Body language is a stupid language!! !

Post Reply New Topic

I might be inclined to agree with this. Also, the neurotypical social radar does mis-interpret all sorts of Autistic movements as 'cues' and 'signals' when we are not sending any 'body language' message, but simply perhaps even stimming. I also wish they would just listen to our words.

This level of Autism ignorance would be very likely to bring an ADA lawsuit. I can frequently be crying when I am laughing, and laughing when I am crying. I cannot control my eye gaze very well, or body posture, stimming, or much of anything else - anyone who tried to "read" my Autistic savant "body language" would very likely go totally wrong.

Of course, there are Autistic savants who do not communicate / understand "body language" AND don't communicate in words - some of us use language in pictures, also PECs systems.

Wow - some neurotypicals here really have a lot to learn about Autism, and I hope their false sense of Autism reality doesn't lead them to commit any hate crimes on any Autistic people in the meantime.

People are more inclined to lie with their words, less so with their bodies.

I agree with it being an important language as well.

I'm quite expressive,but my body language can be misread a LOT by people who don't know me

I often look bored when I'm actually interested and I always look like I'm not listening because I can't make eye contact without cringing so I always look everywhere but

Unless they know.
I wonder if people with ASPD can lie with their body language?
That would be cool.

Yep, I think you might be right. It may be difficult for people to correctly interpret unusual body language. But the weird thing is, more often than not, it will work out fairly ok. Because people will, more often than not, be able to somehow perceive that any unusual combination of body language and words, or body language unusual in the context, signal something they cannot properly understand and it will hopefully promt them to not jump to conclusions about what the person means. For me, it's not difficult to understand fairly quickly to take extra care when I meet people with a combination of body language and context which is unusual. It's easy to spot.

Ah....Yay for smart NTs like you, Janissy, and my mom...

Klingon should become the standard

it's not stupid. it's actually a very efficient way of encoding basic information. You can (well, if you're not like me, anyway) encode this information while discussing entirely different subject matters. You can be exchanging data on nuclear chain reactions while simultaneously making arrangements for a conjugal encounter. It's like being a computer with several ports over which data can be sent.

Furthermore, it's advantageous because it's precognitive. Advantageous in the sense of natural selection. It allows certain basic drives (toward sex, for example) to operate in spite of top down processes that would rather focus on something else. So while it may be not helping *you* the individual, it is working overtime to ensure that your genes are "happy".

my genes dont need body language to be happy

If you know enough body language I'm sure you could fake it if you wanted to.
I'm not sure if it would be easy or hard.
I'd attempt it but I'd probably forget to do it like I forget to use body language in a normal situation.

I worded that poorly but hopefully you get it.

i wouldn't call it stupid. i just wish that it was more like other languages with an assortment of texts and dictionaries about to help you learn it. there are very many moments in life where someone makes a gesture that i cant understand and wouldn't it be nice if i could go home and look it up in my body language dictionary?

(such things do exist but they aren't anything as common as your french textbooks or japanese dictionaries.)

lotta little Eggkids out there, are there?

I'm not exactly certain, since you're quoting me, whether you're leveling the NT accusation my way. But I'm not NT, have been here on WP, albeit on extended hiatus the last two years, since 2005.

Autism isn't a special club btw. The human species runs a range of abilities when it comes to interpreting verbal and nonverbal languages. The side of the human spectrum upon which autism falls tends to have more difficulties with multitasking interpretation of incoming sensory information, making simultaneous decoding of multiple cues more challenging. C'est tout.



My guess would be that in general it's harder to lie with the body because it is not under the same level of voluntary emotional control as language seems to be, particularly when it comes to facial expression. Not that it's impossible, as every actor has to lie in order to be believable. But I suspect it's just harder to do so.

And?