[nfbwatlk] {Disarmed} How do blind persons compensate for this kind of sighted interactions?

Thu Nov 27 15:52:18 UTC 2014

Don:

I have two answers or observations:

(1) Bear in mind that the course was taught by a sighted person who buys
into the notion that sight is *the* essential communication medium and that
anyone who lacks it is severely handicapped. This hits me about like the
unprovable assertion one hears all the time in everything from optics
classes to social courses that seventy percent of knowledge comes through
the eyes. You and I know, of course, that this is utter nonsense!. For one
thing, how does one quantify communication? For another, might not how one
gains knowledge be based, in part, upon the individual? But I'll leave that
debate for another time. But since the sighted are the majority, there is a
certain validity to their assertion that eye contact is supremely important.
But take it with a grain of salt or the telephone would never have gained
popularity.

(2) What do we do? WE do the best we can. We face the speaker, keep our head
up (not down on our chests) and try to make our conversation sufficiently
interesting that eye contact won't matter. And we use other techniques such
as using other people to inform us who is trying to get our attention or who
is in a room.

Above all, we acknowledge that we live in a sighted world, do what we can to
deal with it and stop worrying about it. After all, it's not a situation
that's going to change and I dare say we can largely compensate. (You never
heard anyone say to FDR: "Just think what you could do were you not
paralyzed!").

Incidentally, at a Youth Slam or some such event a few years ago where there
was a simultaneous seminar for parents of blind children, Denise Mackenstadt
said there was a discussion wherein parents asked why their kids kept their
heads down. They discovered they could *hear* better if their heads were
down.

Mike Freeman

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbwatlk [mailto:nfbwatlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Don
Mitchell via nfbwatlk
Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2014 10:39 PM
To: 'Debby Phillips'; 'NFB of Washington Talk Mailing List'; 'Corey
Grandstaff'
Subject: [nfbwatlk] {Disarmed} How do blind persons compensate for this kind
of sighted interactions?

Since I took a communications class and learned how important eyes are in
communication I have wondered how we as blind persons compensate, adapt, or
develop accommodations for this kind of sighted interactions. What are your
thoughts?

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Image: Nadezda Cruzova / Shutterstock.com

How humans learn to subconsciously connect with their eyes

Researchers have studied the way infants 'read' emotions in people's eyes to
discover that at just seven months old, most people have already figured out
how to derive meaning from these incredibly complex organs.

BEC CREW   24 NOV 2014

Facebook Icon9.1kTwitter Icon41Email Icon

READ MORE

By decoding the brain activity of infants that were subconsciously exposed
to various expressions, an international team of psychologists has
demonstrated how humans learn to communicate using their eyes alone.

When it comes to expressing our emotions - intentionally or not - there's
nothing quite like our eyes. Whether we're experiencing feelings of joy or
fear, or a deep sadness or boredom that we can't help but give away, our
eyes are the windows to our souls, and as humans, there's not a whole lot we
can do to change that. 

But let's not lose perspective here,
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-humans-learn-to-communicate-with-their-e
yes-1416414194?mod=e2tw> as Alison Gopnik points out at The Washington Post,
eyes are really just slightly squishy globes of jelly-goo surrounded in
special nerves, fibres and lens cells. They're incredibly complex organs,
yes, but how can they express so much without us even trying?

New research by psychologists Sarah Jessen from the Max Planck Institute in
Germany and Tobias Grossmann of the University of Virginia in the US has
discovered that not only do we learn to read and respond to what we see in
each other's eyes at an extremely young age, but we do so subconsciously in
order to survive.

Humans are the only primates with a large, highly visible sclera - the white
part of the eye - which makes them easier to track and read than the eyes of
many other animals. Imagine trying to read the emotions of a hamster without
any physical cues other than what's going on
<https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTV2qgCAdecYHWFfoq9Gvd
sTEHgAMJ_hmVa8jygnu1ixaB9kzzzvQ> in those black, beady pools. Those adorable
little enigmas.

But most people, even when they're very young, tune in and focus on another
person's eyes when they're trying to connect and read their emotions and
intent. Grossmann and Jessen decided to test this ability in several very
young babies to see just how early on in a human's life meaning can be
derived by reading another person's eyes.

Working with seven-month-old babies, Grossmann and Jessen exposed their
young subjects to several schematic pictures of human eyes showing either
fearful expressions - wide-eyed plenty of visible sclera - or neutral,
dead-eyed expressions. The eyes would either be looking front on at their
infant audience, or to the side. The infants were also shown images of eyes
where the colours had been reversed, so the eye whites would be black, and
the pupils white.

Each image in the series was shown to the infants for just 50 milliseconds,
which is enough for them to subconsciously register what they saw, but not
long enough for them to really think about it. And all of this was happening
while the infant subjects were wearing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography> EEG caps, which are
equipped with an array of sensors that detect and record brain signals as
they occur.

"The babies' brain-waves were different when they looked at the fearful eyes
and the neutral ones, and when they saw the eyes look right at them or off
to one side,"
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-humans-learn-to-communicate-with-their-e
yes-1416414194?mod=e2tw> reports Gopnik at The Washington Post. "The
differences were particularly clear in the frontal parts of the brain. Those
brain areas control attention and are connected to the brain areas that
detect fear."

But when the babies were shown the reverse-colour images, their brain scans
revealed that they did not differentiate between the fearful and neutral
expressions. This suggests that the position and area of the sclera is
crucial for how we interpret meaning in each other's eyes, especially when
we're young.

"Their brains clearly responded to social cues conveyed through the eyes,
indicating that even without conscious awareness, human infants are able to
detect subtle social cues,"
<https://news.virginia.edu/content/whites-their-eyes-study-finds-infants-res
pond-social-cues-sclera> said Grossmann in a press release.

"This demonstrates that, like adults, infants are sensitive to eye
expressions of fear and direction of focus, and that these responses operate
without conscious awareness,"
<https://news.virginia.edu/content/whites-their-eyes-study-finds-infants-res
pond-social-cues-sclera> he adds. "The existence of such brain 
pond-social-cues-sclera> mechanisms in
infants likely provides a vital foundation for the development of social
interactive skills in humans."

The results were published in
<http://www.pnas.org/content/111/45/16208.short> Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science.

Sources:
<https://news.virginia.edu/content/whites-their-eyes-study-finds-infants-res
pond-social-cues-sclera> The University of Virginia,
<http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-humans-learn-to-communicate-with-their-e
yes-1416414194?mod=e2tw> The Washington Post

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