How do you know you have issues picking up social cues?

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You're in a group of people and they're all talking and laughing and teasing and maybe doing stuff together but you have no idea when it's your turn to talk, what they're laughing about, whether the teasing is really just fun teasing for everyone or mean bullying and one person (usually you) is actually the butt of cruel insulting bullying, and when they do stuff you're confused as to how it was decided that the group was all going to do that because you were left out of the nonverbal social loop where the cues were passed 'round and agreed upon before the group acted.

People get mad at you when you try to interact with them and you have no idea why.

You speak and behave toward a person almost exactly the way another person did and get a totally different reaction.

The rate at which others converse leaves you hopelessly lost and confused because you're trying to follow the words only when words are only a fraction of what's going on within that conversation.

You ask someone to help you understand why a person said or did something that confused you and they say "it's a no-brainer" or "isn't it obvious" or words to that effect, indicating that there are social cues that most people would pick up on, but as a person on the spectrum, you miss every time.

And definitely what League_Girl said, she's absolutely correct.

haha this was my topic

Yeah my dad had to tell me to "use body language" and to me that made no sense at all, he told me to stand up straight, look at people, smile, ect and to me it seemed pointless so i didn't.

When i was diagnosed i was told theres a WHOLE language that was going on without me knowing.

there are only 4 REAL facial expressions in my mind; Happy (laughing, smiling) Sad (crying, frowning, quiet) Angry ( yelling, lots of arm movements, pushed down eyebrows) and Neutral. I cant tell when anyone is afriad unless they scream obviously but the rest of the emotions dont exist in my mind.

Body Language isn't a real concept to me, its just fake, fiction
There are only 4 facial expressions and other people on have 4 emotions

Other people do not have a thought process to me. I can't ever think that other people have opinions or intentions, even if they tell me it, its just a thing, its not real.

very hard to explain.

Yeah, this was me too, a lot. I thought I was pretty decent at reading people but kept having weird misunderstandings, in which I thought that a person was feeling one thing and then found out they were feeling something else when they acted in an unexpected way. Basically, I could see the body language and facial expressions, but I'd get them mixed up--confusing similar expressions like sadness, anger, tiredness, and illness. I didn't find out that I'd missed social cues until someone yelled at me for not picking up how they felt, and then it would be a complete shock.

I'm still not really sure what I'm missing. I was at a social skills class this week, telling about an upsetting experience. The therapist looked over at another group member and asked him why he was upset. She had read it correctly--apparently my experience reminded him of a bad memory of his own. I was looking at him thinking, "he's upset? He doesn't look upset! How can she tell?" I really couldn't see it, and it makes me wonder how much I miss.

You embedded this question in another thread. It intrigued me.


Before I first learned about Aspergers, I remember interviewing for a job (I was out of work at the time). The interviewer told me that he was really good at reading people. At the time, I remember thinking, "This is odd. Why would he tell me this? After all, how hard is it to read people?".

Actually, at this juncture in my life, I still have no idea if I am good or bad at reading people. I have no way to measure this.

A lot of times I'll notice that a person is doing something with their body or face, but I won't know what it means, or whether it's significant. I've also had people tell me, "You know they meant X when they said that right?" and I'd be totally bewildered. Recently I've started asking my mom what certain facial expressions mean when we watch them on TV together, and what she tells me is usually way different than what I had guessed, like once I thought somebody felt sorry for someone else based on her expression, but it turned out she actually felt admiration, which it the complete opposite. I find it really annoying, because it's like watching TV in a foreign language; you know you're obviously missing important things, but you have no idea what those things are.

My son once pointed at another stranger and asked me why he is mad. I told him "I don't know, I am not in his head." Would an NT know why they are mad? I am not sure how they would have responded and I was just left blank in my mind. I didn't even know the person was mad either because I was too busy with myself and going to my car. I am aware I do go off in my own world and not be aware of what goes on around me.

