Can Aspies read facial expressions?

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this could look to me like he has a major irritation in his sinuses brought on by sniffing pepper spray.


this could look like someone who has an otherwise neutral facial expression whilst in the act of accelerating downward about 2 seconds after being dropped, like in a fast moving descending elevator in the burj dubai building.

this looks like it could be the result of the deceleration he experiences on his still neutral facial expression as the lift slows to stop at the first floor.

i can not post any more pics because i will be flagged as spam, but this is enough to show that in my mind, any facial expression can mean anything.

I used to think I didn't have much of a problem reading facial expressions.

Then, shortly after I was diagnosed, I did a few online tests. My score was miserable. I couldn't recognize fake smiles, tell disgust from sadness, etc.

I think I know what a happy face, a sad face, a surprised face, etc. look like and can correctly infer other people's general mental state if they express it, but if anyone is trying to be misleading or conceal his/her emotions I don't detect it. It's quite distressing in some contexts, because I see some people smiling and acting as if they were happy while at the same time speaking in an odd, wrong way. In such condition I tend to focus on people I know and try to get them to tell me what is going on emotionally, because I can't really make sense of it by myself.

In short, it's a definite yes, but generally they aren't anywhere near as good at doing it as the general population.

I got 6/10 on the quiz.

I scored a 4/10 on the quiz.

I can read some of the basic facial expressions, but some expressions look very similar to me even though they have completely different meanings. I mean, I can't really tell the difference between a disgusted facial expression and a confused expression, or see the difference between a shy expression and a mischievous one.