Does anyone NOT have trouble reading social clues?

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Sedaka
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14 Oct 2007, 9:49 am

some i get some i dont.

it's hard to say where i er most... but i always interrupt people... i tend to think they have some sort of mal intent which manisfests in me either by thinking they're making fun of me or i feel i have to apologize over random things...

and my humor isnt amusing sometimes... it's often course or irrelevant (yet uncontainable)


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Malachi_Rothschild
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14 Oct 2007, 10:07 am

I think I'm probably better at reading situations than I am at reading people, and I've gotten very good at reading situations. I'm trying to tell people more openly and directly what I think they might not be saying. So for example, I was in SL talking to someone about a samurai outfit I had on. I had said something they didn't understand, and when I expanded I knew I'd included more jargon, yet they said something like, "Cool." So I said, "It's okay if you don't understand or aren't interested. We can talk about something else." To which they replied, "No, I'm interested." To which I replied, "Okay, I'll continue." And I went on to talk about it a bit more. I'm still really not sure if they were being truthful or polite.

On the other hand, if someone comes to me to talk about something that happened to them with another person, I can usually identify situational patterns in the behavior of both people and from that deduce patterns of thought and/or feeling-states.



nominalist
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14 Oct 2007, 11:41 am

As a kid, I had trouble reading almost everyone. I would go on and on about my pet subjects oblivious of whether the other person cared.

However, I am now 51 years old. Over the years, I have deliberately taught myself how to read people. At this point in my life, I think I am actually better at it than most people, but it did not come easily.

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marshall
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16 Oct 2007, 9:03 pm

I don't have problem reading emotions or social cues. Knowing how to react to cues is a different story. Sometimes people assume I don’t understand them when I do because I don’t know how to react to let them know I understand. For example, someone will be talking to me and they will say something jokingly. I guess I’m supposed to smile or nod or something to acknowledge their joke but often I just don’t react at all and then everything breaks down. It isn’t that I don’t understand the joke, it’s just that the joke isn’t funny to me and it isn't natural for me to fake a reaction just to be social. I'm not good at faking a smile either and people sometimes think I'm being moody when I'm not. I think it usually goes right past me that I am supposed to react a certain in some given social situation and I don't realize I did something wrong until its already too late.



PenitentSpark
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16 Oct 2007, 9:15 pm

Dave089 wrote:
I understand social cues fairly easy but i find it hard to react to them

Ditto.

I often have trouble reading/controlling my own social cues and thinking of how others will read and react to them.



Ki_Lunacy
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16 Oct 2007, 10:04 pm

I can understand most of them. The trouble is that I can't react to them very good.



serenity
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16 Oct 2007, 10:34 pm

I do understand some social cues. I have a hard time gaging myself. Sometimes, I think that I did wonderfully in a social situation only to find out later that I didn't. I have what I refer to as my social rolodex stored in my head. It's kinda like a computer program that flips through facial expressions, and matches it with the context of the situation. I have had to had a successful experience with understanding certain facial expressions, and situations to be able to "store" it so to speak, and use it later. The older that I'm getting the more I learn. It's still 50/50 for me. I'll know that I didn't do something that was expected, or that I did something wrong by the awkward feeling, but I often don't know what.



Kitsy
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16 Oct 2007, 11:46 pm

I'm not sure what's going on anymore with social cues. I feel like I'm picking up on more hints and what a fake smile looks like but I've always had a developing sense of people and had other ways of picking up on things other than verbal communication.



pandd
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17 Oct 2007, 3:47 am

I use analytical means to match up movements of face/body with a catalog of potential meanings, but often it's not possible for me to determine which of a couple of alternative 'meanings' is the correct one, and things usually 'go too fast' in social situations for me to even hope to catch up - especially if there is more than one person in an interaction I am party to, or someone I am unfamiliar with is involved.



Sapphix
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17 Oct 2007, 6:00 am

Well, the jury is still out about my Aspergers based on the length of my index finger. But there are many things that describe me in a way that nothing else ever has. I most certainly do struggle with social cues. However, I do think that we need to define "social cues". I have no problem reading the emotion underlying people's faces at all. In fact, I tend to see that to a hypersensitive degree. The slightest change in someone's emotions comes across loud and clear to me. My trouble in a social situation is that people don't believe that their facial expressions speak a different language to their words, and thus their words never seem to match what they are really thinking/feeling. Thus I am always confused and not at all sure what to respond to. And neither do I understand the formalities of social cues - what to say and when and what is appropriate. Those feel like rules I never received. Because all I know how to do is to be honest and direct. The people around me, whom I suppose in a group situation would be primarily NT, seem to have a consensus about disguising their real emotions, thoughts or feelings that I don't understand. Ramble, ramble..



shopaholic
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17 Oct 2007, 8:23 am

I can understand the obvious facial expressions etc, especially when I know the context.
It is the subtler ones that I am probably completely oblivious to.

For all I know, aspies who say they "can" read social cues may be totally unaware of some "next layer down" that can only be seen by NT's.

As others have already said, my problem is more to do with the cues I do (or don't!) give out myself.

There seems to be some kind of invisible glue that makes NT's automatically flock together in a social gathering which I just can't see or give off.

I read the other day that 2/3 of communication is nonverbal, and that we are all communicating all the time.

Well, I most certainly am not! When I am in my own bubble, which is most of the time, I most emphatically do not want others to look at me and try to interpret my "body language". As I am not trying to do to them - they are just there as part of my surroundings.



Triangular_Trees
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17 Oct 2007, 9:26 am

For the most part I can't read them, but I have no trouble reading the looks that my bf's parents use to communicate with each other. I'm convinced his dad is an aspie - I used to stop just short of saying he was one, but from what he recently told me, he is, he's just learned how to deal with that, and I noticed his mom had the traditional aspie "fidgeting" at dinner, so maybe their aspieness is why I can read what they're commmunicating to each other



Ana54
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17 Oct 2007, 11:46 pm

Anxiety, depression and dwelling on my past and on stuff I'm worried or depressed about takes away from my ability to pay attention to such things. Once I get prescribed something I'll be alright, I think. :)



Macallan
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18 Oct 2007, 1:53 am

I'm okay at social cues and can pass for an NT on first acquaintance. I do make inappropriate responses though and only realise when there's a moment of silence and people stare at me. Some of my 'social cue' skills are innate, and some must be learnt because I occasionally have a little voice in my head saying 'make eye contact' or 'stop fidgeting/scratching' or 'smile now'.

I can also read the body language of horses and dogs pretty well. That's definitely a learned skill and took some practise, although now it's mostly second nature. I work with a number of horses and their owners daily and it amazes me how little NT owners can communicate with their horses in a way the horse understands, or hear/read what the horse is trying to tell them.



alliegirl
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18 Oct 2007, 4:13 pm

My daughter can read socials cues pretty well, its the sneekiness that some NTs do to her. They mat be making fun of her, and won't get it all the time. She is a teenager, and at work they have been sneeky mean to her. It drives me crazy!! ! I hate that they do that to her.



Frosty
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18 Oct 2007, 4:22 pm

lol How would you know the difference? I mean I think I can at times and other times I bereft of any insight, specially with females. /ouch! sorry to slam the fairer gender.