Ouch

[unixronin]

From Yahoo Finance:

Only a small percentage of communication involves actual words: 7%, to be exact.  In fact, 55% of communication is visual (body language, eye contact) and 38% is vocal (pitch, speed, volume, tone of voice).  The world's best business communicators have strong body language: a commanding presence that reflects confidence, competence, and charisma.

So we Aspies can count on getting across the 7% that is verbal, plus probably some varying fraction of the 38% that is vocal. The somatic 55%, we can mostly write off as lost. If we assume that on average we're getting half of the vocal content, we're getting about 26% of the total communication bandwidth ... barely more than a quarter of the total gestalt.  Even if we get all of the vocal and some fraction of the somatic, we still don't get much over 50% of the total stream.

No wonder we have trouble communicating.

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I have seen those numbers before. Just think of how much brainpower you are expending just to keep up in a verbal datastream.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the constant background process wondering "Yeah, that's what [s]he said, but what did [s]he actually mean?"

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I suspect that happens to everybody.

[smandal.livejournal.com]

Well, you might be only able to process 25% of the bandwidth, but that will be less than 25% of the gestalt, since that's nonlinear. So it sucks even worse.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

True. I was trying not to over-analyse the problem.

[novel-tharkun.livejournal.com]

Yet other articles use different percentages. Depends, I believe, on looking at total activated neuron pathways vs. differentially activated pathways, and on other experimental items.

All-in-all, I'd suggest using less mental power analyzing the meta-conversation during the conversation, and instead use it to watch for their eyes or shoulders changing to see when they're engaged in your statements.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

It certainly explains why the internet is so prone to miscommunication, too. And that 55% visual goes with why I don't like telephone communication... So there are a lot of communication traps that don't even involve Asperger's. If you think about it, modern technology might have helped level the playing field a little.