People often told me my laugh was “strange” throughout my school years. Muffled, choppy, sometimes almost out of breath. Years later, during my autism assessment, I began to wonder whether my laughter might be atypical too. The answers I found were far more nuanced than I had imagined.
Five years ago, while I was going through my autism assessment, I came across a 2012 study that caught my attention. Researchers investigated how laughter in autism is perceived by asking participants to characterize recorded laughs. They listened to recordings of autistic and non-autistic children’s laughter and tried to tell them apart. The result? Participants identified the autistic laughs slightly better than chance, yet no single characteristic could fully explain why.
The study immediately resonated with me. I had vivid memories of people commenting on my own laugh. They described it as “muffled,” “distinctive,” or even “out of breath,” among other things. There was clearly something unusual about it, but I couldn’t identify what it was. In fact, I never noticed anything unusual about anyone else’s laughter. I was even mocked once because my laugh apparently stood out whenever I burst into genuine laughter.
Unsuccessful Personal Research
Reading that study made me want to listen to my own laughter differently. I tried to find the recordings the researchers had used so I could compare them with mine, but without success. Eventually, I came across a YouTube video of a mother who had recorded her autistic child’s laughter (a somewhat questionable thing to post online—and perhaps an equally questionable thing for me to go looking for). Once again, I noticed nothing particularly unusual, except how heartwarming it was to watch a child laughing with such genuine joy.
A More Genuine Kind of Laughter
That was the end of my literature review. My next step was to conduct a highly rigorous scientific study: observe the people around me and compare their laughter with that of my autistic friends.
The results? None whatsoever. Methodology: flawless. Truly world-class armchair science.
Still, something caught my attention. The laughter of my autistic friends consistently felt more genuine. It never seemed forced. It was simply real—in a world where fake laughter is surprisingly common.
When I Tried to Learn How to Laugh
That realization made me smile, because over time, as part of my social mask, I had taught myself to fake laughter. The problem was that I was terrible at it. Apparently, people could tell almost immediately when my laugh wasn’t genuine. The only reason I ever used it was because of my ADHD: if I got lost in a conversation and failed to follow what had just been said, I would sometimes laugh simply to avoid revealing that I had missed the point.
I had learned how to laugh. And, as was often the case with social skills, I had learned it very badly. Which is rather ironic, considering how quickly I learn in so many other areas.
Learning Social Laughter
It seemed that anything related to social interaction followed completely different rules. I had never really understood the nuances of laughter or when it was socially appropriate to laugh.
My solution was to produce the same awkward, almost giggle-like laugh every time, immediately followed by a sentence. And if it wasn’t already obvious that I wasn’t genuinely laughing, I would then make matters worse by abruptly changing the subject—when the other person had often just wanted to share a genuinely funny moment with me.
Captain Flo, reporting for duty in the noble art of failed laughter.
The Difference Between Autistic and Allistic Laughter
I noticed, however, that my laughter became much more vivid whenever I was genuinely amused and made no attempt to hide my joy. Like the laughter of my autistic friends, it felt authentic. It came out naturally, sometimes to the point of bringing me to tears, whereas my allistic friends often expressed their amusement more subtly.
When I laughed, I wasn’t trying to make the other person laugh with me—the social function that laughter often serves. I was simply expressing an emotion, whether or not anyone else joined in. I had noticed the same thing in several of my autistic friends, who had no hesitation laughing on their own.
Among allistic people, laughter often serves an important social function: it invites others to share an emotional moment. A 2009 study likewise suggests that autistic children more frequently produce laughter associated with the spontaneous expression of positive emotion, whereas non-autistic children also produce another type of laughter that appears to play a greater role in social interaction.
That led me to a personal hypothesis: autistic laughter often seems more personal. It doesn’t expect anything from the people around it. It simply expresses an emotion—which may explain why it can sometimes feel so contagious despite not being intended as a social signal.
This interpretation, however, is based on my own observations and should not be taken as a scientific conclusion.
When Laughter Appears at Unexpected Moments
Let’s go back to middle school, when my social mask was already well established.
We’re standing in a cemetery. My father walks over to my grandfather’s grave and… starts talking to him. It was the first time I had ever seen someone do that. I found the situation absurd and struggled to hold back my laughter. Unfortunately, my younger sister—who isn’t autistic—started laughing too. So there we were, both getting scolded.
Although I initially managed to behave as expected, this was just one of many occasions when my laughter surfaced in unconventional ways (even if my sister deserves part of the blame for this one!). I’ve lost count of the situations where people thought I was laughing at someone, when in reality I was on the verge of tears because they had completely missed the detail that had actually made me laugh. Most of the time, I’m not laughing at people. I’m laughing because the situation itself strikes me as absurd.
A Few More Unusual Traits
Some autistic people—and relatives of autistic people—also report using laughter as a form of stimming, completely disconnected from anything objectively funny. I can relate to that, but mostly when I’m manic. I laugh at my own internal wordplay, and I also find the act of laughing—and even hearing my own laughter—regulating in itself.
That brings me to another point. Laughter can sometimes appear without any obvious trigger because many autistic people describe having particularly rich inner worlds.
As a result, someone may suddenly laugh after noticing a pun or a connection that never crossed anyone else’s mind, sometimes in situations that are considered far too serious for laughter. That happened to me several times in school. I’d suddenly burst out laughing because (as I only discovered months later) I was the only one who had noticed one of my teacher’s amusing verbal quirks—or simply spotted something that was funny to me and probably nobody else.
An excellent way to draw attention to yourself when you’re desperately trying to remain invisible.
A Few Personal Stories
Earlier, I mentioned the “inappropriate laughter” that is often reported in autism. One story illustrates it particularly well because it happened more than once.
In seventh grade, our English teacher—who had already pushed us to a remarkably high level—asked us to perform a five-minute radio show. One of the requirements was to include a commercial. My best friend and I decided to turn the whole thing into a theatrical comedy. The highlight was reenacting a famous French car commercial inspired by Transformers, except that we played the car ourselves.
The presentation went perfectly and earned us the highest grade in the class: 18 out of 20. Why not 20? Because I spent the entire presentation laughing. I didn’t even realize I was the only one laughing—or that, since this was still a school assignment, I was expected to show some restraint. My teacher pointed it out immediately. What I remember most isn’t losing two points. It’s laughing so hard that, more than fifteen years later, I still remember the moment vividly.
I’m explaining all this because I want to give the full picture of what, for me, often turns into laughter that feels impossible to suppress simply because it is so genuine. While writing these lines, I called my best friend. He remembered that presentation instantly. The difference? He had behaved in a socially appropriate way. I hadn’t.
But for me, autistic laughter doesn’t stop there.
During bipolar episodes, it can change completely—sometimes to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable.
(I’ll explore that in a dedicated article.)
