ASD and metaphor/sarcasm?

"If you've met one autistic, then you've met one autistic" - we're all different - I have found that many of the autistic people I have met have a wicked, dry and often sarcastic sense of humour - Sarcasm requires intellect to get right and a tendency toward saying exactly what you're thinking, without consideration (or perhaps understanding) of the consequences of saying it. These are all traits of autistic individuals, so it doesn't rule you out.

But as aidie says "nothing beats the face-to-face assessment..."

There are several different ways of “playing” with language. I worked out formulas but I also had theatre training so that helped. 
Sarcasm is essentially a lesser intelligent formula for humour. It incorporates complaining about a thing. 
Now IRONY is a more intelligent formula for humour and really funny. The problem is many times this actually goes over a majority of NT heads. It involves making deeper connexions to systems and explaining their absurdity or how contradictory they are. Micheal McIntyre is quite good with Irony as is John Cleese. It’s more rare. John Cleese manages to use a wide range of humour-formulas. 
Scant and Metaphor are good for children and also useful to explain something difficult. In fact, electricity is often described metaphorically to the flow Water. Water is easy to visualise. Electrical currents are not. 
Poetic verse is another lovely use for metaphor. In fact there are many systems of exchange between humans which are metaphysical and difficult to explain without the use of metaphor. The way humans grow to become better is akin to a plant in a nursery shielded from the natural elements of wind and an imbalance of water. These external forces being similar to life’s overwhelming expectations or human greed, anger, competition. 
A classical education of the Trivium would have spelled these “formulas” of linguistics out. 

As I understand it, females have tendencies to be strong at masking and tendencies to focus on working people out/mannerisms etc from a young age. So there's a tendency for them to come across as neurotypical, when in fact their brains are working super-hard to process things and fit in with other kids.

Some guys will experience similar and will, like quite a lot of females do, often get missed out by diagnoses.

One of the first times I really thought "hey, I might actually be autistic too" was from watching a video of girls/women with autism who were talking about themselves and their experiences.

Despite being supposedly male, my entryway to understanding my own (probable/highly likely) autism was through finding a lot of crossover with the female presentation tendencies. [I regard myself as bigender though as that makes my internal life easier for me]

Here are some articles I bookmarked last year as I was discovering/figuring stuff out:

“these results suggest that in adulthood, females show fewer, but perceive more autistic features than males. One possible explanation for this may be that females with ASC are better at masking their autistic features, perhaps because of better self-awareness and self-referential cognitive abilities. Self-referential and social-cognitive traits are related to each other in autism [71], such that increases in one relates to increases in the other.” 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3113855/ 

I found articles like this one to be quite useful and eye-opening at the time:
https://www.aane.org/self-discovery-one-aspie-woman/

OP it doesn't exclude you from being autistic, it's unlikely that you're making all the rest of it up. Not sure of your gender but I've read somewhere that females with ASD are less likely to have language issues. As an extreme example, people have speculated that Jane Austen was autistic.

I might not understand a turn of phrase first time (e.g when my mum said something might've "fallen off the back of a lorry" I said that seemed unlikely because it would've been damaged by falling off) but no-one is born knowing all these phrases, the way I see it everyone learning a language has has to build up a sort of look-up table in their head for non-obvious phrases.

Although I understand it, I don't use many figurative phrases myself in conversation and sometimes I find it kind of annoying when people use too much figurative language because it seems inaccurate and over-the-top. 

DiQ said:

I always put my inadequacies down to my mother being overprotective among other things - the small world thing.

Yep. If I hadn't spent years trying (and failing) with managing depression which I attributed to emotionally absent parents (or one absent and one highly critical) I probably would have dismissed any suggestion of an autism spectrum diagnosis out of hand. It's only when the question was pitched (very well, might I add) by a concerned work colleague that I figured it was something worth exploring. Then came the AQ10 and the mood diary, and the discussion with the GP. 

I felt the depression-management strategies I was trying weren't really helping - from a work perspective I was succeeding (going to work, paying my taxes, self-sufficient.. mostly) even though it left me  exhausted. In the main "busyness" of life I was functional but outside of that I wasn't managing myself particularly well. Basically I kept my world small outside of work*, nobody asked me about it, and it worked - until something happened which would cause me to loose my footing and go into a spiral. 

The report from my final assessment was useful in another way - the response to the observers questionnaire (the person who knew me well) was included. It really helped me to grasp that those things I thought nothing of, were noticeable by them and others. We talked about it afterwards and they were saying it felt they doing me a dis-service as some of the feedback was critical (in a good way) of my general social skills. To me, it was information and insight I'd never had before. Honest, non-judgemental feedback - hugely useful! Who wouldn't want that?

I decided to disclose my diagnosis to the rest of the people I work with. They're a good bunch although there were a few who came back with the "I thought....", "I had an idea that...." - yeh right!  Everyone's an expert after the fact.

*it's not like I didn't do anything! I just didn't do anything which required me to get along with people beyond a casual acquaintance. 

aidie Yes so interesting. I found the AQ10 to be quite unhelpful and the one with more questions a bit more helpful. You're right, a face-to-face consultation would be a lot more helpful because I found it challenging to know what context the questions are referring to. There are so many possible variations. 

Like Ethan, I would be really interested to read up more on how autism presents in people who aren't easily diagnosed under the more traditional methods. I've found some podcasts helpful, where people have been chatting about their own experiences, but it's quite hard to find reading material that doesn't just refer to the topic quite vaguely. I get the impression that research into this area is still relatively scarce?

Untoward Thanks for the response. It's so interesting. I'm just learning how much I thought I understood that maybe I don't actually get, in the way that I thought I got it! (If that makes any sense....)

