Asperger's and learning

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I can only speak for myself.

I have sometimes extreme sensory integration issues. (So bad that I will never step foot in a brick and mortar school again; I am continuing my education online and I am so happy that technology has advanced to the point where I can now be successful.)

I sometimes have trouble understanding information that is purely verbal when it is given at a normal rate of speech. I am very visual. At a previous school, I had a sign language interpreter as an accommodation--it helped some, but not enough. I could never do lectures. At movies, I get the closed captioning devices because I have trouble comprehended purely verbal information.

Counterintuitively, I *can* comprehend verbal information given at a much higher speed. My comprehension is still probably lower than average or at least in the lower portion of the average range. However, if I have access to speeding up verbal information (recording something, and using modern speech modification apps to play back at the highest speed), I can actually comprehend it. I can currently access textbooks on my phone and use the accessibility functions of my phone to do this.

I cannot comprehend verbal information that has more than one "bit" (if given at a normal speech rate). It's fine if it is written down, but if it's verbal--nope. By that I mean, a phone conversation can include only one idea. If there is more than that, I might not understand anything at all. (As you can imagine, I avoid telephone conversation at all costs.)

I need to move to take in information. And writing or doodling or "fidgeting" is not enough. My whole body needs to move.

I very strongly prefer self-study with a little bit of guidance.

I was the typical gifted student--I learned stuff far too quickly so I was bored. Fortunately I got to a much better school with classes for advanced students so my grades went from good to excellent. And, since I got college credit for some of those classes, I got to skip basic freshman calculus and go straight to the harder stuff. And, even though I didn't get an Aspie diagnosis to much later in life, I realized it was much better to take basic economics from a grad student teaching a small group interactively than deal with those big classes most people took.