Tones of Voice and Facial Expressions..

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I was just talking to a friend who has been diagnosed with an ASD about this. She asked me how I am with social cues and this is what I said:
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"the reason I think I may NOT have an ASD, even though I have all the other symptoms, is because I can read facial expressions, for the most part, and I can decipher tones of voice (again, for the most part). I often mistake a lot of different looks for angry/mean/mad looks when in fact they're not. Like, a look could be "happy" and I'll see it as angry and get scared. Same with tones of voice. I believe the social anxiety may have sprouted up so young because I always mistook benign emotions for mean ones. And since I still do that, I often think people are being mean when they're not or don't like me when they do. I also see "shocked" looks a lot, when the person apparently is not shocked, so I think something I said has shocked them and get scared. I don't understand it lol."
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I am getting tested, finally, on August 19th, for a ASD, and I'm thinking the fact that I can discern these social cues, although I can get them wrong, will keep me from getting the diagnosis. The diagnosis makes my whole life make sense but I know that the professionals put a lot of stock on this and the fact that I can tell how someone is feeling a lot of times will keep me from getting any ASD diagnosis.

What are your guys' thoughts and are any of you similar with mistaking emotions for other, maybe negative, ones? Or do you just not see them at all?

I don't see them because I don't look at them. I see the emoticons on the left of the screen, and I understand them.
It's possible that the reason why you see a lot of negative emotions, is because you don't like socialising a lot? I don't know.
I think you can have ASD, and also being able to discern some, or most cues. Someone with Asperger is someone with Asperger. Not everyone have the same difficulties.
They focuses on facial expressions, I think because it's one of the things they can do best.

i often assume someone is mad when most of the time they are not.
i think it's because, when i was younger i was terrible at telling wen someone is mad, and what i did made them even more mad, so now i just assume they're always mad.

Thanks for bringing up this topic because I'm sort of the same. I'm actually pretty good with facial expressions and voices, at least as far as I'm aware. But I was a lot worse when I was a child/teenager, particularly with not being able to tell when people were just bored with me ranting about my special interests over and over to them (something my family always teased me about in a good-natured way, but I just did not see) and not being able to tell when people did not want me around or did not particularly like me.

Now that I'm a grown up I find that I've become pretty good at it, and I think part of it has to do with my obsession with certain tv series, especially in my late teens. I spent a lot of time on internet forums debating plots and characters and observing them behave and I think that improved my ability to read behavior an awful lot. However I still have trouble with some people, especially people who love to be sarcastic 99% of the time and make constant puns. There is a girl I know, for example, who's very friendly but being around her makes me uncomfortable most of the time because she likes to joke a lot and I often can't tell if she's being serious or whether I'm meant to laugh at what she's saying and especially if there are other people around who know how to respond to that I feel like an idiot and it makes me uncomfortable. It drains my energy being around her because I feel like I'm kept on my toes all the time.

The thing is, as far as I've always been aware, impairments in reading facial expressions and voices is one of the key aspects of Aspergers and so I am not sure whether I have it or not despite having pretty much every single other symptom. And having not being diagnoses as a child I'm not sure whether I've compensated growing up, like I was saying, or never had it and was just a naive kid or what. So I feel like I'm kind of stuck in a limbo.

this is quite possible, in fact, many people on the spectrum are better at interpreting facial expressions and tone of voice then the average NT.

the reason for this is quite easy: those are skills that can be learned. if you spend the time to learn facial expressions, you will indeed become able to read them, and becouse you actively practiced, you will be better then an NT that "just does" it.


this said however, it can indeed make it harder to get diagnosed if you can read expressions, most 'experts' still do not realise that the difficulties inherent to the spectrum are just difficulties that can be overcome with training.