Mimicry and facial expression

I just read this interesting article on facial expressions from Discover magazine. I thought the information about mimicry and emotional expression was especially interesting in the context of autism (although the article does not discuss autism). People with autism have difficulty with mimicry and also have difficulty with expressing and interpreting emotion (this is probably why people with autism often avoid eye contact).

According to this article, mimicry and facial expressions have a hard-wired brain connection--if you look at someone who is grinning, your brain will tell you to grin too. Even if you're trying to identify a grin, your brain will tell you to start grinning. So if a person with autism has a problem with the mimicry function in his brain, then attempting to interpret facial expressions would be not only difficult but potentially uncomfortable as his brain tries to route messages through a part of the brain that doesn't do exactly what it's supposed to do. Instead, he may avoid the issue by not looking at people's faces.

I suspect people with autism accommodate for the challenge of interpreting expression by learning what expressions mean much the same way they learn to read--a smile is a sign for happy, a frown is a sign for unhappy, furrowed brows and tight lips are angry, etc. But the fact that even adults with autism often avoid eye contact suggests that the challenge of the hard-wired system remains.