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Expressions/Gestures
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159168. Fri Mar 23, 2007 7:08 am
That system ought to work well for everyone, I would think, autistc or not.
One regiment in the army (the Irish Guards, I think) has a convention that you wear a hat at breakfast in the mess if you don't want anyone to speak to you. That has more to do with being hung over, though.
eggshaped
There are often club-nights which use that system with red meaning "I have a boy/girlfriend" and green meaning "come and get me".
You'd be surprised how hard it is to get hold of a pair of green pvc hotpants these days.
Red and green is a good combination, I find.
"I have a girlfriend but don't let that put you off" isn't conflicting, is it?
Actually, I suppose the "but" does imply conflict.
Although it might conflict with "I'm single, but I hate everyone here."
159385. Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:39 am
Stephen Fry has recently been involved with a project using cartoons to teach autistic children about expressions.
A project that has helped a small group of autistic children understand more about human emotions is being launched nationwide. The project uses cartoons narrated by the actor Stephen Fry to help teach the youngsters about facial expressions. People with autism often struggle to identify and understand feelings, and to look others in the eye. Denis Murphy, six, is one of those who has been taking part, and his family have already noticed changes in him. He is typical of a child with autism because he is fascinated by trains and cars, but finds it much harder to relate to human emotions. That may be because vehicles have very predictable motion, while people are far more unpredictable. The DVD animation series, named The Transporters, capitalises on this fascination with vehicles by grafting real people's faces onto cartoons of vehicles. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen is director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. He said: "We've got to somehow find a way to get autistic children to overcome their fear of looking at people's faces so that they can start learning about how expressions arise. This is a way to ease them into reading faces." Denis began watching the cartoons before Christmas. He was asked to look at them for 15 minutes every day over the course of four weeks. But the first time he saw them, he liked them so much, he watched all 15 five minute episodes at once. Each episode introduces the idea of new emotions, like happiness, anger, fear, kindness and pride. (C)BBC
http://www.biopsychology.com/index.php?descType=always&type=keyword&id=6&page=0
159406. Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:34 pm
MatC
164445. Tue Apr 10, 2007 7:53 am
Speaking of body language ... there is a study called kinesics (the "science of interpreting behaviour"), used in law enforcement, personnel and so on. If body language, gestures, expressions etc does come up on the show, I wonder if we could get in a kinesics expert who Stephen would invite to tell us something about the panellists. She says perfectly normal, predictable stuff about each panellist in turn ("He is anxious about making a good impression with the audience" kind of stuff), until she comes to Alan - when she quite deadpan comes out with a load of the most outrageous and astonishing "observations," egged on by Stephen ("Really? That's fascinating - and can you tell whether or not Alan has actually murdered anyone today?")
174223. Mon May 14, 2007 10:27 am
In the UK & US most people judge your expression by the mouth, while in Japan, they judge it by the eyes.
That's why our smileys look like this
:o) or :-(
and Japanese ones look like this:
^_^ or ;_;
Molly Cule
174428. Tue May 15, 2007 4:53 am
I've never understood those things. What are they supposed to look like? Two dots by the side of a hole - what is that?
The Japanesse ones at least make sense - though I shall continue my policy of automatically deleting any message which contains any pictograms of any sort.
If you look at them sideways then they make a face.
Smileys are apparently vitally important in e-messaging as they ensure that you're not misconstrued because the recipient cannot see your expression.
For instance sarcasm is hard to express in text.
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