Do you talk with your hands?

[Beverly]

Hands, arms, body, all of me gets into the conversation if I'm not minding my motion filters. I can refrain and keep my hands and body still but, I don't like it and, it isn't natural.

 

[Progster]

Yes, I gesticulate quite a bit when I'm speaking, but how much I do it depends on my state of mind. If I'm calm I don't do it so obviously.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I find that when people are talking, they tend to move their hands a lot. I was watching a lady on the NASA channel talking about an upcoming program. She seemed to moving her hands more than average, and I found them distracting. After several minutes I realized I had been trying to match the hand movements with the words, looking for any discernible pattern. As if I could determine an algorithm behind the gestures. When I realized what I was doing, I realized I had focused on words and gestures, I had not actually followed what she was saying.

I have always found hand-waving while talking to be distracting. I wonder how many people have this issue?

I had to take a drama class in high school. (Not my choice, but I had to fit a humanities class into my schedule and that was the only one that would fit in with my other classes.) Anyway, my teacher was always telling me to use my hands while speaking, and it always seemed so unnatural when I would try.

 

[Iberata]

That's interesting. I never had this, to be distracted by hand waving,
but I do tend to utilize it myself.lol

 

[Jumpinbare]

I'm the opposite. It feels very unnatural to me when I try to use gestures except to point out something or demonstrate a particular activity. I find other people's gestures distracting from what they actually say.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Reminds me of Matt Smith in Doctor Who; he had a habit of waving his hands about and in the 50th Anniversary Special he gets called out on it - which makes me laugh as I tend to wave my hands about a lot as well.

(Fast forward to 3:20)

 

[Kaichi1996]

I have a tendency to use improvised "signs" for certain words when I'm talking. It's something I probably started doing because I saw someone else doing it when I was little, and I find that it helps to prevent misunderstandings.

On another note, I've never really found myself being distracted by other people's hand movements when they speak.

 

[autism-and-autotune]

I suspect this is a very non-aspie trait, but thought I'd check.

If I'm talking with someone where I'm saying more than just a few words at a time, I talk with my hands, almost like a made up sign language.

We've always used some baby sign language with the kids, but our youngest (3.5) is the only one who really took ownership of it. He's being slow to develop understandable spoken language, even though he's speaking in complete sentences (as his pronunciation gets better, we're finding he uses very well-formed sentences!). It's just really hard to understand him because he doesn't use many consonants at all.

However, he IS very communicative and makes up some elaborate and intuitive signs for the things he wants to tell us about.

Does anyone else complement your speech with hand signs?

Yes. Not even in a sign-language way. But I do talk with my hands; it just...feels good?

 

[Suzanne]

Contrary to what is stated about those on the spectrum, I am very expressive and yep, use my hands a lot and been told I should be in theatre, which is true, because I am good with acting with different emotions.

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

I suspect this is a very non-aspie trait, but thought I'd check.

If I'm talking with someone where I'm saying more than just a few words at a time, I talk with my hands, almost like a made up sign language.

We've always used some baby sign language with the kids, but our youngest (3.5) is the only one who really took ownership of it. He's being slow to develop understandable spoken language, even though he's speaking in complete sentences (as his pronunciation gets better, we're finding he uses very well-formed sentences!). It's just really hard to understand him because he doesn't use many consonants at all.

However, he IS very communicative and makes up some elaborate and intuitive signs for the things he wants to tell us about.

Does anyone else complement your speech with hand signs?

It is hard to tell sometimes, sometimes I feel like a fool doing it and wonder if I look ludicrous
Do you ever think that when u talk u may look like a raving fool as an autistic and you think you look so sweet and cute and everyone else is like she looks so weird and definitely disabled
I think sometimes I must look like a freak instead of sweet and also wonder if I close my eyes a lot because I can in photos