Thank you so much for the encouragement, FSCR! Your daughter sounds so talented. I hope she will be able to share her gifts in a way that makes her happy. Good luck to you and her too.

Thank you for that, @Flint. Yes! I remember distinctly in one of my jobs in the past, my colleagues had a really sharp banter thing going on. Before that, I think I understood sarcasm, but I picked up the skill of actually using it in that job. Now I think about it, it's actually quite a technical thing similar to how you describe it and I think I sometimes overstep the level of acceptable sarcasm without realising or have moved onto talking seriously and I'm still being 'flippant'. And then there are days when I can't even exchange niceties with a neighbour and make sense. All my illusions of being normal are being shattered right here... thank you for sharing.

Ethanthat's so interesting. I always put my inadequacies down to my mother being overprotective among other things - the small world thing. You've made me realise also, how often I think I get things, but just the other night, my partner said something that was meant in jest and I didn't realise and took it seriously. I had myself fooled over the years because I always brush those off and pretend I got it all along - I'm supposed to be the funny one... *facepalm*.

It's also so nice to be in a place where some people write so much. I always feel like I have to edit and re-edit and cut and re-organise my writing. Although I'm a terrible rambler and I see you are not.

I just had to go-a-googling once I read this exchange and apparently there's some concern in academic circles about the use of the AQ10 

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/popular-autism-screening-tool-is-unreliable-study-suggests/

Its predictive value apparently seems to be pretty useless as it churns out a lot false negatives.

There's a research paper at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988267/ if anyone is interested in this sort of thing. The section "AQ10 as a predictor of ASD diagnosis" and concluding paragraph before the acknowledgements pretty much summarises the whole report if you don't feel keen on wading through a lot of statistics, analysis and research-speak. 

@aidie - have you a link or some info non the unique traits of female autism? Would be really interested to read up on that.

nothing beats the face-to-face assessments by a modern assessor. The Test above was created in 2001 and then they didnt know that female autism has its own traits. I would love a new modern up-to-date test. The AQ-10 only has ten questions so its not very good anyways so thats why I point to the one in the link which has 50 questions.

That's interesting Aidie. I have just double-checked my daughter's score on her AQ-10, the test you give the link to above, and she only scored 2. where you need more than a 6 to be considered for assessment but at a thorough clinical assessment she was found to have ASD. The test is a very blunt, unsubtle tool. I thought this at the time but didn't follow up with the assessors. 

F

do this online test

https://psychology-tools.com/test/autism-spectrum-quotient

it will give u an indication how autistic you are

I have never had any issues understanding sarcasm but I do occasionally not get a joke, usually ones which involve wordplay because I always think that people use their words in their literal meanings. I can't think of any examples, but a similar problem I have is the names of rappers such as Flo Rida and will.i.am. To me that was their names, and it didn't occur to me there was another "meaning" until years later someone told me.

Hello DiQ

All I know is that my 17 year-old daughter has just been diagnosed with autism. She understands nuanced language, sarcasm and irony. In fact she has a fantastic use of written and spoken language, a great sense of humour and would make a great stand-up comedian if her other autistic traits didn't prevent her. Autistic or NT, everyone is an individual. There are a huge range of traits. Please have the confidence to go further. I have never heard of someone going for an assessment and being told that they aren't on the spectrum. Has anyone else here?

Good luck.

Too much I think. Way too much. With a few too many flourishes 

I think he had his suspicions - I've had a long history of burnouts with depression and I took a copy of the AQ-10 to one of my appointments. Whatever I wrote must have clinched it for him. I'm not able to find a copy now - seems to be one the few things I've actually deleted. I probably mentioned some sensory stuff in there but can't be sure. 

I understand sarcasm most of the time. 

In fact, I'm sarcastic a lot myself, and I have explained to someone how for me sarcasm is an extension of seeing things more literally. Because sarcasm often points out how ridiculous a phrase or something someone said is in light of reality. 
It sees the lack of logic in something or the fact it simply makes no sense and points it out in a funny way. 

That said, there can be occasions where if someone else has been sarcastic, I need reassurance it was sarcasm. But, I don't think that happens very often, and I think it often depends on the person.

' It seems that there was something about my style of writing (or even how much I wrote)...'

Just curious, how much did you write? Was it a lot, or 'too little?' 

Hi there,

As my psychologist explained to me - everyone's experience is different and it's a combination of behaviours/traits (apologies to anyone if I've got the language wrong) that manifest in different ways in different strengths in different people.

A self screening test might give you a better idea. I tried this one which I used to have a discussion with my GP.

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg142/resources/autism-spectrum-quotient-aq10-test-143968

What clinched it for him was when I did a mood diary about my depression.When he read the entries he explained to me that sometimes clinicians can only read what had been presented and that this meant some things might not be picked up on. It seems that there was something about my style of writing (or even how much I wrote) that flagged it for him because it was then that we moved onto talking about an assessment.

TBH I'm not sure I completely followed the conversation that happened afterwards - it's that weird moment when someone with the expertise recognises something "in you" which you're not aware of. 

I get sarcasm, but I think it depends on where I hear it. In a comedy show - no problem. From a friend - I'd struggle a little bit on how to take it. Anywhere else I'd think it really strange. My therapist explained to me that I tend to put people in boxes and then have expectations of them depending on which box they're in. So a manager for example - because they're a manager MUST be ...... x....y....z AT ALL times. I believed for a long time people did the "one thing" and nothing else and were faultless at the thing they did (I know! I know! I lived in a really quiet village where we never went anywhere and with nothing going on - the world was pretty small when I was growing up).