aspie hearing

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i have a fourteen yrold aspie son who never hears what anyone says. he is forever asking " he said what?" he only catches part of what is being said. have had his hearing tested, it is excellent. i am guessing that it is an attention issue. anyone else having the same problem?

My son has what I gently refer to as "male selective hearing" in a major way. I suppose it could be part of the AS?

It's called auditory processing disorder. I'd look into it. It's common with those with AS.

I wonder if we could work around it with sign language. He seems to be more of a visual learner anyway and memorizes things that he reads at an almost absurd rate.

I would not recommend sign language. Improvement may happen given appropriate stimulus. Atrophy will definitely happen if you remove stimulus.

Uh, not really, actually. Sign language is a good supplement when verbal communication doesn't work very well, and there's no evidence that any "atrophy" occurs--in fact, some studies actually show faster acquisition of spoken language in children given access to alternative methods of communication, probably because experience with communication has a bigger impact than experience with any particular style of communication.

However: One would presume the receptive language is the problem here, not the expressive language, particularly auditory processing. If it's auditory processing and your boy has a good level of literacy, it is very likely that he will be able to get more by reading than by listening. In noisy environments, writing seems to be about the only way you can get something across to me, and I have only what they call "mild auditory processing disorder".

It takes a lot of mental processing power to first identify speech, then filter it from the background, then determine where the words start and end, then match the words to your mental database, then put their meanings together, and then to make sure they mean their literal meanings and not sarcasm, metaphor, or figure of speech. It's no wonder some people's brains get bogged down in the middle of all that, especially when the background noise is especially distracting.

It's not really a matter of attention. It's a sensory processing thing. You're still working on the first half of the sentence, and the person who's speaking has moved on to another sentence altogether. Or you can't figure out what somebody just said because you can't figure out what's speech and what's background. It can get ultra annoying. You get about half the words in the sentence, and then you have to guess the rest. Sometimes you guess right; sometimes not. You get better at guessing as time goes on and you get more experience.

Auditory processing is generally much improved in a quiet environment with no other sounds. If that isn't enough, there are other "input" methods like writing and sign. It's an important issue because if you're missing words in conversations, you may easily be missing words in class.

It can be made worse by stress, too. Today I got pulled over by a cop because I'd made a mistake turning from the wrong lane at an intersection; and as he was talking about the problem to me, I tried to catch what he was saying, but looking back on it, I think I must have caught the first few sentences and spent the next few minutes interpreting them while he went on to say things I completely missed. Thankfully he didn't notice that I was so lost, because he sent me on my way with a warning. The stress of the unexpected event, on top of having had a long day already, made the auditory processing a lot worse. It turned out fine for me, but it might turn out worse for somebody who couldn't figure out what a cop was saying in an emergency situation. I have learned to get people to repeat things and say, "It's too noisy here, I can't hear you," or asking for written instructions instead of oral, but I still do a great deal of bluffing, pretending I hear what I don't.

Does he have the same issue when there is no background noise going on at all? Hearing a person is very difficult for me when there is any background noise, especially music.

it's difficult for us to hear when there are other sensory stimuli going on at the same time, or if there's something else you're concentrating on. I thought I was going deaf and had a hearing test which came out fine as there is silence apart from what you have to listen to.

Not sure it's a hearing problem, he may just be somewhere else with his mind, I often do the same, it's like there's a wall for things coming into my system, even things I like, and I have to make a conscious effort to absorb them (see instructions in videogames). Listening takes effort.

I researched "auditory processing disorder", this is why my wife dislikes talking to me. This explains alot! When talking to someone, I have to focus all my attention and is VERY exhausting!! ! Everyday, I learn something new.

I have this problem. I expect like me he hears things you can't hear? I can hear high and low pitched noises that don't even register with other people. If you take into consideration how noisy a room is (even if it seems silent to you) he might hear better. Small noises like a fridge buzzing or a TV/Computer can be a distraction as can even the pipes in the walls! The way I have learnt to cope with it over the years is by learning to lip-read and some basic sign language (trouble is not many people know how to do this...) but if you do decide to do the signing, make sure you speak the words as well otherwise he will rely only on signs.

Good advice jellybean. I teach my 18 month old son sign language and always say the words I am signing. Alot of what I teach and reseach for my son ends up helping me more.

I and my sons have this issue. It is very difficult to differentiate speech from background noises, and when we are engaged with something visually (such as reading) our ears "shut off".

I have found that for me, some of the time, by the time I realize someone is talking to me, over half the sentence has happened and I didn't hear it. Then when I ask them to repeat, they just repeat the last few words as if that is enough! LOL Then I have to ask them to repeat the whole thing.

huh, that explains a lot.

when I became a mom, I had to give up reading because I was always listening for kid sounds so I couldn't understand what I'd try to read. now that the kids are older I'm back to reading a lot and it's great, but I'm still more easily distracted than I was before I had kids. before, nothing existed outside the words. now things intrude.

They have actually proven that using sign language to supplement communication in infants increases their vocabulary. We used it with our toddler and he now knows several signs which he uses WITH his verbal communication as if it is just part of saying the word. We would not just stop talking to our oldest boy out loud.



This seems to happen a lot with my son, rather than repeat the whole thing I just use key points, "Plates/forks/table", and then he knows to set the table while I am finishing dinner. It does not work in every situation, but for the ones that it does... I would rather use that because I "HATEHATEHATE" repeating myself heh. Also there are times when it seems the more words that I have used the more it slows down his recognition of what I am saying.



Unfortunately/fortunately my son has the opposite problem. Due to my X not getting him to a doctor when he would get ear infections (which he got them a lot, as do I), and not keeping his ears clean, my son has some hearing loss.

I guess I am going to have to use a combination of learning more signs than I currently know, and learning to be more succinct when I speak to my son. Actually my husband complains that I give too many details to people on the phone as well... he says I am just confusing them because they cannot keep up with my train of thought.