Peripheral vision in some people on the autism spectrum.
I went for an updated eye test at the opticians today and had a most interesting discussion.
I have a sight problem - long sightedness and slight astigmatism and a visual perceptual issue - Scotopic Sensitivity. The first means I need glasses to see what’s close up. The second means that many kinds of lighting make it hard for me to read, concentrate, look at faces or cope in lit up places full of movement or crowds. I have a prescription lens for the first, tinted lenses for the second.
But more than this there are some mysteries.
I have an acute sense of color. I see rainbows in a piece of ice, some colors and lights have sent me into manic and euphoric episodes and giggle fits, I have a synethesia thing where color and touch are crossed.
I also have a 2-3 second delay in processing the MEANING of what I see, a kind of ‘functional visual agnosia‘ and am largely face blind (prosopagnosia).
I also have exceptional peripheral vision. At my lectures I’m known for looking about 40-80 degrees away from my audience members and describing and mirroring the gross and fine motor actions of those in my audience.
This usually takes audience members aback but I use it to demonstrate how many people with autism use peripheral vision to watch people and some even read or type this way.
It’s also a way that I find I can process the part in the context of the whole but when looking directly, especially without tinted lenses, I see in a far less cohesive way.
So I asked the optician if he knew why this was.
I got the most amazing reply.
I found out that my peripheral vision didn’t just surprise my audience but its very very rare in most people. This may shed some interesting light on visual perceptual differences in people on the autistic spectrum.
The optician explained that this degree of visual acuity with extreme peripheral vision is usually not possible because the majority of receptors called ‘cones’ are packed in the central part of the eye.
Interestingly, these cones are also what perceives color.
I asked him whether one might have so MANY of these that it makes one perceive color so much more than others might.
He felt that would be so.
I asked whether one might have so many of these ‘cones’ in the centre of the eye that one saw far more detail, even to the degree that it slowed down the processing of each detail in the context of the next, so that one effectively had a visual processing delay, a ‘functional visual agnosia‘.
He agreed it was possible.
I asked if it were possible that by using the peripheral vision as I do, could I be reducing the use of an overabundance of these cones in the central part of the eye and, by doing this, experience something closer to what other people normally experience when looking directly? That, in other words, by possibly using fewer of my far more, even dysfunctionally too abundant cones, I manage to perceive things better as a whole and process it more quickly for visual meaning.
He agreed that theoretically this was indeed possible.
So if some people with autism who have avoid eye contact because faces appear meaningless fragmented, bunches of detail with no cohesion unless looking peripherally, what are we doing when we force them to ‘learn eye contact’?
If those who have this type better when using peripheral vision because they better see and recognise the letters on a WHOLE keyboard, what are we saying when we presume incompetence based on their use of peripheral vision?
If those who are so overwhelmed by dysfunctional visual perception due to seeing too much that they can’t process what they see and then struggle to learn language as sighted people do, what does this mean for presumptions of intelligence based on language aquisition?
What if Scotopic Sensitivity is merely a label and the real issue may be something more than a hypersensitivity to light frequencies? How much differently might we assist those on the autistic spectrum with visual perceptual differences beyond the effective use of tinted lenses?
I wrote in depth of these perceptual issues in Like Colour To The Blind, Autism An Inside Out Approach and The Jumbled Jigsaw. But perhaps this simple article will find its way to the researchers who can find out whether some of the visual perceptual issues of people with autism are not only associated with gut/immune/toxicity challenges and inherited light sensitivity but with an excess of receptors in the eye with very far reaching effects on interaction and development.
… Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons.
http://www.donnawilliams.net
autistic consultant and author of 9 books in the field of autism.
During my interview with Sanjay Gupta, he was asking me why I hadn’t looked at him the entire time I’d been in there. I tried to explain that first off, eye contact would be totally overwhelming and make it impossible to understand what he was saying, and second off, I had in fact been looking at him a good deal of the time, and that if I pointed my face at the lights (the ones being used to light the room for the camera) that was more than enough to see him perfectly well. Now I know why he was surprised at that, I guess.
Hopefully, this article will help those with this issue to be better understood.
I still don’t look directly as much as most people.
I’ve trained myself to do so, almost exclusively for the benefit of others feeling more comfortable and less uncertain that I’m listening, but I still generally look away when wanted to understand what people are saying.
With a language processing disorder as well, I benefit from the visual demonstration of verbal language - ie gestural signing and the use of representational objects (like in the Blah Blah Blah DVD) but watching faces directly gives me very little meaning and unnecessarily takes away a lot of processing.
thing is, if we had a lack of peripheral vision they’d understand it. But as far as I know there’s no literature on those with an abundance of it due to the detrimental PROCESSING impact of excessive receptors when looking directly.
