Aspergers and comprehension of NT instructions/questions?

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I've had that problem before too. I still think of things later where I said one thing not realizing what was meant by a word and then suddenly realizing what was really meant.

In most situations it's safe to just guess. If it's not life-or-death the worst that could happen is a moment of comic relief, and making people laugh will make you popular. Most things aren't that critical.

This response to questions or attempts to clarify leaves me panic-stricken at work:

"You've been working here how long already? You ought to know this by now!"

This response to questions or attempts to clarify leaves me mute in personal relationships:

"Quit trying to change the subject. That wasn't the point and you know it." -OR- "Quit nit-picking my words!"

One especially honest co-worker once put it succinctly: "Shut up and go away."

There was a test on thinking styles on BBC's website, my result said I'm a visual thinker and one of the characteristics was that visual thinkers have big difficulties with understanding verbal instructions. I'd post the test but it looks like it's not there anymore. I can definitely relate, the biggest issue for me is the many variables one.

Yes, I can definitely relate to this...sometimes to clarify a nuanced statement, I will say "When you say X, do you mean Y? or Z?" - I try to phrase it as a closed-ended question if I at least have some indication of what they might really mean. If they give a beat-around-the-bush response the 2nd time, usually that means they're uncomfortable revealing their true meaning directly, e.g. it was criticism directed at me and they wanted to be gentle about it, OR it could be they're uncomfortable going along with something because of the context, e.g. somebody else is in the room who might react badly to what the other person says, but I wouldn't instinctively pick up on that.

I figure it's the lesser of two evils - better than just feigning comprehension only to be found out later, or people assume that I have ADHD (they never seem to think that I might have Aspergers- the gossip has traditionally been that I must have ADHD).

However, some people can find the clarification approach annoying if done more often than the "average" person. I had one boss who criticized me for not being able to naturally perceive "beyond just what was being said" and my asking questions ate up meeting time, and time is money. Such a person is not enlightened enough to realize that once an Aspie is on the right track, they are more productive than most NTs (given the right post e.g. technical, design, programming etc.) and save money, so it's worth "investing" in their comprehension, which is where a lot of them end up going on tangents if not clear. Personally I think the "time is money" being thrown in my face was a pretext to try to push my buttons and get me to leave.

There are always a lot of variables. The problem is where to stop bothering. At some point it's not important anymore. NT's seem to know this level automatically.
I must admit I have no clue whatsoever. Especially since I am the out-of-the-box person. I go out of the out of the box, or even further. The variables can be many. But at some point I save myself by asking myself what the purpose is. What do they need? What "job" needs doing? To what degree?
Wanna know what 2+2 is? It's 5 for very large values of 2. Easy peasy. But that's probably not what NT's want to know. They don't want to know that the root of 9 is 2+1. They want tp know it's 3. Make it simple. If you would excuse my french: Make it for ret*ds.

I had a good one there. The task at school was "what is the average for the numbers X and Y".
Since I rarely payed any attention, I managed to forget how to do it...
So I had to make it up on the fly. So I explained to my math-teacher that "X+((Y-X)/2)" would give the average. He looked at me for something tyhat seemed like ages, and said: "Why don't you just add them and divide by two?".
"Oh, yea. I guess you can do that" I said.

I know my first thought would be "I don't know how long I've been working here."


Been there. Too often. Hate it. I just want the details sorted so a sound goal can be reached.


I would love that. Everyone is so F'ing polite all the time. Please will someone tell me the truth and what they think just once.

It's the third option. They feel freaked out because they have to explain stuff that is (to NT's) self-explanatory.
That's my experience, at least.

This is why I couldn't seem to stay in college, I had to many questions left and I was never sure how to do anything, eventually I gave up.

It plagued me thoughout my life, at work I am always asking questions and I am seen as a pain in the ass. I tried fixing things how I thought it should be done but I'm always wrong in the end, I seem to pick the solution that wasn't the "obviously correct one."

Well I am usually fine with written instructions but verbal instructions are hard.....for one I tend to randomly space out and miss bits and peices(this was more of an issue back in school when I might miss some of the teachers directions only to get the response 'you should have paid attention' I did pay attention but my mind tends to wander sometimes regardless of if I want it to or not.) and also sometimes immeaditly after hearing instructions I may forget something and have to ask again which is not good in job settings.

