Processing speed and Aspies without ADHD.

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Do you find that your processing speed is slower? Possibly faster? I would really like to try and separate a lot of AS traits from ADHD, they seem to get clustered together and it's difficult to get concrete information. The DSM mentions nothing about processing speed in either AS or ADHD as far as I know but I know that many ADHDers seem to struggle with it. Is this an issue for most Aspies?

I'm a fraction of a second slower than everyone else, it seems. I am so much more comfortable when words come at me more slowly, since I have a hard time understanding people who speak quickly. I love sports (baseball and football are special interests), but when things happen quickly it seems as if everyone else has thoroughly analyzed the play, while I am still digesting it. I'm not sure if this has something to do with Asperger's or with the fact that I am "mixed-handed", which has been described as a brain that has been wired into the equivalent of a messy office, with piles of papers, rather than an organized and efficient filing system. And I have a high IQ, btw, with no other symptoms of ADD/ADHD.

Interesting question. I'm curious to see what others say.

S-L-O-W
particularly visual processing

and as my previous post No Attention Deficit.

Last edited by iceb on 23 Jul 2010, 11:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have no diagnosis, but I'm sure I couldn't be considered ADD or ADHD. I do have a hard time processing things, and it's something I've always noticed. I'll ask questions about something that appears to be transparently explained, just to be sure. I also have a hard time understanding what people are saying, despite apparently nothing being wrong with my hearing. I "hear" it just fine, I just don't know what word they said. I say, "Huh?" allllll the time. Besides being a video game nut and disliking mainstream culture, this is part of the reason I listen almost exclusively to video game and movie soundtracks... I can rarely understand even a single word of any given song, unless I'm looking at a lyric sheet.

I seem to process of things pretty quickly. I have been diagnosed with ADHD when I was 5 though but that was before they used Aspergers as a diagnosis and AS was often diagnosed as ADHD.

Last edited by Todesking on 24 Jul 2010, 10:19 am, edited 2 times in total.

Like DonDud I have problems getting what people say. It garbles into nonsense if there's any background noise at all, so I depend heavily on lipreading when I'm out with people in stores or god forbid a party. Grandin and Attwood write about APD being a characteristic of those on the spectrum. Sometimes processing can also be slowed down by what Grandin calls clipping which is when you miss the first part of what someone says.

Being on the spectrum can also cause reading difficulties in that text can change size, color, jiggles, etc. So I think Aspies can definitely suffer in terms of processing as well as those with ADHD.

MotownDangerPants posted: Do you find that your processing speed is slower? Possibly faster? I would really like to try and separate a lot of AS traits from ADHD, they seem to get clustered together and it's difficult to get concrete information. The DSM mentions nothing about processing speed in either AS or ADHD as far as I know but I know that many ADHDers seem to struggle with it. Is this an issue for most Aspies? - Motown - Assorted on topic/off topic comments. Regarding ADHD, there have been statements made which are close to the idea that a person with ADHD can take 8 hours to do homework which an ADHD-free person could do in 2 hours. Regarding the many epilepsies (such as absence/petit mal/complex partial), a subtle/whatever seizure can take a person off task so the timed processing is visibly slower. Recall reading about a waiter in a restaurant who found himself being off the task of serving a beverage to a customer by about seven minutes. He had to ask the customer what the customer thought had happened which could explain the long time the waiter spent at the beverage machine doing nothing so to speak. In terms of trying to measure processing speed (a little off topic), football players (high school sports, etc.) are beginning to use a devise called Impact to evaluate/try to evaluate the effect of sports concussions/processing speed: - http://www.impacttestoffice.com/ - http://www.sportsconcussions.org/ - In terms of trying to measure processing speed with central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) - http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/auditory.asp - not sure what's available or how it measures auditory processing speed. Also: Learning Disabilities Accommodations - Have allowed extra time to complete a timed exam due to processing challenges; other words - digit span, letter span, attention span, and so on. Some sales training classes have made generalizations such as the maximum amount of time an average American adult can pay attention well (aka to a sales pitch) is about 18 minutes maximum (so what are the implications of a State of the Union address from Washington, D.C. by a US president which lasts over 18 minutes?). It's very disappointing to read about a standard resource such as the DSM (2010) which is so lacking in using modern technology to measure processing speeds of all kinds (mental/gross and fine motor control/auditory and so on). It makes some think that the people behind the DSM (2010) don't really care and don't really want to help customers at all since they are not using modern technology well at all. Hopefully there will be some improvements in the new DSM scheduled for 2013. - pgd

Yes, though the busier the environment, or the more psychological pressure put on me, the slower it seems to get, until it just freezes and I shut down.

I have likened it to a funnel, through which only so much data can be shoved at a time, until it starts to back up.

The more upset and angry, I start to fumble until I just give up. In a better mood my thinking is clearer but in a bad mood everything becomes frustrating, this is probably why I struggled with advanced subjects back in high school. I have trouble with worded questions more than anything else, most math and visual questions I do OK with.

My visual processing speed is slow and inhibited.
My auditory processing speed is above normal.
My emotional processing is atypical.
My physical processing speed is pretty poor.

I should note, high IQ and an extremely good memory. Its the here and now I often struggle with.

Basically I process things differently. Sometimes very differently.

I don't have ADHD.

I feel like I process things much slower than everyone else. I have poor working memory and I think it might be related. It takes me longer to understand spoken words than most people. I have an average IQ.

What's an example of visual processing?

Yes! just like that.

On the IQ test that was part of my AS assessment, my processing speed sub test was 9 standard deviations lower than my highest sub tests.

It has been speculated that with AS there is some degree of right brain impairment. The right brain, I have heard, takes raw information of some sort and pre-processes and the left brain gets that pre-processed information and resolves it.

In the case of people with AS, the left brain may have to do more of the processing than was intended.

I speculate this type or processing issue might manifest clinically not as the person using extra time to think about something to arrive at an answer, as in the individual sitting there thinking "Uh...let me think" but rather I believe this extra time is used by the subconscious to figure out what the information is. Once this is known I believe the cognitive processing is not impaired.

I scored 86 on the processing speed index on the recent WAIS I took.


I've scored higher on other WAIS tests i've taken...but it's always been at least a
relative weakness for me.


I'm sure it effects my performance on the block design subtest for one example.


I seem to be able to assemble the blocks correctly....but it takes me almost all the alloted time to do so.


My auditory processing isn't too hot either apparently. On the Weschler memory scales....I remembered the stories which were read to me better after a 30-minute delay as opposed to immediately.

I got something close to 100 (a little above...I forget the exact number) on immediate recall and 130 on delayed recall.

I have issues with auditory processing, unless it's music performance. I have a lot of difficulty understanding people who speak quickly, or if it's in a large room with other sounds. They might as well be speaking a foreign language, for how much I'm able to actually understand them. It has often been a source of embarrassment for me when I work customer service jobs, as the customers think I'm stupid when I ask them to repeat themselves (especially if I have to ask more than once).

For some reason, though, I'm perfectly fine (and even better than average, considering I'm a violist) when playing/singing in a music group. I suppose that's because the brain processes music differently than it does speech.