Reading Errors and Oddities

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Just wondering if anyone else has similar problems when reading.

I seem to substitute words/phrases (especially when reading aloud) - sometimes these are ones that have similar spelling, sometimes they're words with similar meanings (at times I read an entirely different phrase in terms of words but the meaning is the same - so it seems I have understood it somehow) and occasionally I can't tell how I managed to come up with it.

I also swap letters and numbers around at times (p,d,b;123,132). This happens often enough that my wife doesn't trust me to correctly input card numbers for online shopping. (And that I find myself grumbling to her about how I'm sure I've done it right and how the webpage isn't working and then it turns out it is me that's wrong.)

At times I get stuck on the first letter of a word, for example c-c-c-c-c-ar.

Sometimes my reading is much worse than others and I'm not sure why it's so inconsistent.

I had difficulty learning phonics and still struggle now, but I learnt how to sight read very efficiently and can read very quickly. At age 9, I was reading at the age of a 14 year old. So I don't think I could have dyslexia... but there does seem to be something off.

Whenever I could make the teacher skip me from reading, I'd do it because I was sure eventually I'd accidentally read something vulgar aloud.
Paying attention to context and what I was actually reading would have made my reading super-slow, so that wasn't an option.

Luckily, that didn't happen.

I do the swapping but not the sticking.
It makes for some very entertaining billboards.

My brain also occasionally throws in similar words. e.g. there was a recent post of someone thinking about getting incarcerated. At first glance..!? Why would you want to be incinerated?!

But like you, i was well above my grade in reading, so i too don't think it's dyslexia..more like brain hiccups.

Once in school, I had to read a book that was purposely written with HORRIBLE spelling and grammar. The author was trying to make it seem like the main character, who lives in a post-apocalyptic and illiterate world, was writing the story. I could not read it.

I complained to another teacher, who was always very receptive, that having to read this book was a bad assignment. She told me that the reason I could not read it was because my brain had learned to stop reading each letter of the word. Instead, it looked for cues and started anticipating what might come next.

It might be why you replaced words like "incarcerated" with "incinerated"; your brain read a few letters at the beginning and end, and anticipated what the word might be. It also might be why you substituted synonyms; your brain read a few words and anticipated the rest of the sentence. This makes you a faster reader, but more susceptible to errors.

_________________
31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

That's an interesting idea.. I don't know about the OP, but i learned to 'speed read' quite young.
Now that you mention it, when i'm (slow) reading technical docs, swapping words isn't much of an issue..

Thanks.

I have to re-read paragraphs as I "slide-off" the words towards the end. My concentration goes and the words just blur visually and mentally. I also make elementary mistakes and get the wrong end of the stick frequently - it takes me a while to read a book properly

This has been most problematic in written examinations as I have to go back over questions to ensure I have the meaning.

Gartog is very close to my experiences. When I have to read aloud though, it forces me to concentrate harder and I can read aloud 'better' than I can silently. But the flipside is that I am not grokking the information as I am focusing on translating the symbols into words only.
Me and words are not good friends. They come in ok, but they do not go out well at all. And if trying to do both, then I don't get them coming in well at all.....
I do enjoy reading. I must because I have to read so much over and over to get the information down.