Responding to your own name

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Please exclude your primary caregivers or immediate family members as the persons calling your name when answering the poll. The persons calling your name might be children, teachers, or adults who were not raising you.

Responding means showing or trying to show any external signs that you were aware of another person calling your name, e.g. turning to look at person, saying something, doing something that might not have been recognized as a standard response, anything other than no response at all.

If you can remember being called by name and not responding, then what was going through your mind during the non-interactions? Did you understand the social meaning of someone calling you by name?

I started regularly responding to my name when I was 8 to 9 years old. I heard the sound of my name and the direction of the sound, and I knew that it was my name, but after that, nothing. No understanding of the social meaning and therefore no response. Hear sound, know name, THE END. I'm curious to know what was going on in other people's minds in the same situation.

The keyword for me is "regularly". I still don't regularly respond to my name. Sometimes I simply didn't hear them, never mind they're in the same room. Other times, I can hear something was said, but it didn't process. My children know that they might have to touch me. In school it didn't help that there were generally five girls with the same first name in my class. I never knew who was actually being called.

My daughter is 10 and often doesn't respond to her name when I call. When other children call her name she may or may not turn in their direction and is even less likely to wave or otherwise respond.

Background noise definitely is a factor.

I don't know the exact age but I definitely had problems with responding to my name. Now, when someone calls my name, I feel that it somewhat drains me (as if extra energy would be required) to respond with something (that's hopefully appropriate). Mostly I do, because I know I should. However, when I anticipate it's only an attempt at nagging (or something like that), I'll pretend I didn't hear.

I recall when I was 4.5 yo, hospitalized for observation with something else, the doctors/nurses suspected that I had some hearing impairment, for I didn't respond to my name. I don't remember having any problem with my hearing that time.

(I voted 5-6.)

I was well over 10 before I started responding. I have always had auditory problems though.

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

I remember that I did not respond to my name everyday at school. I never responded, even though I heard. No social meaning. No need to respond. When I was asked to do something, no problem. When my name was called by itself, no response. My mother told me that this behavior was incomprehensible and mystifying to her. My grandmother considered it to be perfectly normal. My grandmother and I also rocked back and forth together every time we sat down. My mother used to blame my grandmother for my rocking behavior, that I learned it from her. I think I did learn it from her, through her genes.

Extremely common name + I usually assume that people don't want to talk to me = I don't answer immediately anyway