Is Sanjay Gupta is the immune specialist (Dr Gupta) who found that 20% of people with autism had insufficient secretory IgA to fight bugs and that 10% (like me before treatment) had no secretory IgA ? I wrote about his immune related findings in Everyday Heaven and in The Jumbled Jigsaw. His work helped me a lot.
Donna *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net
I think Sanjay Gupta is a neurosurgeon, he’s the guy who interviewed me for CNN.
There’s a lot I get out of body language, but it’s not usually the body language people expect me to see (it’s other stuff), and it’s often the whole pattern of movements among and between people in an entire room. But not when I’m looking at them directly.
Forgive me if I’m asking too much, but I’m trying to comprehend the “Visual oveload” that an autistic person might feel looking at another person’s face. Does it feel like a lot of pieces put together, but they don’t fit together somehow? Like a nose, and eye, another eye, but somehow they have nothing to do with each other? How could I illustrate that visually so I could explain everybody else the feeling an autistic person might have?
Thank you for time.
Dario
The experience is best described in the book, Like Colour To The Blind. In art the closest thing too it I ever saw were the nature works of Klimt.
Your visit to the optician revealed so much. Can you give any suggestions for finding vision specialists, particularly for people who don’t use speech.
sheri
Hi Sheridan,
First thing is to find an optician who is ALSO an Opthamologist.
The optician only looks at sight, which is the eyes
the opthamologist looks at vision which is how the brain works with what the eyes see.
So some opticians are also opthamologists, others are not (its an extra qualification).
Also if the person without functional speech types, get the opthamologists email address and they can start there, make sure to take something for typed communication to the appointment.
If you haven’t explored this look at DEAL communication centre in Caulfield
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~dealcc/
It’s a free service.
If typing isn’t possible, then ask them if they have experience working with people without functional speech. If they say yes, then if you’re asking about someone with autism then ask if they can navigate the behavioural language of autistic systems.
I have written about the ‘language of behaviour’ in The Jumbled Jigsaw and in Autism; An Inside Out Approach, and the language of behaviour of those who work by sensing is in Autism and Sensing; The Unlost Instinct, and the language of behaviour of those with Exposure Anxiety is in Exposure Anxiety; The Invisible Cage. So you might want to help find passages that explain this person’s systems and send them some preliminary info.
Good luck.
I work with many autistic children as an occupational therapist in the schools. This is very interesting, as I recently worked with an autistic child who kept staring above and to the side of me. I was new to him, and it seemed he kept “staring” at me, but he was actually staring above me. It seemed as thought, he was actually looking at me, even though he wasn’t. This makes sense after reading what you said. I would, however have to question the “excess cones” theory, this is because autism is a brain disorder. It would be more likely in my mind to be related to the processing of what is actually entering a normal eye. I can’t imagine why a person with autism would have a different eye. I will now have to see this “eye contact” thing from a new perspective. Thanks,
Ah now that’s a very interesting point.
However……..
Those with autism who are also deaf often appear less ‘autistic’ once the deafness is addressed. Same as those with autism who also have a mood, anxiety or compulsive disorder. Address those and the autism usually appears less. Those with autism who have actual visual impairments can appear more autistic than when those are addressed. Those with gut and immune disorders and autism generally appear less autistic once those are treated and managed.
So we need to realise that autism may be a brain thing but that that brain doesn’t function alone. If the gut or senses are challenged in some way, the brain differences may be accentuated or ‘autistic’ behaviours more obvious. Even sensory deprivations until addressed can result in autistic behaviours.
So I think we need to be cafeful not to be too narrow in how we understand INTERACTIONS between conditions which EXACCERBATE the PRESENTATIONS of what we deem ‘autistic behaviours’ or ‘autistic development’. Whilst it has been shown that much of what reveals itself as autism is brain difference, this has never been shown to be the WHOLE picture for any and all, no matter which ‘team’ proclaims it as such.
If it were purely about the brain then autism wouldn’t surprise us with such unusual avenues of potential being opened up for some who were previously so much more challenged. For example, the role of typing, pets, sports and arts for some people with autism which has dramatically opened up their worlds.
People are surprisingly and wonderfully multifaceted, more than they often know and certainly more than those who study their conditions would often assume.
I hope they always surprise us.
You know, it is possible to test the ‘too many cones’ hypothesis. First, an indirect way of testing it is to have your optometrist measure your contrast sensitivity function at different peripheral locations to see if you are able to see finer patterns peripherally than would be allowed if you had normal cone spacing. If you do really have much finer peripheral acuity than normal people, there are researchers that can take pictures of the individual cones in your retina and let you know if there are more there than usual. They have to use really fancy optical systems so your optometrist will not have the special kind of camera you need to do that.
Interesting. I have a slightly elevated acuity of color perception (not as sharp as yours, but not completely “ordinary” either), but without this peripheral thing. And I’m -10 short-sighted. (In fact, my peripheral vision is mostly blocked out by the rim of my glasses, so maybe that’s why I can’t use it.) My boss (aspie as well) says that she was tested once for the color thing and could tell 2x times more colors from each other than the average person, but no periphery thing or visual stimuation causing euphoria. And we both avoid eye contact because it sends the THREAT signal to our instict-brains.
