Teaching Cognitive Empathy: 5 Games
I was going to title this “Should we try to teach autistic children to make eye contact?”. Perhaps I should have - while the games are quite self-explanatory, there purpose doesn’t really make sense outside of the broader issue.
Whether or not autistic children should be taught to make eye contact is a controversial topic with at least two schools of opposing thought:
The “for” position states that eye-contact plays an important role in childhood development, signals engagement and helps children interpret social cues. And that as a skill it can be improved by a gradual process of modelling, prompting and reinforcement.
The “against” position states that eye contact is primarily a western norm rather than a universal social cue and many in the autistic community find it uncomfortable, overwhelming and therefore, actually a hindrance to social interaction.
I think that both positions may be, ironically, focused on the wrong thing. Hopefully I’m not strawmanning either position, but:
The “for” camp seems to target eye-contact as a goal in itself or at least, the means to a goal. I don’t think this is correct. When interacting with someone, I don’t typically make literal “eye-contact”, rather I look roughly at the centre of their face, but with my own eyes relaxed and allowing my peripheral vision to function. Similarly to when I drive and don’t literally “keep my eyes on the road” and at the expense of everything else I need to see and visually process in order to drive effectively.
The “against” camp seems to suggest that eye contact is mostly a cultural norm that we needlessly enforce on one another. This doesn’t seem right either. Whenever I want to know more about a thing (such as another person), I find that it typically helps if I can look at it.
But again, we’re not really just “looking at it”, similar to how we don’t read books just by looking at the pages. What’s happening is we’re trying to collect as much signal as possible from the other person in order to glean as best we can, what their internal state is (such as their thoughts and emotions) so that we can respond in an optimal way. “Eye-contact” (or whatever you want to call it), is the byproduct of this attempt and so rather than trying to teach it, we’re probably better off trying to teach cognitive empathy;
the ability to understand another person's perspective, thoughts, and mental state.
This is a series of games (roughly in order of sophistication) that parents can play with their children and that depend directly upon cognitive empathy. Most parents have already played some of these, this blog aims only to encourage more of the same by emphasising the underpinning benefits:
Eye-spy
The rules of the game are almost the definition of the concept; Player B tries to know what Player A has seen.
As well as being appropriate at the youngest age, this game also has scope for some nuanced uses of cognitive empathy. For example, player B might glean that they can narrow down the list of possible targets by tracking the gaze of Player A while Player A selects their object to spy. However, if they are too obvious, Player A will detect this and may counteract with a deliberate misdirection by pointing their head away from the object they select.
Charades
If eye-spy is an effort to correctly assume someone else’s perspective, charades is an effort to have someone else correctly assume yours. It goes from:
“If I were them, what would I think?”
To
“If I were them, what would they think that I am thinking?”
Cheat-poker
Here cognitive empathy is at its most combative as players attempt to infer the true thoughts of others (to catch them cheating) and try to conceal the thoughts of their own (to get away with cheating). In theory, it allows for an infinite number of recursive iterations of cognitive empathy:
"Player X is cheating."
"Player X wants me to think they are cheating."
"Player X is actually cheating, but wants me to think they are only pretending to cheat."
"Player X thinks that I think they are only pretending to cheat, and is using that to get away with actually cheating." – etc.
Playing cheat-poker was when I first realised that cognitive empathy could be gamified and I made a short video explaining the rules and theory here.
Emotional X-ray
Is played by hitting pause at any particular moment in a movie or television show and attempting to analyse the internal perspective of the character on screen based on signals and context.
This game has several advantages; firstly, we can do it while watching our favourite shows. Good film and television also typically offer distilled examples of the types of social dynamics we hope our children to develop a comprehension for; anxiety, jealousy, realisation. Finally, the game presents an opportunity for parents and other more experienced cognitive-empathizers to gradually model more detailed inferences.
Spy game
Spy game is essentially Emotional X-ray taken into the real world where perspective taking and signal reading is attempted on strangers. A parent and child travelling by car might stop at a crossing and try gauge as much detail as possible; the pedestrians age, occupation, where they’re going, their mood and self-esteem.
This is the most realistic game for cognitive empathy, matching the level of challenge we face with signal reading each day. A benefit of the game is that signal reading can be practiced proactively in a zero-stakes context that isn’t simultaneously requiring cognitively demanding social output.
Two important caveats on spy-game:
Just like with Eye-Spy, you can’t be too obvious or stare for too long. This is itself being an important nuance of eye contact that we have to learn if it doesn’t come instinctively.
Outside of blatantly obvious signals, most of our single-glance inferences about other people will almost certainly be wrong. We cannot after all, read one another’s minds. Which is what makes cognitive empathy crucial in the first place.
———
Crucially, all five of the above games can be played successfully without having to make “eye-contact”. They and games like them offer an alternative approach to the two opposing camps of the debate by changing the focus away from the explicit teaching of eye-contact which I suspect could be a damaging red-herring.
Afterword and pragmatic eye-contact
At best, this blog only covers half the situation. For as well as being a tool for reading signal, eye contact is a signal in itself. Specifically, absent eye-contact is often misinterpreted as a signal that the other person doesn’t like us or is disinterested in us. This concern is probably why the notion of teaching children to make eye-contact is raised to begin with. I’m assuming that more glance will occur as a by-product of developed cognitive empathy, but it remains possible that the world’s most perceptive person could still produce limited eye-contact. Such a person would still be at a social disadvantage.
For pragmaticism, the following ideas might help a person who finds eye-contact uncomfortable, still use it as a signal if they choose:
Gazing between the eyes is indistinguishable to the recipient from gazing at their eyes.
It is typically more important to look at a person during the first moments of a new interaction. Once connection has been established (“we are now in an interaction with each other”), it’s typically less important to look at them as frequently.
To send a signal of interest, it is more important to look at them when they are talking compared to when they are listening to us.
My guess would be that ambient vision (like when looking at a view) is used more for signal reading, whereas foveal vision (like when looking for a lost earing) is more useful for signalling interest in them.
Ned Dickeson is a clinical psychologist based in Adelaide, Australia.
This is a short essay and not intended as an adequate explanation for an evidence-based treatment approach, especially given all the nuances that each individual experiences.
I have used AI for artwork and proofreading but not for ideas or prose.
