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

Denise Mackenstadt dmackenstadt at comcast.net
Thu Nov 27 19:25:51 UTC 2014


My point of view as a sighted person is that these are the most important issues concerning public speaking is eye contact is actually looking toward the audience. In addition, the speaker needs to be able to scan the audience so each member believes that the speaker is including them. Second, the person needs to have the speech document at arms length so the speakers face if not blocked.  For low vision individuals this means that they need to have the speech enlarged enough or to memorize the speech.  Obviously the best solution is to read it in braille.  Unfortunately as you know this is not always practical because many low vision people do not read braille.  This is my two cents. 
Denise Mackenstadt
dmackenstadt at comcast.net



> On Nov 26, 2014, at 10:39 PM, Don Mitchell via nfbwatlk <nfbwatlk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 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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> C ScienceAlert Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.
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> http://www.sciencealert.com/images/articles/boy-eyes_1024.jpg
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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 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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