5 types of nonverbal communication

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I made these up, as I've noticed disparities.

How would you rate your abilities in each? I would say:



Try to signal me to pick up an object, move out of the way, move somewhere else, or do any other type of action, and I will be clueless. This is one reason I could never have played team sports.

I'm in my late 30s now, and rate around average on all these...but ask me about 15 years ago, and it would have been horrific

Like you, my cognition of these emotional cues depends on my attention (or my mood). If I didn't get much sleep the night before or have had a hectic day, then I'm at a disadvantage for sure.

So here goes:

1. Average (I can tell when "something's up", but don't always see WHY, and have to guess - sometimes I'm right, sometimes not.)
2. Average
3. Average
4. Intermittent, but probably comes out to a bit below average - this is the one aspect of the five that I could never quite master, like yourself. I can realize it more retrospectively, but I simply don't have the same spontaneous processing capacity that NTs have for this.

5. Above average - likely because I've had to deal with unsavoury characters for a while in my past, and became more experienced in recognizing these things. Also I've been married for five years, together for nine but she is not a deceitful type, it's more telling when she's depressed or upset.

1 - 3 low to average - I'm capable but need to pay attention

4 low - to below average

5 low, I have been duped into believing some epic lies

1. Emotion recognition (primarily based on facial expressions)

Null

2. vocal expression/prosody

Average

3. gestures related to #1 and #2

Null

4. gestures regarding space and time

Low

5. auras (tiny things that add up to a large impression of the person; for example, you can tell by a person's aura that she is depressed or has been bullied or is lying)

High

Do the auras include just getting a general feeling that the person you're with doesn't like you or has some negative feeling or are you talking about specifically feeling that a person feels depressed or bullied (knowing what's wrong so you can respond) because of their aura?

Edit:
1) below average

2) Vocal expression? ....... I don't know how to rate this one. My inflection is normal. Although, my voice may be a little weird, I get the occasional comment about it but it's something other than lack of inflection...it's just an odd rhythm or something,. When I tried to work as a telemarketer the supervisors said I sound like I have an accent and my voice is sing-songy. meh.

3) way below average

4) way below average

5) Above average if you mean just getting a general vibe from a person -usually a negative one ,like I've done something wrong, they're annoyed, they're upset or something, something's wrong. In terms of actually figuring out what's wrong through intuition: below average.

For example, with my mum ,I can tell if she's in a bad mood even if it's just a little bit of a bad mood and she's not trying to give me signals. The thing is I often think she's annoyed with me and when I ask her why she's mad at me she says really she's sad or worried about something irritated at someone or something else. Sometimes, I start to feel bad if I can sense she's in a bad mood - I'll just get really irritable or agitated or something and then I realize that my mum's in a bad mood and I'm sensing it and then feeling it too.

Last edited by daydreamer84 on 14 Apr 2013, 12:18 am, edited 3 times in total.

1. Facial emotion recognition - a bit below average. I've been surprised at what people were actually feeling.

2. vocal expression/prosody - a bit below average. I often think people are upset when they're not.

3. Gestures accompanying facial queues and prosody - average. I can't assign the gestures themselves meanings, but they help me interpret the other two.

4. gestures regarding space and time - high. This seems very logical to me. I think my visual concept of space and time maps well to other peoples'.

5. auras - very high, I'm actually very intuitive this way. I have repeated examples of people I know immediately to be very good, very uplifting people with a positive effect on everything around them. While I don't literally believe in auras, I do recognize when someone is like this because I feel like they have a 'light' or a 'spark' about them.

1. Below average because I don't pay as much attention to the faces of people
2. Significantly above average because I use my ears more than my eyes during social interaction which gives me a bit of an advantage for interpreting tones and inflections. Tone of voice is my primary method of reading people.
3. Average because even though I don't use my eyes as much as my ears and I don't pay attention to faces too much I still pay attention to people's hands most of the time
4. definitely below average but I've improved. I was awful as a child. I could never tell what people were pointing to.
5. Below average.

1.) average
2.) slightly above average

I'm actually a little bit above average recognizing pure emotion from facial expression, tone of voice, or other things like pauses, ticks, and other stuff. On a test I got a score higher than the average NT male, similar or just a little less than the average NT female. I'll put down average for facial emotion in real life because I don't make enough eye contact to read people as well as I could.

3.) below average
4.) below average

Gestures sometimes confuse me.

5.) average to above average

I think I pic up "auras" but it's kind of subjective and subject to confirmation bias. I don't think it's something mystical though, just subconscious intuition.

What I've always had more trouble with was verbal communication. I takes me longer to process verbal information, especially when people use slang and jargon. I've felt stupid on many occasions for not understanding some slang term or figure of speech, or being confused because something was supposedly "implied" that didn't seem at all obvious to me.

Overall I'd say I'm better at noticing non-deliberate communication (things like emotion, tone, and "auras") than deliberate gestures or verbal stuff. I'm also the opposite of many Aspies in that I'm visual and abstract as opposed to verbal and logical. That's why a lot of psychiatrists I've seen wanted to say I was HFA rather than Aspergers, even though I never had enough language impairments to classify as Autistic (I had so many obsessions and sensory issues though).

