Do most auties sound like Temple Grandin?

Post Reply New Topic

I sure don't.

When I was a boy, I spoke loud and fast in an English RP accent. I'm not British; I'm American. As I got older the accent started to fade but I spoke in a monotone. I still talk very fast and people often tell me that I have an odd accent.

My parents tell me that as a kid, I sounded like a robot from a bad 1950's B movie. As an adult I still think my voice sounds really weird. Listen for the part where I am explaning about calcium and D3 suplimentation. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dCfAiEYsE4[/youtube]

I have a strange accent but that's probably due to my upbringing. I was born in England but moved to Wales when I was 3, and two years ago I moved back to England... So my accent is a little bit odd, although it's nowhere near as Welsh as it 'should' be. Also, I tend to slur my words a little bit when I'm nervous or stressed.

My voice has a strange dull undertone or resonance to it most of the time. I always thought it was an artifact of hearing my own voice on a tape recorder (because my voice sounded "stupid" to me but people told me nobody likes their voice on a tape recorder), until I heard a tape recording of a woman with the same resonance in her voice. (She, too, thought it was an artifact of hearing her own voice on a tape recorder.) Sometimes it's more apparent than others but it does appear to be a feature of my voice.

It explained a few odd incidents throughout my life when people have imitated my voice when repeating something I said. I got very angry at my father once, believing (as I always did when people did this) that he was adding a tone of what most people consider a "stupid" voice to my voice. He was genuinely surprised and said "It's just what you sound like." I also had another kid come up to me when I was a kid and tell me I sounded like my mouth was full of rocks.

To me my voice always sounds the same however when I talk to others they say that my voice varies as if I am performing impersonations of others. One person thought I sounded and looked (if you saw my photo) like Chris Farley, sometimes my voice sounds like I am Hank Hill from King of the Hill (which is also discouraging since I disliked the majority of Mike Judge's work with the exception of Office Space and Idiocracy). I have always had very poor communication with my friends though, like I would make a comment to them that everyone would completely ignore then five minutes later someone would say the same thing word for word and everyone would react to it. It usually took me doing something very out of the ordinary for even a few of them to notice. Also I have never seen this movie about Temple Grandin, thank god for Wikipedia though.

My voice tends to go to too quiet than too loud. And I tend to pronounce certain things in the back of my throat -- I can't hear it when I speak, but on tape it sounds like I'm swallowing my tongue or something. L's and R's pronounced with a big space in the back of the throat, sounding sounds sort of like Bullwinkle J. Moose. And when I was a teen I had a sort of William... SHATner SOrt of FORCEful EMphasis... ON... FIRst... SYLLables, and some intonation problems. I did some do-it-yourself speech therapy on the last part, because it caused endless misunderstandings (people would read anger or sarcasm or into it). So that got better, though it was and is still exhausting at times. (but I don't talk to people much these days, so it's not much of an issue)

All of that was PITA but only in people misunderstanding/misreading, rather than being mocked because of any of it.

I can hear the forceful emphasis in Grandin's speech, and I've only heard one other ASD person speak IRL, but they also subtly had that, slightly.