Resonant Body Communication for Neurodivergent Contexts: A Multimodal, Temporally Elastic Blueprint for Inclusive Biometric Systems
Abstract:
Prevailing emotion-sensing systems privilege a facial-and-gaze paradigm that encodes neurotypical tempo, channel priority, and expression classes, thereby mischaracterizing or erasing neurodivergent communication. This article advances a design-oriented framework for biometric sensing that centers resonant body communication: temporally extended, multimodal, and environmentally situated patterns of posture, gesture, rhythm, and interoception that carry affective meaning. Through an integrative methodology that synthesizes cognitive neuroscience, embodied arts practices, and human–computer interaction, the study formalizes a theoretical model with four pillars: temporal elasticity, multimodal sensory hierarchies, resonant gestures and rhythmic entrainment, and environmental attunement. Building on this model, the article specifies technical requirements for next-generation systems, including whole-body pose capture, wearable inertial and physiological sensing, ambient context instrumentation, and cross-channel fusion pipelines aligned to individual baselines. Temporal analytics—windowed sequence modeling, rhythm extraction, and state trajectory inference—are proposed to recover slow affective dynamics that escape frame-level classifiers. Illustrative design patterns are presented for clinical diagnostics, affective interfaces, extended reality environments, and learning technologies, emphasizing participatory co-design and neurodiversity-affirming outcomes. A parallel ethics program addresses consent, privacy, representational harm, and the risk of normative enforcement, recommending local control, transparent inference, and disability-led governance for deployment settings. The contribution is twofold: a unifying vocabulary for neurodivergent affect as embodied resonance, and a concrete technical blueprint for inclusive biometric architectures. By rebalancing attention from faces toward bodies in context, affective technology can move from narrow detection toward attuned interpretation, improving accuracy, dignity, and usefulness for a broader range of minds. Future work outlines validation protocols and cross-domain deployment benchmarks.
KeyWords:
Neurodiversity, Biometrics, Embodiment, Interoception, Inclusivity
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