Shouldn't I be socially stupid?

[ZenFender]

Just put this up for a little discussion and debate....

Since the age of 6, I would watch the TV literally 3 feet away from the screen, and this has made me extremely short sighted. But due to youthful ignorance and fear of parental wrath, I didn't get glasses till I was about....14 years old. So for 8 years, I have been deprived of proper vision. It's pretty bad short sightedness too- at 400 degrees, it means I can barely recognize people unless they're a few feet away from me.

So from the age of 6-14, I could barely recognize people, much less read their facial expressions! So how come I am not socially retarded in the sense that I can still "read" people's emotions like a regular person now? And it would seem that those years between 6 and 14 would be the "prime" time for the development of social skills such deciphering facial expressions.

But then again, if a person was blind from birth, and somehow got their vision back at adulthood, it would seem on face value that they would recognize a smile for a smile and a frown as a frown. Maybe some culture-bound expressions wouldn't be recognized though (such as "The rock" eyebrow thing).

Watcha guys think? Or maybe I'm totally wrong and I really DO have crappy social skills!

[ZHereford]

One possibility is that we don't read people just by looking at them.
We can sense their energy in other ways. Have you ever walked into a room and just felt the energy emanating from everyone?

It has also been shown that blind people develop their other senses like hearing, smelling and feeling more acutely, which helps them manoeuvre through challenging situations better.

That's one explanation.

[Michelle]

You assume that seeing well and sensing emotion are linked, which I doubt. In singing I had to learn that hearing well and singing in tune are less connected than one might think.

I think emotion, just like sound, is transmitted through vibration which is picked up by the whole being rather than just one part.

[JohnPlace]

Originally Posted by ZenFender

Just put this up for a little discussion and debate....

Since the age of 6, I would watch the TV literally 3 feet away from the screen, and this has made me extremely short sighted. But due to youthful ignorance and fear of parental wrath, I didn't get glasses till I was about....14 years old. So for 8 years, I have been deprived of proper vision. It's pretty bad short sightedness too- at 400 degrees, it means I can barely recognize people unless they're a few feet away from me.

So from the age of 6-14, I could barely recognize people, much less read their facial expressions! So how come I am not socially retarded in the sense that I can still "read" people's emotions like a regular person now? And it would seem that those years between 6 and 14 would be the "prime" time for the development of social skills such deciphering facial expressions.

But then again, if a person was blind from birth, and somehow got their vision back at adulthood, it would seem on face value that they would recognize a smile for a smile and a frown as a frown. Maybe some culture-bound expressions wouldn't be recognized though (such as "The rock" eyebrow thing).

Watcha guys think? Or maybe I'm totally wrong and I really DO have crappy social skills!

Zenfender, I dug up an article abstract on the Internet that you might be interested in. I'm not going to pretend to completely understand the abstract (since this was written for an expert audience), but it sounds as though you are not alone in your curiosity regarding facial recognition and emotional development. Unfortunately, if you want to see the rest of the article, I think you have to be a member of the site.

It sounds to me like the point of the article (as summarized in the abstract) is that visual recognition is only one facet of the multi-dimensional way in which we process emotional inputs.

Here's the abstract, if you're interested.

Originally Posted by article abstract

Recognition of the facial expressions of emotions is a critical communicative system early in development and continues to play an important role throughout adulthood. In the past, the results of developmental studies of emotional facial recognition have often conflicted. The present study was designed to examine the development of emotional facial recognition in a large sample of school-aged children (n = 120, ages 5-10y). In particular, we investigate whether emotion categories, i.e., those based on the visual spatial parameters of facial expression, develop in a similar fashion to those that also recruit lexical knowledge of emotion terms. We have found two distinct patterns of development and we suggest that these different profiles are a consequence of the very different cognitive abilities that they recruit. CONCLUSION: Emotion cognition is a variegated domain which is differentially related to such areas of cognition as visuo-spatial and lexical semantic abilities.

[ginkgo]

Well you did not talk to people standing 5 feet away. You are pretty close to people when you talk to them. I am talking about Americans. The French cannot have a saying like "in your face." They have their face like 2 inches from your face when they talk to you. Americans will do that too while talking to lovers.

I have severe nearsightedness and astmatism and I sparred in karate and did everthing without glasses for many years. I never drove without glasses since that is worse for me than driving drunk. You are making way too big a deal out of your vision problems. Also someone blind from birth is not socially retarded.

Even with glasses I do not see that well when talking to people from 7 feet away. I was taling to a girl that likes me (I say girl since she is only 17) while she was on a porch while I was on the sidewalk. I could easily talk to her. Then (another time) I saw her on the street and I was 2 feet away and I could see her eyes. Then I had trouble talking to her since she looks at me with an intense love.