I'm pretty slow at understanding some things

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I can't help but loosely associate swbluto with traits that appear in ADHD and autism.

And the fuzzy bunny. Bunnies!

Onto a more serious note.

What you described happens to me because of ADHD/selective attention/attention deficit as in I-know-better-but-I-can't-recall-and-process-it-right-now and/or impulsive I-know-better-but-I-impulsively-can't-think-beyond-the-beginning-of-this-thought-right-now sometimes. I'll notice the problem - as soon as I got beyond that impulsive reaction, have recovered my brain from where it's busy playing tag somewhere outside of my head and have thought the thought from beginning to end.

At other times, it's the receptive-expressive language disorder (as part of autism? who knows). I'll often notice the problem if I bother to pause and realise I didn't understand or aren't sure I got it right. I grew up making a point not to bother to pause though which makes this a bit complicated...

And sometimes I suspect it's neither attention, impulsivity or language but an autistic inability to subconsciously recognise by failure to correctly appreciate the social reciprocity that my conversational partner thinks independently and functions differently. That's tough to notice most of the time. I'm aware that it's possible to interpret something a certain way but I judge the possibility unlikely (and can't be bothered to further consider such nonsense) until it's obvious that yes, people do think that way.

Anything like that or totally alien?

I have this at random times, that i just have to process word by word to get the full sentence.

I have to say that I went through reading with my head spinning all the way to the end because I didn't figure out that "twice exceptional" was a special term that I should google. You did say that he/she could have "looked it up", but for me, "looking it up" means "in a book", and you don't usually find two-word combinations in indexes. I hadn't ever happened to hear it before, but google did let me know that it is a special phrase with a specific meaning. It wouldn't have helped in an aural conversation with your friend (who was sitting in front of a computer with access to google at the time?), but it would have put me in contact with meaning a little more quickly if you'd capitalized both words (Twice Exceptional) or put the two in quotation marks -- that might have given me the clue that it was a specific meaning phrase, and not just a slightly unusual use of language.

Just not knowing that that phrase was something that I _should_ put into google in quotes was enough to make everything that followed meaningless.

Just wanted to elaborate about the whole ADHD thing, at least from my perspective. I can do math just fine, but I'm bad with holding numbers in my head. When it gets more abstract, such as algebra, I start to shine. If you ask me how much money to pay for a tip at a restaurant, I'll stumble and often come up with the wrong answer. If I don't have my trusty calculator with me, I'll overpay just to be safe. If I have a pencil, though, the problem is solved. In addition, I can do math like calculus and enjoy it. It's a strange combination. It has to do with working memory problems.

My actual memory is fine, but I have trouble keeping facts and details in my head. Unlike a lot of autistic people who don't filter anything, I seem to have an overactive filter. Not a whole lot gets in except what I'm interested in or paying attention to. That's great when I'm tuned into the right thing. When I'm paying attention to the wrong details, however, I can run into trouble and not know why. Also, I'd not rule out ADHD simply because you can concentrate during a test setting. Often times the adrenaline of being in an exam setting can mask concentration difficulties. Where you'll notice a problem will be in a quiet setting at home when you have 1000 pages of dry reading material. That's the kind of setting that will put me to sleep. If I'm not asleep, my mind might be elsewhere. Or I'll "wake up" and find myself magically surfing the internet or doing chores. Read: Anything but what I'm supposed to be reading.

A similar issue can be seen with my language skills. My actual language processing is fine, but I have trouble putting it all together in a conversation. I frequently say the wrong words, I have a stutter, and other times my language gets garbled (so nothing but gibberish comes out or words get smashed together in unique ways). It's mostly because my "inner speech" is faster than my mouth's ability to produce sounds. I talk too fast. If I slow down and really enunciate, I do okay. Part of the problem is that I am a bit impatient, but it's also another side effect of working memory problems. Because I know I'll get sidetracked and forget what I say, it's also sometimes necessary for me to blurt stuff out as fast as I think of it. If I don't, I run the risk of not remembering what I was going to say. It causes me to interrupt people and be rude at times, so I try not to. But I now understand better why I do that.

From what I was reading of your conversation, it sounds like you are over-analyzing a bit based on incorrect assumptions. It sounds like a theory of mind problem. Not a lack of theory of mind, per say, but as someone else suggested, perhaps an overabundance of it. You're thinking too much. How to fix it, I'm not sure. Just keep track of when you do it and perhaps even make a list of assumptions that aren't "safe" to make. For example, "Not everyone will look up words or phrases that they don't know." Doing so might help you not fall into the same traps.

Lastly, I'd say that, as an ADHD'er, I am socially nearsighted-- not really socially blind. I understand most of what goes on and can read social cues pretty well. However, I miss stuff because I'm paying attention to the wrong things. That and I have trouble with the overall "execution" of a conversation or social interaction. I make a lot of mistakes. I often realize what I'm doing wrong, but it's usually after the fact. I think that's one distinction between ADHD and AS from what I've observed. If you find yourself frequently going wrong and at the same time aware of that fact, then it's probably ADHD and not AS.

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