this link, courtesy of reverancepavane :)

[maelorin]

newscientist reports

A DEVICE that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed.

they've called it an "emotional social intelligence prosthetic" device ...

One of the problems facing people with autism is an inability to pick up on social cues. Failure to notice that they are boring or confusing their listeners can be particularly damaging, says Rana El Kaliouby of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's sad because people then avoid having conversations with them."

the article is interesting, and also amusing. thanks reverancepavane :)

[the following rant bears no reflection on reverancepavane, or anyone else i know. this article just pushed some buttons, 'tis all. thought i'd share some of my thoughts and feelings]

but then again, this has reminded me about one thing that really, really irritates me about autism research(ers).

they're so bloody condescending.

<rant>

apparently we're "mindblind" ... seems if we cannot relate to the masses way of thinking and doing that makes us 'blind to their minds'. i rather think the shoe is on the other foot. autistic people have different neurological wiring, with a range of consequences - including differences in the way we communicate socially and emotionally. our internal mental and emotional environments are different - perhaps very different - to those of neurotypical people [an autie/aspie label for most of you lot :P].

as a consequence, many autistic people do not (cannot) relate to the way neurotypical people relate to themselves and each other. supposedly, this means were "blind" to your minds - but might it not also be the other way around?

i am autistic. i am at the very fringe of asperger's syndrome. i do understand that most people have minds of their own. i just wish more of them would use them, rather than being so absorbed in their emotions. i avoided psychology at university because on the one hand so much of it just seemed so, meh! obvious, and on the other - having sat through many lectures (the audiences had higher proportions of attractive females than my own lectures) - i got bored with the self-satisfied smugness of it all.

i've read some of the literature on autism. and on disabilities in general. i've also been drowned in 'education' literature during my time in the grad dip ed. why is it that the minorities have to learn to 'cope' with the majority, and not the other way around? there are all manner of 'cool education methodologies' that aim to assist auties and aspies being 'normalised' 'as much as possible' but very little to deal with the ridiculous prejudices of the masses?

at least i don't fool myself into thinking i have any idea what's going on in someone elses' head. especially someone who's head is wired up significantly different to my own.


for an another auties perspective on all this, consider the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical.

</rant>

anyway, back to the article, which ends this way:

Timothy Bickmore of Northeastern University in Boston, who studies ways in which computers can be made to engage with people's emotions, says the device would be a great teaching aid. "I would love it if you could have a computer looking at each student in the room to tell me when 20 per cent of them were bored or confused."

in other words, even neurotypicals can't always tell - or is it that they can get so self-absorbed that they too miss "obvious" social cues?

me, i just ask if i'm not sure. bloody people and their computers.

*wink*

my current favourite "phrase i'd like to wear on a t-shirt":

i'm not ignoring you. you're not that interesting.

i made it up myself.

i think you can tell.