transfer it to real-life situations. That is the area of therapy I want to see, real life examples not on a video or computer. I think the difference between a video and real life is there is great unpredictability of what the person might do, where as on a video it’s not as threatening.