Slow awareness/recognition

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I am really slow at doing things and sometimes slow at figuring things out. I do NOT know why I am so slow at times.

Yeah, I get it. This is one of the reasons I've never finished learning how to drive - I just don't trust myself to handle all of the incoming information in a timely fashion, or even prioritize it correctly. I know I can function on this level to some extent, due to other things, but the effort is always exhausting to maintain no matter how much I enjoy it.



Yeah, habit and memory work well. Going into an unfamiliar place can be confusing too.

Okay, I do not know if this is related, but: Do you ever have issues when taking a different route to get to a familiar place? I have a good sense of direction, I can navigate with landmarks, but if the person driving me somewhere takes a different route, I sometimes get completely confused and turned around.



Agnosia is an inability to recognize what you perceive. So visual agnosia means you can see things and not know what they are. I think Donna Williams calls it "meaning blindness." I get it in relatively small doses that may get more intense under a lot of stress/overload. Of course, when I say "small doses" I am considering what I perceive. I do not know how a neurotypical would react if they were to start perceiving things the way I do - maybe no reaction at all, maybe utter confusion. Who knows?

Anyway, it may very well be your processing speed is normal but carrying an extra load in that you have to process everything you see at a level most people don't have to cope with.

I have that too, but not sure how that is related. Maybe because I am fixed in the routes I use, I have little training of orientation skills.


I think I do not have visual agnosia, just the delay in recognition. This is certainly related to the amount of stimuli to deal with. Just wonder why it seems to get worse in time. Maybe just a natural decline with age?

oh gosh for me it's not so much seeing things and interpreting them, it's hearing them. I'll listen to somone speak to me and i know they're speaking at me and that words are filling my head, but it's as if they're smoke surrounding my brain, and my brain isn't absorbing it. then minutes, hours, or days later it registers. I often have unrelated responses to comments because of this, I'm afrain people think I'm ignoring them: ( Or at work, when i take an order, i thikn back as i'm making it, and worry nd struggle to remember if I asked them suchandsuch a thing, or if i wrote down the right order, ughhhhhhh i hate it.

I was really fascinated with maps for a long time, although I usually navigate by memorizing landmarks.



Well, I mean I was suggesting that the delay in recognition might be a form of it, although that doesn't mean it is.

I do think that with age some things do get harder or worse.

I tried to search the internet for some more ideas about this, but it is hard. Probably not using the correct search options. I was looking for 'slow awareness', but I usually get references for 'slow food'! !

Also today I noticed that it functions a lot better, although I feel quite numb today. Difficult to say, I noticed before that if my head is a bit dull, that it is easier to do this. Maybe on a day like this there is less stuff in my mind going on, so this awareness can function better, Maybe these racing thoughts I normally have, have something to do with it.

(Hope this is a bit clear, I can not describe it very well).

yes, i have this exact problem!! !! i used to assume until i was diagnosed recently with aspergers that slo mo replays of football on tv were because it was impossible for the eye / brain to disseminate action at such speeds. then i realised it was just 'me', ha ha.

movement is key, because i can see busy images and have no problem. i also have issues with peripheral vision, and sometimes cover my eyes when someone is twitching beside me at the que in the supermarket, or something.

i refer to it as visual cognitive processing, though. as youve all said above, i also have no problem focusing on single actions to the exclusion of all others, and have superior visual skills in many regards.
but lots of movement, especially at speed, becomes like street noise- impossible to draw a single thread from it; its just a tangle.

i tried wearing sunglasses, which toned it down a little, but then i also get annoyed having something on my face, too.
i *should* wear glasses, but choose not to, due to severe visual overload, which is possibly an allied issue. life is better blurred.

like you, ive felt incredibly stupid and embarassed by this. it seems so akin to being actually a bit dim!!
and it has shaped my life-i never sat my driving test. im an ok driver, but just not when anyone else is on the road. *shifty eyes*, and dont cycle either.

google visual cognitive processing autism and a heap of stuff comes up. i cant post links because im new, but there are heaps.

i like 'visuospatial coherence'.

That's one reason I suggested agnosia. That might actually turn something up like what you're dealing with, even if what you're dealing with isn't actually agnosia.



