I feel like peoples words bounce off my head..normal?

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Is this an aspergian trait? During a conversation, I never feel like I grasp what someone is saying to me. It's like the gist of it bounces off my head and never gets absorbed into my brain, where it can get processed. Then I end up saying something that sounds as if I'm not paying attention, like "oh really?" (I use that one a lot), or other short answers (e.g. "thats cool" "alright"). In actuality I'm trying as hard as I can to hear the person out and then respond. Also, this makes it hard to talk to people I work with because I never remember what they said to me last time we talked.

Difficuties with audio processing is pretty common it seems. I have the same problem and it can be very embarrassing. Sometimes my thoughts are too loud so that it is an effort to auto-translate the sounds into the words they are supposed to be...sometimes, I mishear...or things people say to me come out sounding like gibberish...there are old auditory processing difficulty threads floating around...It took me a little while to retreive the terminology for it..CAPD Cental Auditory Processing Disorder.....fairly common among folk on the spectrum...

furthermore..it is not a "hearing" thing..I am very sensitive to all kinds of noises and good at identifying sounds..It is the sounds of people talking specifically, also in context of music....hava a hard time picking up on lyrics...blah blah...

Someone wrote a good post on that (if it's the same thing) a while back, but I can't remember the name of the thread. Basically, he (she?) said that when people first say something to him it doesn't sound like words; it's just meaningless noise. And then, just after he says "what?," his brain decodes it and it makes sense.

I usually get most of what people say, just after a delay (I also have a lot of those "uh huh" type responses, to buy time). When tired or overloaded though sometimes my brain freezes up, and I can't keep up. At that point the words go off into outer space, never to be seen again. I get the impression I'm on the milder end for that, though.

Oh, the official term for that is "central auditory processing disorder." There might be other names for it, too.

That's a common trait? Wow, I thought it was just one of the symptoms of my hearing loss, an inability to detect the frequency of sound that consonants are located in. It really must be mental though, because when watching a TV show, half of the dialogue is lost on me, even though I have no trouble processing the other half.

I only have trouble with understanding people occasionally; my roommate isn't so lucky. It happens often enough that she ends up automatically explaining the phenomenon whenever it happens, even with someone like me who understands and also sometimes struggles with not understanding. When it does happen to me, I usually just use my ADHD as an excuse and pretend I wasn't paying attention.

It's especially bad for me if the person talks really fast. I've been doing some work for someone who talks a mile a minute, and I have a lot of difficulty having conversations with him. He'll say something and it just sounds like, "Djf iurhlajhew fldls fasjdhf jkhred aflkjasd ljh llakwefj lasdfy oiud fower kljm ldijf." So I stand there silent looking like this for some time until I get what he said. Sometimes I don't reply fast enough, so he keeps going and it just gets worse. Often I have to ask him to repeat.

Processing language is a common problem for people on the spectrum, yeah.

For me, it's not so much "bouncing off my head" as I just never absorb it. It's like forgetting they are talking. It could be an ADHD thing or a language thing or a processing thing--who knows?--but the best I can do is just ask them to repeat things, and try to have conversations only in quiet areas where I can hear them properly.

yup... *nods* ...alright.

Wait what did that guy just tell me to do? Oh crap oh crap... stay calm... hmm... I think it might have been something about burritos. No, that can't be right, what was it? I'll just pretend I forgot about it, next time I am totally not ever ignoring that guy again.

Oh sorry sir, I'll get right on that.

What did he ask me to do again? Geez I really need to stop doing this.

I have this to a certian extent...it's more attention based though. When my mind is focused on the conversation at hand and not wandering, I can respond with ease. The problem, though is that it wanders often and I have to keep redirecting myself...especially if they're talking about something I'm uninterested in.

I have this problem to varying degrees. The longer I'm in a social situation the more likely it is that my ability to process that situation is going down the tubes. Also, certain kinds of verbal communication are harder for me than others (like instructions, or over the phone).