Over-reading non-verbal language?

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I'm trying to figure out of I have AS. I feel obsessed with needing to know (is that a trait?)...I always ruled it out because I have the ability to pick up on non-verbal language. I can "read between the lines" and I can read peoples cues and things, but I'm only now just starting to realize that I might not be reading them as well as I assumed I was, or very well at all. I think I might be over-reading people's non-verbal language actually, and being very over sensitive to things that I think people are suggesting to me. I constantly repeat conversations in my mind and re-read emails to make sure that I didn't miss anything, and I think I might be assuming extra non-verbal cues that people didn't actually use. I always thought that people with AS were just oblivious to non-verbal language, but maybe I was wrong about that? If anyone could explain this to me a little bit better, I would really appreciate that because I am feeling so confused now. Thanks!

I tend to either ignore or over-read non-verbal cues. It's like there's nothing in the middle. When I'm in my "social mode" I'm constantly thinking about conversations, even days after them, and worrying about unintentionally hurting someone's feelings. For me, over-reading people is clearly a compensation strategy for not being abled to naturally read non-verbal cues.

Yes, it happens to me too. It happened more often in the past. Now my social anxiety has dropped to its lowest point ever (due to a very successful therapy) and I have more confidence in my ability to assess their body language - after all, I've been studying it for so long (in real life and in psychotherapy school). But it still happens. And it happens because I'm not naturally able to figure it out, it's always a cognitive process and I might get it wrong sometimes.

Maybe in your case it's some social anxiety, due to a lack of natural ability to recognize and use social cues (in case you are AS).

I do find social interaction a lot easier now that I've been able to manage my social anxiety. While I'm okay with body language reading, I'm still blind to all the other social cues. But I do not care much about it and, thus, my tendency to over-analyze what I've done in the course of the interactions has greatly diminished.

Yes, and I get accused of reading too much into things and being paranoid. When I realized I wasn't picking up on the "hidden meanings" in others' words much of the time (as a kid) I started mentally working out all the possible meanings and assuming the worst case was true, whether sarcasm, passive-aggressiveness or whatever. By now that's so ingrained it's hard to assume anything else.

We are no different from NTs in the amount of over-reading and misinterpreting of hints between the lines. The miscommunication among NTs is rampant too.

What NTs do have that we don't is Theory of Mind, which is a (subconsciously acquired and used) theory, i.e. a generalized assumption (for the sake of common ground) of how all normal people will feel in a certain situation. So even if ToM is very often wrong in a specific case, it doesn't matter, because what it assumes is the conventional assumption, so it is acceptable. As long as you misunderstand what everyone else could've misunderstood, you're fine in society.

Eg. it's customary to blow someone off by saying "I'm too busy". NTs, because they have ToM, automatically interpret it to mean "I don't want to be in touch with you". This is often an over-reading of hints, because some people are honestly too busy. However, if you over-read the "I'm too busy" and think it's a hint to no interest, you're fine. Because you applied ToM - the generalized, common, conventional, acceptable assumption. Among NTs, in this example, the one in the wrong is the one who said "I'm too busy" - because he used an expression that almost no NT will ever take literally. He is judged as having been "misleading".

If someone understood what I mean and can explain it more clearly, I'll be grateful. I'm sure I haven't explained myself clearly.

I think I get what you're saying. It sure explains a lot, at least to me.

Okay, I think more of it is right-brain feel and texture and letting a probability become increasingly obvious (or likely), this instead of the left-brain analytic approach where I'm trying to jump to conclusions.

And building on what Moondust says about theory of mind and the conventional assumption, I think a lot of it is taking a medium step, observing feedback, another medium step, observing more feedback, etc.

I can relate to this possible 'over-reading' and hypersensitivity. For example, if someone suddenly folds their arms (because I read that it indicates a defensive body posture), I worry that I said something wrong. Or if they don't give much eye-contact, I worry that they don't like me. I replay conversations over and over in my head, worrying that I said the wrong thing, and I can obsess about something as minor as reduced eye-contact.

I think that I understand what you're saying here...I'm not sure what I do in those cases though. Like, if a person said to me that they're too busy, I think that I would know that *could* mean that they're not interested in spending time with me. However, I think I would go back and forth trying to figure out if they're actually too busy (because sometimes I am too busy and I will tell people that I am too busy) or if they're just saying that they're too busy. I think I would most likely conclude that they are blowing me off, and than be really hurt by it, and try to figure out if there was something else in the conversation that might have indicated to me why they would blow me off.

This concept is honestly very confusing to me...but I *thought* I understood it from a "normal" perspective. It wasn't until I was trying to explain how non-verbal language works to my hubby (most likely an Aspie) that I realized that I don't know either! He told me that he thinks I over-generalize, but I'm pretty sure that he just literally takes everything at face value, so I don't think he's a very good person to go by.

lady_katie, what's annoying to me is that in society, the responsibility for clarity lies with the other person. You're not expected to give it a lot of thought, and you're seen as perfectly ok even if you misinterpret, as long as you interpret the conventional thing. And if the person truly meant that they're too busy, then it was THEIR responsibility to say something very reassuring like: "but I expect to go back to normal life within X days / months and then one of the first things on my agenda is to call you to do something fun together!". It's all so convoluted in society, no wonder we aspies keep flunking the test!

Moondust, I suspect you're right, but that's absolutely terrifying since there is no way to figure out what is conventional if one doesn't already know. It makes me wish for a dictionary of phrases with their conventional meanings (probably would also need to specify the location and subculture).

This is the real problem. The specific situation. I and many others have the generalities of convention pretty mastered by now, they're quite simple once you discover the basic principle.

This is where, to use yet another analogy, it's actually good to dance behind the beat a little (like many good dancers). We're not trying to be like Olympic ping-pong players where we immediately and abruptly respond to something. Instead we can start to feel our way and start to prepare to move in that direction if and when it becomes increasingly obvious.

And since we're trying to describe right-brain pattern recognition skills, like in zen buddhism we almost need analogies and stories to explain something indirectly.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 19 Jul 2012, 11:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

Maybe that's why I'm finding it impossible to understand AS by just reading about it. I am finding the descriptions of traits so very confusing, and I am having a really difficult time answering questions related to them (like on the Aspie Quiz). The only thing that's helping me at all is reading everyone's personal stories and understandings of it on here. It's helping tremendously actually.

Actually, not even the so called specialists agree on the meaning of each of the traits as iisted. Eg: empathy, ToM, prosopagnosia (i.e. face-blindness), there are as many interpretations of what is referred to by each of them as there are people reading them. You could post a thread asking the meaning of each, and see how varied the answers you receive are!