Flat Voice

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I am interested to understand why my aspie son speaks in a flat voice (I am aware this is a feature of aspergers). When he does his reading at school, the teachers encourage him to use expression. I know he can do it, but after a few lines of reading the book in a more espressive tone, he protests and stops. He seems to find it mentally tiring / difficult. I'm not bothered at all how he wants to speak but was just curious to know if anyone can relate to this. thanks.

My aspie husband and I discussed this a couple nights ago. He was excited to read "The Hobbit" to our kids (both NT, and so am I). So I bought him a vintage copy for Christmas and we decided to take turns. But... the kids always asked for me to read. I think it hurt his feelings. I told him don't take it personally, it's just he doesn't make the voices enough for the characters, and the exclamations with enough feeling. I felt badly, because he said "But I was trying REALLY hard" and I realized he was already working on it.

He said: Tonight, I'm going to sound ridiculous to myself, and maybe that will be right.

It was great! The kids loved it. I think he just accepted he'd sound utterly comical and over the top to himself and let go and just did it.

I can see where to a child, that would be upsetting - to sound silly or laughable to yourself. As an adult my husband can intellectually understand that even though it sounds ridiculous in his own mind, outside it sounds appropriate. To a child, that would be impossible I think.

Perhaps he also finds it embarrassing to talk with lots of expression, and so uses a flat tone for fear of sounding silly and drawing unwanted attention to himself. I know that was what stopped me from reading with any expression when I was in school; I felt safer and less exposed using a flat tone.

That could actually be the point, because when i'm embarrassed, I actually tend to occasionally talk in a flat tone when I happen to get embarrassed by whatever reason?
So it could most likely be the case or possibly could be really concentrating on his reading most possibly... I think this is a common problem that i've personally seen in autism/aspergers.

I find that whenever I do something which I think is accentuating what I'm saying, or the way my face is, that it comes through at about a quarter of the "volume" than what I thought. I think I'm varying my vocal tone, but other people don't. Also when I think I'm smiling, I'm barely turning up the corners of my mouth. If I'm animated about something it changes, but in most situations this seems to be the way I am.

There's also a very large difference between a parent doing something that feels ridiculous at home in front of their kids, and a child doing something that feels ridiculous in front of their class. I'm thinking your husband would be pretty unlikely to read like that in public.

I've always had a flat voice, and thought it was cruel when my English teacher last year would make me read aloud to the class...I guess she thought that with practice, it would change. But it didn't, it just made me hate her. I don't like my voice, and I avoid talking as much as possible. Maybe it's one of the reasons why I hate talking on the phone.

When I manage to get out complete sentences, I have a flat tone and it's really difficult to tell if I'm angry or sad. But I know how to pull off nuanced diplomatic voice well - if only for short bursts (like a minute or two.)

Sometimes it's just easier doing flat voice -even the exaggerated flat voice (Napoleon Dynamite voice for example.)

Boy there sure is no typical case of Asperger's. I was the excact oppsite when I was a kid. I loved reading and had a very expressive voice that amazed my teachers. It was math that I was truly terrible at. In Grade 3 I became matho-phobic and whould cry almost every day. Looking at all those numbers and fractions and symbols would make my brain go numb. It was humiliating, and I needed help from a "special ed" tutor to improve my math grades.

I sounded like a robot as a kid and when stressed or under pressure, I revert to sounding like a robot. It's not fair, Data and Gir sound more human than me. Gir usualy only just blurts out random nonsence but he dosen't have a flat droney tone to his voice.

i dunno what my voice sounds like. the pitch and tone seem to vary depending on the situation. i think if i'm nervous or if something's difficult to say it can be monotonous.

that is so true!

I know that I generally speak in a relatively flat tone, unless I am deliberately being silly or acting out an overly histrionoc parody of someone for the purposes of comedy. I find it more difficult to "turn it on" when I feel like I am being put on the spot. Also, reading out loud has never been my forte. I know I can put the emphasis on particular words when I read silently, but it gets lost in translation when I read out loud. This somewhat goes for sheet music, as well... although it is much less pronounced for some reason.

Maybe it takes a lot of concentration for him to focus both on the words he's reading and on making his voice sound expressive, and he can't keep that level of concentration for more than a short time.

I used to read with more expression than most of the other kids when I was very young - possibly something to do with my knowing how to read pretty fluently before I started school...the others were still reading one word at a time.

But I did end up with a rather monotonous speaking voice by the time I was about 10. When I heard it on a tape recording I was horrified. These days it's a lot better - I consciously practised a lot, in particular I recorded myself reading stories for my son, and managed to make a fair job of that. The main factor that decides whether I'm monotone or "normal" seems to be my confidence at the time.

I know how important it can be to avoid using a monotone voice - I myself have a lot of difficulty in listening to anybody who mumbles or uses the wrong intonation too much......I used to be less patient about it and would often simply give up trying to understand people who did that. To this day I can feel quite annoyed in such a situation, and I have to fight my innate tendency to dismiss them. Foreign accents are usually not so bad because I seem to have learned in most cases how their intonation varies from standard English, but if it's an accent I'm not used to and the syntax is also strange to me, then my attention can still shut down....it's much the same if somebody with good English and intonation doesn't bother to explain things clearly enough for me.

So I'm very much in favour of people learning good intonation. It seems to be a matter of sounding a bit "larger than life," exaggerating the tones just enough. It does feel a bit silly at the time, but when you play back a recording of it, it sounds a lot better than a monotone.

Don't worry about it. Educate the teacher by telling him or her that it's a clinical symptom of a clinical disorder, and to focus on other areas, rather than trying to swim against the unswimmable stream.

It's called "monotonous voice", and it comes under the nonverbal cues cluster of symptoms. It's a symptom of AS (it's as common as problems with eye contact).

Some have a sing-song voice, but most tend to have a monotonous one (a lack of appropriate emotional inflection for the situation). Some have a childlike voice too, but again, monotonous is the most common.

I wonder if this is why I have to tell people two or three times that I really am happy or pleased with something. It happened again yesterday with a professor who offered me a chance to attend a conference for free as a volunteer. I was quite pleased and gratified that he had thought of me for the position, but he asked me a couple of times in our conversation if it was really something I wanted to do. I assured him it definitely was and he was finally happy with that, but it seemed kind of odd to me that he didn't seem to understand my appreciation the first time.