hi, it varies. While is a general truth that people with asperger's have difficulty working out if someone is happy, sad or whatever purely from their appearance some, like me, actually score higher than the general population.

I did a test online for this but now I can't find it or I'd give you the link.

Hi and glad you asked. my husband has aspergers and sometimes he may look pissed but he is just mellow. mad and doesnt show it. happy and sometimes a smile and sometimes just looks like he is a quoate normal looking person. It is very hard to read someone who had aspergers off their facial expressions. Ive learned over eight years not to go off what his facial expressions are but what he says. some you can be good with facial expreccions but someone wtih aspergers you cannot. it just doesnt work.

I have had experience with someone, who, while doing his job was joking, (my husband pointed out that he was joking,) then later turned serious, but I thought he was still joking.

But, yes, I can "get" the happy versus sad distinction.

I get a general discomfort about any "not happy" expressions. Are they angry? sad? thoughtful? analyzing? nostalgic? I have no way of knowing.

I'm sure most people with Asperger's can identify happiness/unhappiness because they've learned what it looks like. I think the problem is having that facial mirroring. When I see someone who is laughing and happy, I also smile. It's contagious for most people without AS. Many people with AS do not have this quality. My AS partner will see a family laughing and smiling and he will not smile, but he will say, "I like to see people having fun."

He struggles with more subtle expressions like sarcastic facial expressions, subtle body language that may indicate worry, discomfort, etc. He may not be able to identify more complex expressions and may group them under the category of simple unhappiness or happiness. Someone who is excited, or surprised, or content he might view all of those as simply "happy." Someone who is crying, angry, frustrated, exasperated, he might view all of those as simply "unhappy." He also sometimes does not understand dry humor. Usually dry humor is said in a serious tone with a serious face. Same with sarcasm. It is sometimes hard for him to identify jokes outside of what he has learned is a joke.

I think some people with AS are better at reading expressions than others, just like anything. It also would depend on how conscious someone is about it, and how much time someone spends with people versus someone else who rarely sees people and has less opportunities to practice and be exposed to it.

I don't think your ability/disability alone can determine if you have or don't have AS. There are so many other factors to determine that.

****ability/disability to read faces****...sorry I meant to add that in there.

My dau 25 with asperger's sometimes ask me "are you joking or serious" - I'm guilty of the dry humor thing, deadpan delivery, but she also often uses that herself, so we have to check it out with each other.

Emotions are sometimes pretty subtle. There really is such a thing as tears of joy. So if you only associate tears with sadness, you would be misreading the facial expression.

I think there is more to this topic than what most people seem to discuss on DS. Discussions usually refer to facial expression in the context of looking at a still image of someones face and asking themselves: What do I think this person is feeling. From what I was taught, the facial expression issue is much deeper than just identifying how someone feels by looking at their face for a single moment, it is a non-stop process that takes place without conscious awareness.

My therapist has taught me how facial expression takes place in conversations word by word, sentence by sentence, and action by action. Little subtleties in someones face during a conversation can cue the speaker as to how the listener is reacting to the conversation. Sentence by sentence the speaker gets subconscious guidance about how the listener feels about what you are saying. That subconscious guidance causes the speaker to adjust the conversation in relation to how they perceive the listener is reacting. NT people refer to things like that as I got a feeling he disagreed with me, or I could tell he was offended; they do this without any verbal exchange and without any easily noticeable change in the facial expression of the listener. Those subtle non-verbal cues happen almost non-stop in conversations, discussions and in almost any other type of social interaction. Much research on the subject states that non-verbal communication accounts for 50% or more of the communication between people in a social setting. That statistic seems outrageous or impossibly high by most who read it; that is because most people are unaware of how their actions and spoken words are guided by their subconscious minds interpretation of all these tiny reactions from the other people they are with. These subtle facial and body movements and changes in tone, pitch and speed of speech are very hard to pick up on consciously; it takes a large part of your early life to learn how to do this. It is a trial and error process learned by your subconscious mind that takes place since infancy that enables you to develop these skills. This non-verbal exchange is used in more than just conversation; people often notice a lot more subconsciously than they do consciously, and their actions are guided by these otherwise unnoticed details.

