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daedal
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12 Apr 2011, 5:50 am

Do you have problems with this?

With my family, it's pretty simple. I can understand them just fine (except maybe ones I haven't worked out yet :D) and when they're angry I get the message because I know what angry sounds like, but in school, I guess people are more confusing...in my old school, there were quite a few bent on being malicious, so they sometimes adopted very innocent tones of voice and I got completely taken in. I guess that's not really 'tone blindness', though, since I recognised them as innocent, but it makes you realise how much NTs must rely on body language, facial expressions and tones of voice all working together.
I read in a book about Aspergers that people on the spectrum often have problems with recognising the nature of the tone, in much the same way as confusion over facial expressions.



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12 Apr 2011, 6:56 am

This is true for me. As a child I never picked up on facial expressions or tones of voice but now I exaggerate both of them. It's either that or people are pissed with me 90% of the time.


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ryan93
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12 Apr 2011, 7:08 am

Sarcastic is easy, but angry is difficult. I find it difficult to tell if someone is angry with me, especially girls :?


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littlelily613
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12 Apr 2011, 7:14 am

I can't tell anyone's tone of voice--not even close family members. Sometimes they are joking with me but I don't realize it. Other times I think they sound angry because of their tone, but they are really not. Tone of voice means nothing to me--I try, but never get it right.



DCxMagus
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12 Apr 2011, 7:16 am

in middle and the beginning of high school I had major problems with picking it up from other people, but after junior year I began studying people's body language and tones extensively and began to pick it up quickly. Still to this day it is one of the many things I have to actively focus on while in conversation with people or I will tend to overlook it.

As for my own tone of voice and said facial expressions, that's just a lost cause I've never had the correct tone of voice for anything but "annoyed" apparently and from what other tell me trying to read my facial expressions is like trying to translate ancient Greek into hieroglyphics. This of course 95% of the time is far from the truth I rarely get annoyed with people(I'll just leave the situation before it becomes a problem) I just tend to have a mono tone voice and when I explain things to people I know what no clue about what I'm talking about I do it slowly and at a very basic level, great for getting them to understand said concept and actually perform the task, bad at making friends while doing so since said process tends to make them think I don't think highly of them or that I'm being an elitist prick.



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12 Apr 2011, 7:44 am

My husband and I both have problems reading each other's tone of voice. As a result, we're constantly saying, "Are you mad at me?" or "What's wrong?" when nothing is wrong. We also have arguments that start because one person says something innocent, the other person takes it as snarky/sarcastic/angry, and then that person says something back that really IS nasty. Then each of us thinks the other one started the argument out of nowhere. It probably doesn't help that we're both Aspish (not necessarily Aspie, but leaning that way) and we're from two different countries. :?



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12 Apr 2011, 8:19 am

For me it depends on the individual. Some people are quite expressive emotionally and so it affects their tone of voice, making it easy for me to undrstand. However, some people have a deadpan voice which doesn't alter much with their moods, this can be difficult for me to pick up on.


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anbuend
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12 Apr 2011, 9:35 am

I can tell tone of voice, but pretty much only when I'm not processing language. My brain tends to favor tone over language, but when I do do language, it switches to language over tone. It's both at once that I can't do, and I've heard this from many other people including Temple Grandin. (And Donna Williams too... like me, her brain is more about tone than words, but she can do words with great effort.)


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12 Apr 2011, 10:38 am

Quote:
"Don't look at me in that tone of voice it smells a funny colour!"


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