Lag between switching tasks

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My co-workers always picked on me, in jest, of how if I am interupted I just stand there and space out for a bit. I've noticed though they are right. When I am doing something I have all the steps planned out, if something interrupts one of those steps my mind has no where to turn so I usually just stand there until I snap out of it. It's comical most times but it can be bad, like if a car is coming and I can't move fast enough. Any ideas why this happens in aspies? The more scientific the better.

No idea but it happens to me. Especially if I am trying to rush. The more stressed I am the slower I move. There's always some time of me doing nothing after being interrupted or finished with one task before I can decide what to do next. I do exactly what you say and space out for a little bit.



I know this isn't exactly what you were talking about but may be related: I have taken tests that test my physical reaction time (eg catching something that has been suddenly dropped at an unpredictable time) and I'm pretty much off the charts in slowness. But I can't even really notice it because it seems to me that no time has passed and I reacted to it instantly. But other people always laugh at me because apparently I've been standing there doing nothing for a while It seems like I am not even able to see things that move faster than I can react to them. My sister used to exploit this a lot when we were kids and would quickly (lightly) tap me on various random places and I would kind of just spaz out because I couldn't block her or do anything against it since I couldn't even really see her hands, I'd just feel them hit me.

Fear causes a sort of "deer in headlights" paralysis. It sometimes takes me around 10 seconds to react to something that has startled me because I just lock up and can't move. This one I am aware of in retrospect but unable to do anything about because its just like my brain stops working. This also caused my sister great amusement as well when she would jump out and scare me and I'd stand still and splay my fingers and shake for a few seconds BEFORE I actually screamed and jumped away from her.

Maybe it's an obvious thing to say, but I am sure it's a neurological issue. For me, that (shifting attention) has actually gotten worse with time (though I'm not saying that it must for everyone). I'm pretty sure that that is known to be a common issue with ASD.

Someone posted a link to a neuropsych test for shifting attention here once... Ah, found it:

http://www.brainfitnesscentersofflorida.com/quiz.php

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt135180.html

I found the "shifting attention test" almost physically difficult.

As to why, I'm not sure, as apparently a number of different things can effect that. One of them has to do with the cerebellum (which is known to be smaller in ASD). Another is having a small corpus collosum (also associated with autism). My mother had a stroke in the cerebellum some years ago, and her ability to shift attention is noticeably reduced.

Yep, I have this attention-shifting issue too. I am happily doing my thing the way I do it, then something interrupts me or something changes, and I have trouble shifting out of the original mode and into the new mode. I developed a little mental trick for this, which is to actually visualize a shift in perspective. Like you're standing in one place looking in one direction, then suddenly you switch the picture around so you're standing in another spot looking in another direction. Do it like in a computer game and see/feel the physical movement. This has nothing to do what you're doing, but it's the visualization of switching perspectives that has helps me clear the original mode out of my head so I can devote brain resources to the new mode. Otherwise, the original mode keeps going like a wave, and I can't get into the new mode.

Gah, another symptom I knew about but didn't really conscientiously give a name! "Lag in task shifting" - simple way to put it! Thanks for this.

It's the one area in my job that is really noticeable, and may be the reason I have to confess my undiagnosed Aspie behavior to my bosses eventually. I dread that day, but they get really aggravated when I "brain freeze" and stammer answers to their questions when they take me off task, so I know it's coming just to hopefully gain some understanding from them.

When I worked as a receptionist I used to have the greeting and name of the company written in front of the phone. The reason being that if I was in the middle of something and the phone rang, if I didnt have my paper with the greeting on it, I would pick the phone up and say nothing. I would not be able to remember where I was or what to say. Embarassing sometimes.

When I worked as a receptionist I used to have the greeting and name of the company written in front of the phone. The reason being that if I was in the middle of something and the phone rang, if I didnt have my paper with the greeting on it, I would pick the phone up and say nothing.

I would not be able to remember where I was or what to say. Embarassing sometimes.

Yes. When I have to explain AS briefly and simply to the uninitiated, I just say that I have trouble shifting my attention quickly from one task to another, and that it's usually more difficult for me to shift from the detail to the overview than to shift the other way.

It will be interesting to see if anybody with AS posts to say that they don't have this problem. I think most of us do, perhaps all.

I don't know why it happens. I suspect I would need to understand neurology better than I do in order to understand why, and quite likely the neurological explanations are still unproven anyway.

Happens to me a lot.