Here is a non-social example of this process: Imagine a hypothetical building nighttime security guard; he has worked at this same building for 5 years was doing his hourly walk around the building in the middle of the night one night. As he was walking down one hallway, he got the feeling that something was wrong. He wasnt sure what, but something just didnt feel right. He got this gut feeling that there was a problem. Everything in quotes in the prior few sentences are considered intuition: the ability to gain knowledge without reason or deduction basically being aware of something without even knowing what made you aware of it. Sure enough, this security guards feelings were right, someone did break into the building this night How did he know something was wrong, what gave him that knowledge that something bad happened without him being aware of it otherwise? Was it a psychic ability, did he have some extra sensory perception??? No, it was his subconscious mind noticing things that his conscious mind was unaware of that gave him the knowledge that there was a problem. He worked there for many years, and break-ins have happened from time to time in the past. During those past break-ins his subconscious mind noticed an opened window that he did not consciously take notice of; His subconscious noticed a slightly cool or warm breeze in one hallway that shouldnt have been there (due to the open window); His subconscious mind noticed a dirty footprint on the freshly polished floor (floors cleaned every night) that his conscious mind didnt notice.

It was this guards past experiences where his subconscious mind noticed these subtle clues that gave his current self that feeling that there was a problem. In the present he wasnt consciously aware of those clues, but his mind did notice these things and that gave him the feeling that there was a problem. The human brain is unbelievably complex, storing information about everything you encounter in your life and using all those stored experiences to help guide your actions and to predict how events will take place in the future.

The example of the security guard is exactly how the NT mind works during social interaction. Non-autistic people display countless subtle cues that other people subconsciously notice during conversations and other social situations. (Many of those cues are noticed consciously, but this reply is about the ones most people are unaware of) Starting in infancy, the mind notices the reactions other people display to their own actions; their mind learns how to anticipate other peoples disapproval or acceptance of what they are saying or doing; the mind learns to automatically give you the knowledge that the other person agrees or disagrees with what you are saying without anyone actually saying it in an obvious was. After an entire childhood of experience in social interactions with people, your brain learns to notice these countless tiny subtleties from other people. That unspoken communication then guides how you interact with other people, without your awareness that it is even happening. Young children are still in the process of learning these skills, which is why young children sometimes say inappropriate things or they dont notice other peoples disapproval. Over time they do develop these skills, and their actions are automatically guided by them more and more as they reach adulthood.

Now lets talk about people with Autism; how does all of this affect us? We miss many of those subtle cues from other people for various reasons. Lack of eye contact is noted as one cause, but there are other unseen reasons for this deficit we have. The area of the brain that processes facial perception is noted to be less active in autistic subjects than NT subjects during fMRI scans taken being shown video of someone displaying strong non-verbal gestures or expressions. Those scans are a strong indicator that our autistic mind is not subconsciously processing the other peoples subtle facial expressions that guide NT peoples actions moment my moment. As for myself, my parents noticed that from a very young age I had an aversion to making eye contact, I avoided looking at other people in a way that could have allowed my brain to learn these skills. I do not have this automatic process that guides my interaction with other people, I am missing this intuition that NT people dont even realize they have. As a child I didnt like being held by my parents, I didnt focus on the face of my parents as normal infants and toddlers do, so I never had a chance to learn these tools that can guide my interactions with other people. I believe the majority of this ability is learned during infancy and early childhood. As an infant you start to focus on your parents faces around 1-3 months, I believe that is when you start to learn how your actions affect others. Even before you learn to talk, you cry and see their reaction to it; you are happy and laugh and see their reaction. Over time your thought processes and behaviors are subconsciously guided by this unspoken communication; something that autistic people are often blind to.

I see many people write about Autism and the inability to read facial expression, but they usually only think about the conscious awareness of other peoples facial expressions. The root problem itself is this inability to subconsciously notice other peoples very subtle reactions. People like us with Autism or AS simply do not have that ability, or we have limited ability in that area, so what seems like common sense and normal behavior to NTs is simply not understood by us.

We can learn to process some of this information consciously, but I do not believe we can completely replace skills that take non-autistic people a lifetime to develop. The brain functions that are required to do so just never developed correctly for us.

I also took that test online. It was a while ago, and I seem to remember it being VERY specific. I was really good at most, but there were a couple that I was off on that had a strong bearing on some aspect of my now EX Wife.

Do you have a link to the test you are referring to? I took tests like that in person, I would like to compare them to the online versions

heres a link to some tests on facial recognition and emotional recognition..

http://www.testmybrain.org/

I seem to recognize faces just fine, but with emotional expression I seem to be pretty clueless especially with anger. everyone looks angry all of the time. no wonder i dont make eye contact. lmao