Topic - Autism’s Savvy Side
There’s a saying that when one sense isn’t working, other senses take over to compensate.
This might be true for adults with high functioning autism who were studied to determine if other senses could be tapped to enhance their social functioning.
It was learned that while they don’t take in sufficient information from facial expressions, they were able to recognize feelings and other personal traits from voices as well or better than those adults without autism.
This doesn’t mean those skills can be generalized to daily life, but it does suggest their difficulties may be primarily visual. In this case, therapies such as visual cognitive training may enhance their social skills.
Recruiting their stronger auditory understanding of emotions and pairing with visual input might give them greater social satisfaction.