I find that if some pressures ease up, other symptoms improve along with it. Like if I am dealing with daily noise, everything becomes much worse and harder to cope with, even if it's not directly related to or affected by hearing. With less clutter in my mind I have more resources to devote to things that happen constantly.

Does that make sense?

I am excited to read this topic. I have something very similar. If anyone finds names for this, please post. Agnosia is close, but I think we are describing something different.

This is not a delay in the sensation of vision/hearing or even in understanding what physically occurred--but rather this sequence of three delays:

(1) a delay in understanding the meaning of the input
(example: "Mary said 'How are you'? Why did she say that? Does she want to know something? Was that just pleasantries?")

(2) a delay in deciding how to react (as if brain must wake up from dormancy)
(example: "How am I? I don't know; I never stopped to think about it. What kind of answer does she want?")

(3) a delay before actually performing the response
(example: "Now it is time for me to speak some words back to Mary. Mouth and vocal chords, kick into gear and say 'Fine.')

Sound comprehension is delayed more than visual, so watching lips or other objects making sound helps me respond more quickly.

Deciding how to react can be a total failure, resulting in nonresponsiveness, echolalia, or rarely to run away in humiliation.

The amount of delay varies. Caffeine, especially coffee, reduces the delays. But, the delays can only be sped up for an hour or so. After that, a long rest.

Watching the longer intro to the Daria show, I see this in the way Daria puts her hand out after the volleyball has already passed by. The nerve message from her eyes took long to go through these 3 steps to reach her arm muscles, but then her brain recognized that it was too late and sent the signal to hold back the arm, but the earlier message mostly wins out and the arm swings in a very odd weak fashion. (I learn how to be acceptable to NTs from TV.)

(Intro: I have been reading this forum for a while, but joined just to post this. I am unofficially an autistic genius and can mostly perform in the NT world--by sheer force of intellect--but no one is really fooled. I am always identified as different. And how could I expect different when I have most of the primary and secondary symptoms of autism. I am in my 40s and only figured this out a year ago. That is another problem: realizing that something about me is different and that it is not a matter of "not trying hard enough". A big 'thank you' to everyone who posts here!)

In my case the relationship is only inasmuch as it makes the previous issue with making sense of what I'm looking at somewhat more difficult because now everything is sort of gently moving about as well - and when I move my vision is sort of not quite tied in properly with my movement if that makes sense.

I can't look at the stars anymore because after a few seconds I end up an my butt and usually quite ill (motion sickness) - which can last hours

Wow, I never thought I'd meet anybody with the same difficulties as myself. The hi-lited stuff cause severe performance anxiety in my work. I just assumed it was multi-tasking, ADD-type, working memory problems but that doesn't provide much insgight. Your explanation is very good. Thanks.

I find that moving objects are hard to track due to "slow eye-focus muscles" (which the optometrist acknowledged). With enough movement visually and physically, I get the same "too much processing" overwhelmed feeling. And, often mild vertigo or feeling physically unbalanced.

This does certainly make sense. With less pressure it is easier to function, specially because pressure is hard to deal with (is it an aspie thing to perform worse under pressure?). For now I see only one pattern to this worsening recognition, that the delay is getting worse since I feel unable to relax. I think that if I can find a new way to relax, that the delay will improve as well. It will not go away I think, but as long as it stays within a workable range, I am happy enough.

Links that may be interesting:
- http://www.ldinfo.com/process_areas.htm
- http://www.psychologists.biz/Processing ... ility.html

It does not explain much, but I recognise a lot in the visual processing section. Maybe a lot of my problems at work and this slow awareness are very much related.

Last edited by flyingdutchman on 13 Jun 2011, 4:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think I have mostly (1) for visual. In conversation, when dealing with information and responding to questions, it can be all 3 delays.


Caffeine makes me restless at some point, I will start blurting out nonesense. But in modetate levels it can make the delay less. Like you said, only for a short amount. What I also notice is that a short night sleep seems to make it better, although halfway through the day I can not cope anymore, and performance goes down. Long sleep makes it worse, I end up feeling numb (I expect the opposite actually...).