Another time when we were on the plane, my daughter was crying and my husband was trying to calm her down and get her to stop by taking care of her and I noticed only one guy was looking at us but I couldn't tell by his face if he was unhappy or not. But honestly I didn't care so I didn't bother worrying about it and fretting over his face. He was just a stranger so why did it matter?

And one thing I hated as a parent was taking my son to the play area and have him play because he liked to play rough and it was very difficult for me to tell if the other kids are just playing with him or just fighting with him but thank goodness he grew out of that game. Now I don't have to worry anymore and have anxiety and even dread taking him there or just telling him no and feeling like a selfish parent just because of my own problem with telling if other kids are playing or not with him and worrying about being a bad parent.

My son has even asked me about friends and I am just clueless about how to tell him how to make them. For all I know, they just happen. I can remember that in a story I read when I was eight about a six year old girl who wanted friends so she asked her mother how to get them and her mom said "I don't know, they just happen" so she tries to find a friend and even puts a note on her front door with her name and age and instead this boy Ricky who she knows shows up and he is five years old and at the end of the story, Lizzie realizes Ricky was her friend. It would be interesting if she was on the spectrum herself because I could remember relating to it. It would also be interesting whoever wrote it was also on it themselves which would explain the characters. I have actually told my son they just happen.

And from my personal experience body language has always been easier to read on TV than in real life because they exaggerate it and it's all predictable. Sometimes I miss it because another person will make a comment about a character and I was never aware of it. I could tell my dad is better at it than I am because he makes comments all the time about characters on TV and laughs and says things like "He really likes her" when I would ask what's so funny. But then it gets more obvious because movies just repeat the same pattern for when a character likes another character. I used to ask questions all the time about characters on TV and how they react and their actions they do and their facial expressions and after a while I just started to get tired of asking about it and I just quit caring and I haven't watched movies with anyone in a while so I have no way of asking anyway. But even before I knew about AS or even understood it, I would try and understand the characters on TV because I was simply curious and I found it fun at the same time. But in real life I was not all that concerned. I can see why kids would think I was selfish. I just say I am too lazy to even bother. Only time I really tried was in the play area because I felt it was so important. My husband will say I have troubles with it. But as a teen I thought I was good with it because I can tell when people are upset because they cry and yell and I could tell people are happy because they are laughing and smiling and cheering but it's actually more than that.

I could remember being eight and my speech therapist asked me after we had a talk about my inappropriate behavior on class "Am I happy?" and I looked at her face and I didn't see a frown, she was not crying, she was not yelling at me so I said "Yes" and she kept asking me and I kept answering yes because I didn't look at the context of the situation and then guessing she is not happy. Instead I only focused on her face. This would be a classic example of an ASD. Today I would know just by the whole situation they are not happy because I am not that literal anymore about body language.
A kid can be running to the street and the parent is shouting at them to stop or screaming their name I would know they are not angry, they were just scared so they shouted to get their attention.

I think I am better at reading body language than some other people on the autistic spectrum because I know when someone isn't yelling at me despite them raising their voice if I bring up a political topic and it upsets them so they start to yell and I just know they feel strongly about it so it's not that they are angry at me. I remember one ASD person telling me she isn't angry at me when she was raising her voice when I mentioned the double standard about parents killing their normal children and parents killing their disabled children and the ASD woman starts shouting how BS it is and how it pisses her off and then she told me "I am not mad at you" I already knew that but I think she was just concerned I was thinking she was yelling at me and that I did something wrong. I just knew she felt strongly about it because of her tone so it was triggering for her.

<--- Wouldn't know what a social cue is unless it crept up and bit him on the a**.

That example is me and my husband all the time. I knew his boss was a mercenary as*hole about 5 minutes after meeting me. My husband didn't realize this until this jerk fired him.

Usually my husband doesn't know until a situation has spiraled out of control and blows up like the Hindenburg, until someone flat out turns their back on him or says something point blank mean to him.

He also has face blindness. Faces don't mean much to him information wise.

