Humour, double meanings, sarcasm etc taking things literally.

I am also undiagnosed but, I mean the more I read the more I understand about what I call my "manufacturing defects" and often joke about this saying I was made with refurbished spare parts.

Some years ago I came across some videos about people with ADHD and spend hours crying because so many started to make sense, thirty something years struggling with my "manufacturing defects" and just now I understand I'm normal just different, still so many things still where without explanation and recently I again started researching and found the missing pieces of the puzzle. I have completed many ASD Asperger tests online, (know this is not a valid diagnosis). So many things started to make sense again, on the other hand I find the questions in many tests a bit...absurd. I mean they seem to be made for small children or was it perhaps that people with ASD where incapable to learn about certain thing... it is also the reason why I had doubts about myself.

It's a relief to read that like me many say is not about the capacity of understanding jokes, of course now I look like a NT but slow person....maybe, I have learned however still tend to Google thins up immediately and takes me a bit more to process jokes and suchlike. 

I can't tell you how many times I've been the joke for been "slow", taking thing at face value, laughing at things that weren't a joke or simply not getting it.

Hi Marjorie195 I can relate to you that it can be hard to understand sarcasm at times as im like this my self. I think its just part of our nature as aspies besides im not a fan of sarcasm as it is the lowest form of wit.With help from my family I have learnt to understand things more clearly which is very beneficial

Hi Marjorie195 I can relate to you that it can be hard to understand sarcasm at times as im like this my self. I think its just part of our nature as aspies besides im not a fan of sarcasm as it is the lowest form of wit.With help from my family I have learnt to understand things more clearly which is very beneficial

Hi Atypical. I only just spotted your reply.

Thank you, it's good to know that I'm not alone in feeling a fraud sometimes. I agree that women present differently.

I have read Tony Attwoods book from the library, but I also

 found the work of Tania Marshall useful, Working towards a female profile of Aspergers. I just googled it, and I have also read Aspergirl by  Rudy Simone.                    They are helping me understand the differences between male and female aspians.

I  find faces is too difficulte and confused

I really must get round to introducing myself properly, but I'm also undiagnosed. As far as I know I'm at least dyspraxic (including the behavior stuff), probably a bit more. But like you say it's difficult to know how you compare to other people, and how much you are actually missing.

One thing I wonder about is if 'being autistic' doesn't actually mean we miss things all the time, but maybe sometimes that we see more things and more possibilities?  So for example maybe we actually see all the body language, but we see lots of it, and sometimes it's contradictory, and we pick out the 'wrong' bits or can't make sense of it? Aoch, is that what you mean when you say faces are confused?

The diagnostic criteria are about symptoms that can be seen by others. I don't think they are always what is actually going on inside. So with humour we might look like we 'miss it' or don't understand it, while really we are too busy working out ten different alternate meanings (and miss the next joke while we are doing it?)

Also there is now some thinking that many more females are autistic than are currently diagnosed (I'm female).  The diagnostic criteria are how autism shows in males, and it may be that females can show autism differently.  The one thing that really makes me think 'maybe I'm a fake' is that in casual relationships I do fine: I can do humour, and can speak to anyone on first meeting. I can pass for NT. Apparently this may be true of many undiagnosed females on the spectrum: we can appear superficially 'normal', but the reality is in our heads we have to think about things much more than NT's, we may be copying other people's examples, it's more tiring and we may also show some delay in responses.  As you say Marjorie, it's difficult to know how you compare to other people when viewed from the outside, but being able to do stuff, but slower and more consiously sounds like me.

There's a bit of stuff on that in Tony Atwood's book The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. I found that a useful book to read.

Thanks everybody. I am undiagnosed, and although I am convinced most of the time that I am on the spectrum, just occasionally I lose focus and start to think I am a fraud. I have just had the best weekend in many years, with a visit from my son and his wife. I felt so normal for a while.

I think this is a difficult area for me to grasp, as, if I miss something, I don't necessarily know that I have.

I can relate to some of the examples you give. I was easy to dupe early in my working life, and was often on the receiving end of joke phone calls from colleagues. A single girl I worked with spun me a yarn that her swollen stomach was some strange disease, when to everyone else she was obviously pregnant.  (70s standards apply). I just thought I was a bit naiive. The guiness pipeline type thing, I now listen, and accept what people say, but do sometimes start to have doubts later and check things. 

The double entendre thing constantly gets me in bother because I am always saying things that other people take as rude (sexy). Unintentionally

If conversation around me turns to banter, I enjoy from the sidelines, I thought my inability to keep up meant I was a bit thick. I have been caught out not realising a joke was a joke, but I put that down to failings in the teller.

