Published on 12, July, 2020
In another discussion, this has been raised as an area which people on the spectrum find difficult.
I have found references to this problem in every book I have read so far.
As an undiagnosed person, this is one aspect that I find difficult to understand in relation to myself. If I am missing non verbal communications, I cannot be aware that I am. I am able, however, to understand quite a lot of the above, and have assumed so far, that this is just something that I have learned. (I'm another child of the 50s) So why is it such a big issue in books on asd?
People with aspergers are as intelligent, or more so, than nt people. So why would they be unable to learn that a phrase may have more than one meaning. Words with multiple meanings are commonplace, eg wind, cheque/check, love, row, tier/tear
. Do we not learn some of these things with time? I am slow at getting jokes, but get there in the end.
Do other people here, find this to be a major issue? Is Frankie Howard really beyond the comprehansion of those on the spectrum? I don't mean to be rude in asking this, it is just the one thing I have read that really doesn't seam to fit.
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.