Understanding and sending text messages

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Hi,

I'm a Speech and Language Therapist working with teenagers who have communication needs. Some of the students have a diagnosis of Autism/Asperger's. A few of them find it difficult to interpret text or internet messages (e.g. on instant messenger). The students take the messages literally and can't read the emotions from the message. They might also send messages which make another person think that something is wrong without meaning to.

Have any of you had this difficulty or do you know people who have? Any ideas or advice I can give to the students who are finding it difficult?

Thanks!

well, good if you only have a few who have problems with it. the only real way to get a different meaning through text(messages), is marking the text in any special way. most likely smileys, in excess.

i am asperger, but a good amount of my friend are very nt and they have problems with this aswell(mostly when the mssage lacks smileys but sometimes even with them).

you can try to teach them the way smileys interact with typical messages, but beyond that i dont think there is much you can do.

hopefully it helps

Thanks for the reply! I agree that it's definitely something most people get wrong sometimes - did it myself yesterday and ended up in a whole chain of text messages trying to explain what I really meant!! I will discuss emoticons - thanks for that.