Perhaps the real issue is, that all the books represent this problem in a very basic, black and white way, whereas it appears to be much more subtle and varies considerably from person to person.

Thanks again, I'm back on track.

With regards to a lot of double meanings, I think living on the Internet sort of helps... after a while you've heard it all  and actually start to expect certain things, like rude double entendres. When I was younger, everyone else seemed to be getting a joke that I wasn't, usually sexually inappropriate. With regards to other turns of phraze, I think it is often not so much that I don't understand the phraze perhaps, but I might think about them differently than an NT person would, like "it's raining cats and dogs" - I wouldn't think it was literally raining cats and dogs but it would turn into "why do they say 'cats and dogs'?" and "Poor animals, that'd really hurt..." and most NT people would wonder why I'd even be bothering to think about that...

I have to "do" casual conversation/banter/jokes by concious application of social priciples. This means my responses to basic social exchanges lack rapidity and "naturalness". I have been told more than once that I give the impression of having some sinister agenda!

Firstly, I have not been diagnosed yet but do have more than a few traits! 

Taking things literally.. Yes someone once told me that Guinness got to England via a pipeline. And I believed them. And was always being dared to do stupid things as a kid (eg eat a fly ). And used to think that any germs on my hands would kill me (the germs on the fly didn't count of course..)

Always the last to get the 'groan' jokes in the office. But love a bit of sarcasm. So long as it is not aimed at me!

I have learnt the meanings to many phrases and do not take everything literally. I am fairly intelligent and read widely, so I have a vast storehouse of acquired information concerning double meanings in my head. It has helped, to an extent, that my dad is a retired English teacher. However I have historically had a propensity to take certain turns of phrase literally, usually the more subtle double meanings as opposed to things like 'it is raining cats and dogs' - I am too logical to fall for that one!. Things I have taken literally in the past include a boy telling me he was going 'to kill' me, when I was 9 years old. I really believed him and spent the night worrying - if someone tells me something with more than one meaning, or they are 'having me on', I am very easily led 'up the garden path'. My dad often tells me things that are not true because he find it amusing to see me taking it so literally, but I can see the funny side!. For example, recently, he told me that some tea pots were going for half price because they had a hole in the side - there was an error at the kiln, he said. I went to look for myself, and noticed some ornamental tea pots with a giant hole in the side, and they were no half price!. The hole was deliberate because they were ornamental, and my mum told me that no one would sell tea pots with a hole in the side because (obviously!) it would not be useable; my powers of critical thinking were blunted by my default reaction of taking what I am told at face value.I had fallen for one of my dad's silly jokes, yet again, but this highlights my tendancy to believe what someone tells me without question.

I struggle more with sarcasm and subtle joking than most metaphors, which can be learnt. However I do struggle to understand certain metaphors and have to spend a lot of energy working them out. I still do not really understand it when people say they do not 'suffer fools gladly', or ' a stitch in time saves nine'. I have looked these sayings up and have a vague understanding of what they mean, but my mind has to work hard to remember what I have learnt.

I can understand basic comedy, but my dad has to act as translator for more complex comedy. Once I understand the innuendo I can laugh as much as the next person, but I am not always good at working comedy out for myself.

It is a very valid question. I'll try to offer up an answer, but hopefully others will contribute........

It isn't an absolute its an aptitude thing. Having less aptitude sets you at a disadvantage.

A lot of GPs, other health professionals, and particularly DHSS officials of late, have got it into their heads that autism should be obvious in a half hour interview.

It is not that people CANNOT communicate effectively, but that they are disadvantaged in ways that are still not properly understood - but possibly mostly related to picking up on facial expressions, voice intonation etc (and generating the right facial expressions etc - it is a two-way problem).

So yes, you can learn a lot of things with time - including being able to anticipate multiple meanings of words, and determine whether something might be a joke.

What holds thing up though is not being able to assimilate and spontaneously process supportive information (mainly non-verbal). You can be attentive enough, and informed enough to be on the lookout, but assimilation will be slower and less effective than for NTs. Also I don't think you can really learn enough to overcome those difficulties.

It isn't perhaps fair to give the example of a comedian. You watch/listen to a comedian in expectation of double meanings. You don't engage in normal conversation with that expectation (or maybe we should) and compared to NTs we are not as fast at spotting it.

Understanding double meanings, or metaphors, may not be enough. It is spotting them in context, at speed, as conversations move on, that puts people on the autistic spectrum at a great disadvantage.

And as I said before, that difficulty is unlikely to become obvious in a half hour interview, or a clinical session. So what on earth some clinicians are on about, playing down the impacts of being on the autistic spectrum, is beyond comprehension.