By Rachael Thompson
Disclaimer:
The material in this blog is not to be used by any commercial or personal entity without expressed written consent of the blog author. The statements in this blog are not intended to provide individual strategies or interventions. The author does not in any way guarantee or warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any message and will not be held responsible for the content of any message. Always consult your personal Occupational Therapist for specific sensory processing advice.
Proprioception is the feedback that we get from our muscles and joints it enables us to know where our body is in space and our limbs are in relation to each other. It is the sense that gives us the information that we need to work out how much force we are using.
Like many autistic individuals I am under-responsive to proprioception.
Individuals that are under-response to proprioception may find that they experience:
Difficulty with motor tasks especially if not able to see what they are doing
Frequently bumping into things
Being perceived as being “clumsy”
Difficulty copying or imitating movements and having unusual movement patterns such as a different way of running.
Difficulty understanding the right force to use for an activity
I use my strengths in visual processing to compensate for underlying difficulties with proprioception, so the list above is not readily observable in my everyday life.
Proprioceptive difficulties also present in difficulties perceiving and processing the sensory information from the small muscles in our face. Being under-responsive to proprioception makes facial expression really tricky.
This can have a really profound impact. If you think about how you interact with a baby before speech a lot of communication is reliant on reciprocation of facial expression it is one of the primary ways we create the initial connection with other human beings. It is fundamental in developing secure attachments and bonding with our primary caregivers. It is also fundamental to our interactions throughout our life and an important factor in our ability to connect with others. Research shows that we rely on facial expression to:
Create a connection with a communication partner through facial expression reciprocation.
Express an intention to communicate with someone else.
Communicate emotion
Express Empathy
Develop trust
It follows that difficulties and differences in facial expression will make all of the above challenging especially between individuals of different neurotypes.
I have always found facial expressions difficult. I remember teaching myself to smile using a mirror and a lot of practice. I needed the visual feedback and lots of repetition to guide how to produce and then successfully reproduce the muscle movements of smiling. Smiling then became my default facial expression. Smiling serves me well as smiling generally elicits a positive response form others and also means that other people rarely ask, “are you ok?” which is a difficult question to answer. When I have asked other people about my facial expressions, they say I generally always look either happy, confused or neutral.
I have very little awareness of what my facial expression is. It quite often doesn’t match the facial expressions that I have learnt are meant to express given feelings amongst the non-autistic population. I have to consciously change my facial expression to match what I am thinking or feeling it does not happen automatically. Since using zoom I have become really aware of this and in meetings I regularly have a glance at my own image to make sure I am using a facial expression that matches my intention. I find this useful, unfortunately it doesn’t translate to everyday interactions.
My small repertoire of facial expressions makes it hard not only for people to understand how I am feeling but it also makes it hard to connect with other people who are looking for emotional reciprocation. This further compounds the challenges with emotional reciprocation that I experience as a result of differences in interoceptive processing which I explore in my blog: Interoception, Self-awareness and Empathy
For people in relationships, working alongside or supporting autistic individuals it is important to remember that facial expressions may not be the same as those expressed by non-autistic individuals. I don’t mind being asked for clarification if my facial expression doesn’t match up, I would rather this than someone makes an assumption based on a generalised perception of what my expression might mean.
Further Reading
Brewer, R., Biotti, F., Catmur, C., Press, C., Happé, F., Cook, R. and Bird, G., 2016. Can neurotypical individuals read autistic facial expressions? Atypical production of emotional facial expressions in autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research, 9(2), pp.262-271.
Cobo, J.L., Solé-Magdalena, A., Menéndez, I., de Vicente, J.C. and Vega, J.A. (2017). Connections between the facial and trigeminal nerves: Anatomical basis for facial muscle proprioception. JPRAS Open, 12, pp.9–18.
Frith, C. (2009). Role of facial expressions in social interactions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, [online] 364(1535), pp.3453–3458. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781887/.
Ishii, L.E., Nellis, J.C., Boahene, K.D., Byrne, P. and Ishii, M. (2018). The Importance and Psychology of Facial Expression. Otolaryngologic Clinics of North America, [online] 51(6), pp.1011–1017. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30104039/ [Accessed 10 May 2021].
Rinn, W.E., 1984. The neuropsychology of facial expression: a review of the neurological and psychological mechanisms for producing facial expressions. Psychological bulletin, 95(1), p.52.
NICABM. (2015). How the Brain Works with the Vagus: Empathy and More. [online] Available at: https://www.nicabm.com/brain-how-the-brain-works-with-the-vagus-empathy-and-more-4/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2022].
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