People often say I don’t pay attention to films or my surroundings. In fact, I mostly *listen* to the world and touch it, I just don’t use my sight much. I don’t know why, but my visual memory is also not so good. (Except for written text, to the degree of hyperlexia. Pretty weird.)
I’d really like to ask Donna (or anyone elsy who might know), if it’s likely that a child I teach 8 years old) is using periphery vision and how I might help him use his vision to his best advantage. In the two years I’ve had him in my class he seems to see and look more efficiently but I think not seeing things well close up results in his often extreme avoidance of things presented to him. He loved to flap in front of his face and still likes to move things near his eyes. yellow is by far his prefered colour. he rushes from place to place and likes to be at the edge of events rather than in a group or circle, often by a wall or in a corner. He loves outdoors, especially being up high. With only a few spoken, (usually echoed) words and an obvious sensitivity to certain textures (we do a lot of deep pressure and sensory integration stuff) there are a lot of things he doesn’t understand and gets upset by. looking at pictures / books etc seems to mean nothing to him. Any idea how I can help, give more meaningful activities, increase understanding and tolerance?
Hi Margaret,
I was the first autistic person to write of their usefulness to people with visual perceptual fragmentation which I associated with inability to filter incoming information and a product of information overload on the visual channel in those with autism. it HAPPENS that tinted lenses can sometimes reduce visual input to the brain, allowing more cohesive visual perception in SOME people with autism, of which I’m one. BPI (Florida) also do tinted lenses and stock an autism testing range for the same price as one pair of Irlen lenses.
I find that sideways looking also somehow filters visual info, allowing me wider processing of the whole, including context.
I also found that high salicylate levels increased my sensory flooding (ie inability to filter incoming info) which raised sensory perceptual fragmentation.
I also found that omega 3s improved my info processing as did glutamine (both are systemic antiinflammatories).
Just because these worked for me doesn’t mean it’ll apply to all with similar behaviours.
One cheap idea re tinted lenses is standard brown or grey sunglasses.
Also some kids with these issues love looking throuhg colored celophane.
Hope that’s useful.
You can find my writings on visual perceptual disorders in autism in
Like Colour To The Blind (not UK spelling of Colour)
Autism; An Inside Out Approach
The Jumbled Jigsaw
all of which are published by Jessica Kingsley Books
http://www.jkp.com
also also in my DVD
Battling With Books
and many articles on my site
http://www.donnawilliams.net
Hope that’s useful.
Donna *)
Thank you Donna. I have been a bit concerned for some time that salycilate (is that it) might be a factor, since I read or watched something of yours which i believe mentioned apples as a culprit. this little boy is pretty adicted to them and in a diet of toast, digestive biscuits and not much else, they have obviously seemed a healthy option, but I do wonder. he tends to be very ‘high’ and excitable, squealing and grabbing (very happily). i sahall have a talk to his Mum.
I definately need a copy of Like Colour to the Blind now. I own or have read most of your stuff and find it hugely helpful. Now I ‘ve discovered so much on this site, I will be a frequent visitor.
Thanks
sounds a lot like a sugar issue too…. white flour registers as simple carbs - sugar.
the digestives and white bread toast would physiologically be little different to giving him spoonfulls of sugar per day. Whilst this could well feed candida like crazy, cadida will also then crave more and more sugar ‘highs’.
at the same time the diminished gut function and leaky gut situation that could theoretically ensue would do little for brain or immune system health.
This is so useful. My daughter has visual tracking problems. This is continuing to be a real problem with learning at school,as she doesn’t seem to track from in front to then looking down. In fact she has a reluctance to look down at desk level. She has poor recognition of people in photos and also can’t handle the lighting in some shops.
Any suggestions?
I guess I’d say start with regular sunglasses, see if that makes things better. If she tends to be quite allergic and rather ADHD, you could check her salicylate levels (look up salicylate food list) then have a look at a 30 day trial of omega 3s and see if that helps her with visual processing. Also go to wikipedia and look up prosopagnosia… face blindness… i also write of it in other places on my blog and in my books which you can find on my site http://www.donnawilliams.net the most relevant of these books is probably Like Colour To The Blind. But also check out my art with her because face blindness is expressed a lot though that. but the fact she struggles with the lighting AND can’t recognise faces says that her face blindness may be underpinned by visual fragmentation issues. Not sure if this would be Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome as its also covered by other forms of visual agnosia… you can find info on agnosia on wikipedia… but I also have a clip about it on you tube… just go toyou tube and type in donna williams. most of all let her know that this is both a strength and a weakness and not to resent it or judge herself by it, but do find ways to make it work for her. All the best… Donna *)