In this sense, these individuals must learn to understand and implement the cues under conscious control. Individuals with ASD thus do not readily reap the adaptive benefits of perception automatically translating to behavior to foster positive social interactions. For this population, can these complex social cues be learned to an extent that they no longer operate under conscious awareness? .
Compromised social information processing, and by extension social relations, may also be explored in the context of person perception. Given that individuals with ASD often struggle with self-other differentiation, to what degree can they accurately perceive the impressions they portray to others? My deep interest in autism developed over the past two years while working at OASIS (Ongoing Academic and Social Instructional Support), a program that functions as extended support for Pace students diagnosed with ASD. During this past Summer, I had the rewarding experience of co-teaching a Social Literacy course geared toward enhancing the students' social awareness and bolstering their social skills; the class incorporated theory of mind and social thinking. I noticed the students tended to struggle with their perceptions of how they present during job interviews and, more broadly, with their understanding of how communicative body language is. Based on the theory of a compromised mirror neuron system, the students used mirrors to practice displaying emotions on their faces and subsequently practiced identifying their peers' emotions based on their facial expressions. When working with these students, it is critical to remember that the social information we readily and effortlessly metabolize presents as a foreign language that must be consciously learned and practiced. How disorienting and isolating it must be to exist in a social world, where others expect you to understand and play by the implicit "rules" of which you are unaware.