1. Emotion recognition (primarily based on facial expressions)
It depends on the person, the emotion, level of subtlety and how much I pay attention. Anything from below average to horrific. With my mother I think I'm actually about average.

2. vocal expression/prosody
About average.

3. gestures related to #1 and #2
Depends entirely on the person, situation and how much I pay attention. Could be anything from almost average to horrific.

4. gestures regarding space and time
Horrific

5. auras (tiny things that add up to a large impression of the person; for example, you can tell by a person's aura that she is depressed or has been bullied or is lying)
Again, it depends, but usually: Significantly below average - below average. Only exception is my mother; I actually think I'm 'above average' to pick up from her, and certainly nothing under 'average'.

1. Below average. I approximately get "positive" or "negative"

2. Below average. Again, about "positive" or "negative"

3. Below average

4. Slightly below average.

5. Complicated. But high.

I'm an stereotypically alexithymic autistic person who is below average at reading people's emotions, has social problems because of that, but fits the description of an empath.

It's complicated.

So, I can't tell "this person is upset", but I'll effectively feel their emotions, because of how I process things in a weird complicated manner. I get that part very strongly, but can't necessarily use the information, and react like its happening in myself, and then because I'm alexithymic, I can't pick up what is happening when its within myself either.

Those results are interesting. I'm a highly intuitive person, and until now I though that this was a unusual feature in aspergers...

1. Emotion recognition (primarily based on facial expressions)
Lower/average. I can tell positive from negative facial expressions most the time. But mess up on joking and sometimes shocked faces look happy.
I can't go further than positive or negative often though.

2. vocal expression/prosody
I think I'm average. I don't normally pay much attention but I suppose that means I am confident enough in it to accuse someone of sounding angry. I know when people sound shocked or happy.

3. gestures related to #1 and #2
Low/average.
If this means general body language, including paralanguage then I'm ok at mentally listing the possibilities of each thing I pick up, but only in an academic manner. I find I have more than enough for an answer so can be overwhelmed with conflicting evidence. I can identify positive body language. Not always negative though.

4. gestures regarding space and time
Not sure what this means, and if this means body language no idea what above means! I thought gestures where what people did with their hands to be honest!

5. auras (tiny things that add up to a large impression of the person; for example, you can tell by a person's aura that she is depressed or has been bullied or is lying)
Very Low.
Cannot easily tell when one is lying. Can only compare behaviour to normal to guess if they seem unusually subdued. Never been able to tell if someone is being bullied but have concluded 99,9% have been due to conversations.
Often make socialising awkward for others because I don't pick up on the atmosphere.

Interesting.
I think because of my Alexthymia it might be why I find Empathising hard. But I can actually do it if I use my brain enough to find a situation that's similar. it means I'm great at empathising with kids because I can figure out why they would be upset that someone stepped on their flower and tried to offer them a different one which clearly won't make up for the one they stepped on.
However I can't understand things like jealousy because it's too far from things I've felt.
I can still logically understand most emotional things enough to pass as an empathetic person I think, but the person I feel I most identify with right now is my housemates Sociopathic partner. Alexthymia is weird. There are a lot of things I know how they'd make me feel but I'm not sure if that's the normal feeling due to Alexthymia because I feel like my emotions are a big washing machine mixing up loads of things.

I'm more likely to feel my emotions physically; such as love is in the belly or chest, sadness is more like the lungs, and stress causes actual illness because I don't notice it for so long it needs to do that to be noticed. I'm not sure about happiness.

If I felt anyones emotions it would just make me feel confused, I don't know if I'd know I were responding to them.

1. Emotion recognition (primarily based on facial expressions)

40% success rate I'd say, I have trouble with many of the small differences and eye signals especially. There is a lot to take in at once.

2. vocal expression/prosody

I can pick up on emotion in speech from those around me on a constant basis such as family and coworkers, mostly irritation/frustration because I try to avoid annoying them, and also placation is pretty evident. Outside of those people it is much harder to tell.

3. gestures related to #1 and #2

Speed is the most obvious indicator of emotion, fast usually = anger or excitement, slow or wafty = calm. Other than "come here", "be quiet", "help!", and rude gestures I don't really get them and go by the speed instead for a general idea.

4. gestures regarding space and time

I can tell where people are pointing in general, but unless they mention the distance/landmark I can totally miss something. The only time gesture I can think of is pointing at the wrist as in a wrist watch and meaning "running low on time".

5. auras (tiny things that add up to a large impression of the person; for example, you can tell by a person's aura that she is depressed or has been bullied or is lying)

Anger can be almost palpable in the air, otherwise not much. I know sighs can mean frustration and slouching can be a sign of depression or withdrawl, but usually people will say they are ok or bored, which could be that they just don't want to talk about it or I'm just wrong in the first place.

Despite learning/studying about in-depth and small body language cues, it is much harder to read them in practice, and going off of them in "reading the eyes/face" tests still gives a poor outcome, and it didn't help much on the human lie detector test that was posted on here a few weeks ago (I think I got about 1/3rd right).