What type of nonverbal problems do you have?

Post Reply New Topic

This is a tricky question to formulate. Maybe you can suggest an improvement.

If anyone's answer seems to contradict their score on the Reading The Mind in The Eyes test - http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt86249.html - could you please post to explain how you see things.

I think I know what you're asking.

Can you read body language and facial expressions, given time to think about it? Or is it simply impossible?

Correct me if I'm wrong.

For me, time to think about it improves my accuracy. But that's not saying much, I still get it wrong far too often.

And yeah, I think a lot of aspie's scores on the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test would be much lower if, rather than showing a photo, they showed a short video where the person made the expression for just a second or two, and if there was a time limit to answer. It would better simulate the way these things work in real life.

I'm a very solid both.

In general, my problems on that test were not so much that I failed in the general field, but that I failed with certain expressions that could potentially be very bad to misinterpret.
For example, I mistook flirtatious for hostile, as I have during earlier tests. It appears that I usually only misinterpret signals with a heavy emotional value, such as flirting or hostility.

No amount of time - I've taken different amounts of time for different answers both right and wrong - could change that.
I suppose it's off to another social skills course for me.

I tried to make them disjoint sets. How both?

How do you talk about if in a real-time scenerio you don't get enough, while in pictures you can score almost average, when part of it is from effective not receiving the information and part is from not processing?

I suppose I'd be "receive incomplete information" but that doesn't seem right at all.

I voted receive full information but not process in real-time, but the story is more complicated.

I receive massive amounts of information from non-verbal cues that are taken physically and not processed in the social-emotional direction in real-time. I see all the facial features in miniscule detail down to the nosehairs, tooth grooves, and iris specks, and I see all the facial features flitter-flutter, and I can replay this video from memory later, but I almost never think about what the people with the facial features are thinking in their minds when they are sending these non-verbal cues to me, especially not the complicated subtle social stuff about me and them and others we know and all our relations with each other. If you gimme the RMET with the multiple-choice pre-selected states of mind and the wonderfully grainy pictures for to refer, then I have no problem doing the analyses and matchingks, and I got 34/36 on that test. I missed the questions with answers "distrustful" and "nervous". If I had to come up with the fill-in-the-blank states of mind, then I would score poorly. After real-time interactions, I can analyze the non-verbal cues in my video, but I won't be able to come up with most of the complex social-emotional meanings, because my social knowledge is eggstremely limited due to not knowing that the noises and movements that people were making in my direction were a form of mind-to-mind communication until the 8-10 age range, a rather late start for learning communication and social cognition. Also, I receive equally massive amounts of information from non-social sources, like all the stuff in the room - books, couch wrinkles, carpet fibers, dust specks on the blinds, wood grains on the tables - no filtering of physical information and no emphasis on social meanings. My automatic interest in dust specks and carpet fibers likely causes me to miss some hoooman non-verbal cues if I am spending lots of time automatically looking at these things instead of hooomans.

As far as I can tell, the first option applies to me when it comes to non-verbal signals.

Besides that however, doesn't A lead to B if A goes on too long or if there's too much information?

Struggling to process it all stimuli in real time results in an insufficient amount of information about the situation for me because the floor of incoming stimuli doesn't stop and whatever doesn't make it into my subconsciousness because it's "full" already gets lost.

Then there is also the possibility that someone picks up on social cues and that it is more information than they can process in real-time but that this person still doesn't pick up on the same vast amount of information that is available to the average person.

I think I see all the signs, but don't know how to use them or interpret them as fast as I would want.

However, every time I hear about body language, it mentions all kinds of strange signals that don't make sense and that I certainly do not pick up on, so maybe it's not just about processing data.

Both for me. I am very bad in real time and just bad after having had time to think about it.

Dammit, I have a perfect test for this produced by Cambridge Autism research centre but I haven't yet figured out a good way of putting it up on a web site. It shows short clips from films then asks you to describe the actor's emotions. If it included a time limit on how long you have to answer I think it would be pretty realistic.

I can correctly interpret what I notice and already understand, but most I miss. Somebody told me I didn't acknowledge or respond to their non verbal communication and my first thought was that I never remembered them using any. I think if someone systematically taught me body language I could do a lot better than I do.

I chose the "insufficient information" answer for the quiz, but really I think that it's a combination of not enough information/too slow processing for me. I can get a general idea of how someone feels from their expression because I've learned some clues to watch for. It's vague and inaccurate, though. And I'm easily fooled if someone masks their expression at all. I don't like that quiz because it's basically just process of elimination for me. I can discern general feelings like happy or sad, comfortable or uncomfortable. So when I have to choose an answer, sometimes it's very plain which one it is. On some, I am absolutely guessing, but the law of averages says that I will get some of those correct. That certainly doesn't work in real life.

If I didn't have a selection of answers to choose from and just had to fill in the blank, my score would be pretty low.

I think I fall under both. I think I miss a lot of stuff, and I know for a fact that it takes me longer than NTs to process what input I do take in. It also takes me longer to process other types of input, as well. This creates a time lag effect that is noticeable to me and to others. I used to hate playing board games with my cousins and others when I was a child. I always felt they were cheating. It wasn't until very recently, this past year I think, that I realized that they had just gotten impatient while waiting for me to process things before taking my turn. So they would start playing past me, which caused me to accuse them of cheating. It happened a lot. I am in my early 50s now, and it took all these years, and my discovery of my Asperger's to finally figure that out. I can't get rid of all of the hurt feelings I suffered as a child and teen, but this definitely does help some. It is a relief to know the cause of my problems.

The first option, I seem pretty able to get all the information it just takes me a while to process it....if that's what you mean. I didn't take the quiz though because I've already taken a test like that and got all the eye expressions right, which I can do IRL however I can't do that and interact with someone because I cant process everything at once.

Receive full information but struggle to process it in realtime.

I receive full information and i don't have a problem processing it in real-time. I can also 'think back' and review non verbal communication used by others. However, I think this might be a result of my special interests.

My problems lie in, how effectively to use the information once i have IT and showing appropriate cues(so others can read me).

how effectively to use the information: how to help others without drawing attention to myself.

TheSunAlsoRises

Yeah, same thing here, I can get all the information but if I have to know what it means as well things get really confusing. I can read people very well on "vibes", but that's about as vague as you can get huh lol