Body Language

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Neurotypicals rely on body language more heavily than they do regular speech when communicating. Body language communicates emotions, which for neurotypicals are typically not far away from the thinking part of the brain. Emotions are actually the most common conversation topic for neurotypicals, but they communicate their emotions through nonverbal language that is more or less automatic from birth (although even they need practice at some things in childhood to become good at it), whereas the literal verbal dialogue is just random fluff that they don't give a s**t about.

The reason life is so hard for aspies is because neurotypicals assume that the emotional responses they have that equate smiling with happiness (and hundreds of other things) are inherently, ubiquitously valuable. But of course we know that they just plain aren't. I am under the impression that getting out of that fantasy world to communicate with aspies is sometimes a painful experience for neurotpyicals, which is why many intelligent neurotypicals who are capable of being good friends to aspies choose not to be.

In conversation, neurotypicals hold body language>voice tone>literal speech by a wide margin. In other words if you say, "I love you," (or any other emotionally charged statement) without the accompanying nonverbal language, they won't believe you.

There's a few misconceptions here, which are similar to things I've seen elsewhere on this board. Let me try to analyze it...

I don't think it's true that emotions are the most common topic of conversation. Most of my conversations with my friends involve random discussion of our interests, food, sex, comparing information on social relationships (in other words, gossip, more or less), humorous banter with no particular point... etc. It seems like the verbal dialogue is doing all the work here! Non-verbal communication is a necessary component, yes, but what it shows is more to do with someone's attitude, the emotional subtext of what they're saying, etc. Even so, the words determine all the content!

I found a video on youtube that attempts to disprove the oft-quoted 55-38-7 rule. Search for "Busting the Mehrabian Myth" - I can't post it because I don't have enough posts yet to post URLs.

Another confusing thing when people talk about body language is that there are different types.

So there is body language which is congruous with speech, whether it is used instead of, or as well as. For example, nodding yes, waving hello, pointing direction, and more complex gestures to illustrate sizes, dimensions, shape etc. Most of the time these are easily understandable, because they are descriptive. Some people use these gestures a lot when they speak, others very rarely - and that includes people on the spectrum as well as everyone else. The tendency to be physically demonstrative while speaking is a personal thing, but can also be a cultural thing, since apparently people from warmer climates may be more physically demonstrative than people from colder climates.

But that is not really where the difficulty exists. There are other aspects to body language, which are much more subtle, and which are like an additional language.
For example socially directive signals, of which there are a wide range, and, as mentioned in the previous post, emotional subtext. These are the aspects of body language which, for many on the spectrum, are invisible because we do not register them in others and do not generate them ourselves.

This distinction can lead to misunderstandings. It would appear that there is a whole spectrum to non-verbal communication.

This page is quite interesting, and has many other links.
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/eq6_non ... cation.htm

I saw that YouTube video and I'm absolutely not impressed. It is obviously true that a lot of meaning can get across through literal speech, but that does not include the majority of neurotypical communication. You don't make friends by writing the newest scientific paper, nor by writing any other sort of intellectual paper. The response to my statement to actually reinforces what I was talking about. All of those conversation topics mentioned are emotionally charged and would have no value if they were not accompanied by the appropriate nonverbal speech. I know so because I have tried to make friends without nonverbal speech and failed, and make since learning nonverbal speech I can make friends nearly as predictably as I can run a computer program.