Interpreting the "nervous laugh"?

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I find the nervous laugh to be one of the most ambiguous emotional cues - do you?

I mean, as an "Aspie guy" as I think most of us on this forum are, it seems to be mostly a female thing...how many times did it happen you were talking to a girl and she did the nervous laugh? I found out more than once, after the fact, that she was uncomfortable in my presence...when all along I thought it was a shy personality

But for someone you just met, there's the lack of a baseline, which is why we tend to conflate personality with certain nonverbals more directed at US. I suspect lack of baseline may be an issue for NTs too, when they just met the person. After all, that factored into episodes of that show "Lie to Me" with Tim Roth. He always had to get a baseline of someone he just met.

It wasn't until a trusted NT friend told me about "combo cues" - that is, in said example, if the young lady shuffled slightly away from me or cringed inwards _while nervous-laughing_, then that was bad. If she leaned in or shuffled forward while doing so, then great!!

I like to also use the analogy of radio frequency when comparing ourselves to NTs ...they occupy a frequency band of more subtle emotional common understanding, with I guess lower amplitude; but we need the signal to be more prominent. Yet we DO overlap somewhat on those wavelengths. Just not enough for them to give us a "passing mark", unless rigorous and experienced masking is involved.

Hope that helps?