Audio Processing

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So I've always known that sometimes when listening to people, their words just break up into noise, or I zone out listening to their tone of voice but not the words and miss the content. Or especially when people give me directions, trying to remember the directions actually makes it very hard for me to comprehend the directions, and it seems like this is the most reliable way for me to lose comprehension. This cost me a job once.

I also started turning on subtitles in video games and on my DVDs and I found that it was kind of a relief, like watching without subtitles cost me more energy to pay attention than watching with them. I don't typically recall not understanding dialogue in movies or television shows, but I do find that every little thing can interfere with my focus on what I'm hearing.

With video games, I noticed more often that I'd lose track of what I was hearing, but I'd play them longer than I'd watch movies, usually, and time may be a factor.

I've also noticed that I tend to avoid podcasts and audiobooks. I don't really like to listen to long unbroken recordings like that, and I know in both cases my attention will generally wander and I won't be able to focus on the speech. I tend to be visual, and it's hard for me to focus on hearing something without something visual to connect it to. I also find it very difficult to transcribe from recordings, as in I need to listen to the same words 2-4 times before they stick, and can only do maybe 1-3 words at a time.

Music is different, and part of that is I focus on the colors I see when listening to the music, plus I tend to memorize the lyrics and sing along. With voices, I associate them more with textures than colors.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I'm not sure whether I'm exaggerating or underplaying any of this. I just noticed recently how much easier it is to watch television with captioning than without, and it made me wonder.

SAME HERE!

If I watch movies on the computer, I always switch on captions if it's available.

I think it's because many people with ASDs have Auditory Processing issues to some degree, so it is easier to just read the words and know exactly what is being said as opposed to misinterpreting the sounds for something else.

It would be so wonderful, if some sort of technology was developed so when you talk to people in person, you could see the words coming out of the mouth like a "Speech bubble"...

You aren't exaggerating, at least not to me. You and I could be auditory twins lol. I have severe auditory problems. Right now I have to take a foreign language to get my degree and have been begging for a C-Print machine (it types out and prints what everyone around you says). No documentation for a disability means no help for me.

I always zone out when people are talking to me. I come off as rude all the time. Since I discovered Asperger's I have tried to explain this to those closest to me, in hopes to not offend them anymore.

I am the same, except for the synesthesia part, because I don't have that. I have these history podcasts that I really want to listen to, but even if I try to listen to them with headphones lying in bed in the dark, my mind still manages to get distracted.

My issue is that I wish I knew a good way to let potential clients know that I have this problem without scaring them away from contacting me in the first place. I don't understand why, in this day and age, people still insist on talking on the phone instead of communicating online.

Yeah. I didn't think I had, but then I look at how accommodating audio issues actually frees up energy and how much energy it costs me to do things like talk on the phone, and I start to wonder what's going on. Like I feel like my comprehension isn't that bad, but why does all this make life easier for me?



Agreed.



I don't always zone out and I manage to hold my comprehension together when I'm 1 on 1, but with more people around things fall apart more easily. And yeah, I've been called rude for zoning out, even though I don't - can't - do it intentionally. I actually thought I might be having absence seizures once, but I can zone out for a long time, and a seizure would kill me after a few minutes, I think.



Yes, I'll get distracted in the dark as well.

Oh and phones! I wonder if this has anything with how exhausted phone calls make me. I hate them so much, they're almost painful at times.

[/quote]Oh and phones! I wonder if this has anything with how exhausted phone calls make me. I hate them so much, they're almost painful at times.[/quote]

Same here, I always answer the phone sounding aggravated. The only person I enjoy talking to on the phone is my best friend Tina. She has Tourette's and is very patient with me when I ramble on or say "I couldn't understand you, what did you say?" The worst is my mom. She is partially deaf, so our conversations end up with a lot of "huh?" and "can you repeat that". She gets so frustrated with me because she can't see anything "wrong" with me. She doesn't believe in what she calls "psychobabble". It is very frustrating. My dad learned how to text so he could conversate with me more, my mom refuses to learn.

One of my rules is that people have to text me first if they want to call me, but I so much prefer texting. Talking is like taking a cheese grater to my brain.

This actually started in my 20s, I think, and got progressively worse. I don't recall having trouble with phones in my teens.

One of the things that makes it worse is when I have to keep repeating the same information over and over. I am not sure why this is, but that's the worst.