I am now wondering if "social cues" are communicated deliberately (by the other person) or if they happen at the sub-conscious level. That is, unless I am in a very emotional state, almost all of my verbal communication is 100% deliberate. That is, I think through what I want to say, before actually saying it. Does the same happen with "social cues".

Perhaps, maybe the reason I think most other people are idiots, is the words that come out of their mouths don't make sense (i.e. they contain logical inconsistencies which are difficult to follow). Maybe they simply don't have a filter to ensure that what they utter actually makes sense. I don't know.

The one that springs up the most for me is I'll see somebody's working on something or watching a TV show that they're focusing on and I'll still start talking with them. It's not til after I try to strike up conversation til I go d'oh and realize I should have waited.

UGH, YES. I do this ALL THE TIME. It gets people so mad at me. I always notice it when it is way too late. My husband says I have the world's worst sense of timing. Like I almost WANT to be annoying.

I never even known about social cues till I joined this forum & things that are mentioned I know I never noticed.

This. And yes, I think that for most of them it is mostly sub-conscious. I think this is also why sometimes they get so impatient with us: our deliberation about communication slows us down considerably.



Yes, they sometimes speak without thinking because of their reliance on nonverbal cues to sort out and indicate what they really meant. Whereas we tend to overthink our word choices because for us the words themselves is 95-100% of communication and the inflection, volume, cadence, facial expressions and body language accompanying the words are minimally relevant.

Then they react primarily to our inflection, volume, cadence, facial expressions and body language instead of our carefully chosen words, and we are flummoxed at their inability to take our words at face value and understand that we literally meant precisely what we said, and only what we said.

I used to think it was only because other people often have different connotations for the same words. I think there is still some of that in my miscommunication problems, because I do the idiosyncratic use of language thing common to ASD people. But now I'm sure it's more than that. It's that while at one time in my life I thought I was pretty good at comprehending and using body language, I now know that I'm crap at it and my body language is a different language from most people's in my region and culture!

Yes, this is particularly frustrating. It's easy to concentrate on our own personal difficulties reading social cues, without remembering that our own cues (or lack of them) are so often being misinterpreted too. If I do become aware that my own instincts are failing me, then I can recognise it and ask questions that might resolve my confusion. But, many people seem to find it impossible to believe that their "social instincts" could ever be incorrect - so there's no obvious sign when I am being misinterpreted, and I can't take any action to clarify the situation. There have been times when I have not discovered that this has happened until months or even years after the original misunderstanding - and that's only the ones I know about (which might only be a tiny proportion of them).

Yes. And sometimes they get furious, or don't believe you, or think you're being manipulative, or they don't believe you could be so stupid, when you try to explain to them that their social instincts were incorrect. That you're different and relate differently and communicate differently seems an impossible concept for them to grasp. And they feel so, so insulted when you tell them they misunderstood your intent. For me--even people who know I'm weird, even the ones who know that the weirdness is a form of Autism, even the ones who have studied Asperger's disorder and know exactly what it is and what I am and why communication with me is sometimes tricky and bizarre--they still get mad and cling to what they thought I meant based on social cues I didn't even know I was making instead of believing what I tell them was really in my head when I said that thing they got all upset and worked up about.

I would like to know this answer myself as well because at least two people brought it up in my life time. But one person just asked me if I understood social cues. Someone a while back just assumed I didn't understand, but I didn't like her and how she went about it, I was afraid of her and she made me upset, and she just acted like she wanted to find out what was wrong with me and then this other person just asked. I was in some upsetting situations where I felt I couldn't talk to anyone about this because I felt judged and felt I was forced into talking to them. But when this nice lady asked me I just said that I don't know I just know from the way I feel about the situation or I take a guess. I never really know for certain to be honest. I don't have this problem very often as I don't talk to people that much and I like being alone. But I do notice that people are rude to me and that they reject me and I don't understand why. If feels like people reject me a lot. People make fun of me also and I perceive it as bad so I never talk to them again and I stay away from them. In the moment I might not always get it but later on I do.