“Sorry love, with those masks I have a hard time understanding everything,” the baker sighs as she asks me to repeat my order for the third time. I doubt whether it’s my face mask, however. Also before the pandemic people often had trouble understanding my ‘Holland’ accent here in Flanders. Nevertheless, face masks do create a problem in communication for many. Deaf people and those who are hard of hearing experience difficulties – thankfully it was quickly decided that the mask can be taken off to enable lip reading.
But there’s another group of people of whom many find the masks burdensome: autistic individuals. One of the characteristics of autism is hyper- or hyposensitivity to sensory input. This means that autistic individuals can be either overly sensitive or much less sensitive to certain information coming in through specific senses, such as light or sound, but also touch. This not only entails being touched by other people, but also, for example, hypersensitivity to the texture of specific food, clothes, or pinching shoes. A face mask, which in addition changes how one’s own breathing is experienced, can therefore feel very uncomfortable for some, and even lead to panic reactions.
The interpretation of another person’s facial expressions can also be problematic if half of that person’s face is covered. To see if someone is happy, angry, or sad, the eyes and mouth are our most important sources of information. Additionally, body language, gestures and intonation can give further cues. As face masks make the mouth unavailable, this leaves only the eyes visible. This can be hard if you’re autistic, as research has shown that autistic individuals look to the eyes less often than others when seeing emotional expressions (but equally or even more often to the mouth). Although this issue is still being debated, it could make the mouth their primary source of information for recognizing emotions.
The amygdala, a brain region that is crucial for emotion processing and emotional reflexes, potentially plays a role in these atypical patterns of eye contact. The explanations scientists have given for this are contradictory at first sight. On the one hand, it has been said that autistic individuals show less arousal when someone makes eye contact with them. Their amygdala would be less active, and it would therefore be harder to keep their attention by looking them in the eye. On the other hand, direct eye contact could alert an autistic person too much, resulting in stress responses and avoidance. These two explanations don’t have to be mutually exclusive. We see a lot of individual variation among autistic persons, also in emotion recognition. Despite the long-held belief, autistic individuals are not necessarily worse at this. Possibly this is because they get more information from watching the mouth – which nowadays is almost always hidden from view in public life.
So what to do? Face masks were not introduced without reason, and we will not be ‘freed’ from wearing them for a while. For autistic individuals, some online trainings have been offered to help them get used to wearing a mask, and masks made out of more breathable fabric have been introduced. However, we can all contribute: by simply realizing that face masks really do pose a challenge to some, and by being understanding and patient about that. Luckily the solution to my own communicative problems at the bakery is very simple: I will just diligently keep practicing my Flemish.
Annabel Nijhof 