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Literal Speech As a Child

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Kiseki
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19 Feb 2011, 8:38 am

sillycat wrote:
>>> Even with NTs this happens frequently don't worry too much about it. The world is a place of miscommunications.


Oh, see I am trying to assess whether or not I have AS. So I was curious to know if this was a trait found in very young NT children as well.


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Yensid
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19 Feb 2011, 1:57 pm

League_Girl wrote:
Someone took my humor seriously here recently despite having :P at the end. :x

I was a little pissed but stayed civil because this is an autism forum so what do I expect?


I know what you mean, but yes, it is worth remembering that this is an autism forum.

Still, I find that, in general, people here are more "normal" than in most other forums. NT behavior can sometimes be so bizarre.


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Yensid
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19 Feb 2011, 2:00 pm

Kiseki wrote:
sillycat wrote:
>>> Even with NTs this happens frequently don't worry too much about it. The world is a place of miscommunications.


Oh, see I am trying to assess whether or not I have AS. So I was curious to know if this was a trait found in very young NT children as well.


I'm pretty sure it is. I'm not sure what the cutoff is, but certainly at age 3 that sort of misunderstanding is pretty common.


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ruveyn
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19 Feb 2011, 2:07 pm

Kiseki wrote:
My dad recorded me and my brothers talking as kids and it was quite amusing to hear!

I was about 2 1/2 and my mother was recording me and my baby brother. She said to me "I'm taping you and Joe right now." I said to her "Oh no! Don't tape Joe up!" And she responded "No, I'm taping his voice. I'm not taping him up. Did you think tape, like Scotch tape?"

Was this odd for a 2-3 yr. old kid to think? At what age is literal interpretation of words acceptable and when does it start to become strange?


Normals catch on to abuse of language an non-literal usage before they are five years old. They understand when to take speech literally and when not to. For Aspies, the literal mindedness is chronic and long lasting. Ask me. I know. It took me years, nay, decades to finally realize that very little speech is intended literally. I still have to use empirically derived heuristics to comprehend non-literal speech.

I have children and grand children and only one (my oldest son) shows strong signs of being as Aspie. He an I used to have great very literal conversations with each other. Once I asked him what color was his bicycle. He answered: "blue on the side facing me". My son! I never was prouder of him as then.

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Digsy
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19 Feb 2011, 2:13 pm

AS_mom wrote:
No I don't think it's odd for someone with AS. I was caught out by 'Pull Your Socks Up', an english saying meaning smarten up. I was in middle school at the time and it was said by a teacher to me, when I pulled my socks up (we wore uniforms) and the whole class laughed at me, I was mortified, I tried to pretend that I was making fun of the teacher and ended up in even more trouble. My son has been caught out on many of these to, he's 13, and I have to watch what I say at times so he doesn't take the wrong way.


Phrases like that with an esoteric/exoteric meaning I often miss to this day. For example I'm 33 and I would have fallen for the "pull your socks up" one because the only time I can recall hearing it was in P.E. once, I had a childhood habit of rolling my socks down into a donut shape around my ankles.

I used to consider other things like "don't pull that face if the wind changes you'll stick like it", to be lies and people saying them liars, I hadn't quite grasped the idea of "figure of speach".

A broken heart would have meant death.

And I still do it now with the word broken when I think of that word it means broken as in not working, but some would argue that broken has several levels of use and broken objects might still work.