Well here's the "acid test" that proves to NT's who think we just have ADHD, that it's more complex than that. Speaking for myself, I not only misinterpret verbal instructions, I have also regularly misinterpreted WRITTEN instructions, which proves it's not about "paying attention". With written instructions, granted, you don't have the processing speed & short term memory challenges that come with relatively instant verbal communication - but I still have trouble deciphering sometimes. Maybe it's just due to over-analyzing, I don't know.

Take, for example, this one instruction from an online exam I had to write for a job in a certain organization (and I just found out that I failed it).

"Ability to research, analyse and summarize complex information and assist in the development of options or advice or recommendations,"

In the exam, I was given a passage with data, graphs, and paragraphs, and I researched, summarized, and analyzed it with my findings and a method of analyzing the best options given my findings. That's what I interpreted as "assist(ing) in the development of options, advice or recommendations." The statement didn't tell me "develop options, advice, and recommendations" - it implied that I'm to help guide the development of those. The passage said that I'm preparing a briefing for my supervisor who is attending a conference, so they can make good recommendations based on the info (again, not saying whether it's the supervisor who is making my recommendations at the conference, or whether the supervisor makes recommendations based on the supporting analysis I provide). It's not the first time I've received ambiguous instructions, or emails or whatever in written form that I didn't interpret correctly, and somehow I always get the nagging feeling that most NT's would have arrived at the correct explanation.

Sometimes I think us Aspies would make excellence lawyers, because statements such as the above could be contested as to their ambiguity - subject to the test of "what a reasonable person would infer from them." I really don't know what a reasonable person would infer from the above ...sigh.

I like to blame this on the fact that we think so outside the box that we can subconsciously think of many interpretations to what was said or asked of us but only one interpretation gets into the conscious brain. Minutes later however there is bleed through of the sub conscious thoughts and we're like 'oh they must have meant that.'

Anywho, yes I do often fail to follow instruction too. It's more of a comprehension problem with me. I hear the words but it takes awhile to understand what was said, then comes the misinterpretation.

I think this thread is interesting in light of the various "aspie quiz" threads that have come up recently. When I look at the quizzes, I see a lot of really ambiguous questions I don't know how to answer. The one about "do you like dates" is the best example. Do they mean the fruit things you cook with? Going to a movie? Chronology? Now apparently the person doing the quiz never stopped to think that "date" is a highly overloaded English word with multiple definitions, and assumed everyone taking the quiz would just know what was meant. I also remember this from school, where I would read questions on tests and stuff and not really know what was being asked. It's as if other people carry with them a frame of reference that explains this stuff that I don't have.

I believe a lot of it has to do with the central coherence theory. You read about this concept a lot in the ASD literature. NTs are instinctively able to keep track of current context and look at decisions in terms of "the big picture" rather than dwelling on micro-details as we Aspies do (and I have been criticized VERY heavily for this in the past ). This is also why Aspies get in trouble sometimes for changing the subject in a conversation w/o proper transition as they don't keep focused on the current context. Thankfully, this mistake has diminished far more for me since my late 20s.

Although I write very well and can do much better on short/long essay exam questions than most NTs, I can only do so if the instructions are free of ambiguity. On multiple choice questions, I have traditionally scored high, irrespective of the subject, as long as I've studied. Some people might find this odd, but the questions saying "which of the 4 below is NOT an example of...blablabla." ("or, all of the following are X except...") I will catch almost immediately which one doesn't belong. Yet in a previous job when I created multiple choice tests on technical subjects for a training group, several of the members would not catch the 'NOT' and leave it blank, guess, or ask me (proctoring the exam) what it meant if it said 'not' - and does it mean they should only circle one. Maybe that's where the Aspie black-and-white pure logical thinking can be a strength, seems NT's overthink that one or struggle with it...

fastest answer ever to a poll question

...instructions arggg, got to be clear what you want or I'm lost

I've been told that asking so many questions is passive-aggressive on the job. Point blank - you are too smart to not know what I mean. A compliment and an FU all in one sentence.

Left-right is my nemesis. I still need to consciously look at my writing hand to figure out which is which. So, when people use 'It's on the right..." I need to first figure out my left and right and then figure our if they mean my right or their right which, from my perspective would be my left. That one quite literally makes my head hurt. And I always have to ask -"Which right?" which seems to totally frustrate people.