Do people think you're slow in understanding?

[felines are superior]

I know we have a higher IQ than the average nt, but people who don't know we're aspies may think we're slow to understand things. I used to think that before I knew I had Asperger. It was very confusing and frustrating to me that some people who really were very slow in understanding did much better than me in understanding certain things, like social cues, people's meaning, better judges of character and situations, etc.

 

[SusanLR]

I have been told this by NTs also.
There is a lag sometimes between my answering something or getting the meaning of certain situations,
but, it is like only a few seconds, yet they seem to pick up on it and ask things like "Do you know what I'm talking about?", "Are you getting the meaning?"

Yes, I do.
But, as with everything in life, I do not like to be hurried.
I want to reply accurately and concisely.
Maybe my facial expression of being rather unemotional
and difficulty with eye contact add to the thoughts that I
am not understanding or slow.

 

[Suzanne]

No, because of the people I have to be around, are not like that. Ok, they may THINK it, but never have said it; I do very well for the entire nation on my own! I find it incredably frustating to not be able to put a reason behind an emotion. I FEEL angry or hurt etc, but WHY is undecernable at the time and only after a while ( often when too late), the WHY comes to me.

 

[Gracey]

Yes.

I think sometimes it's due to my lack of emotional reaction or certain body language
. Other times my response may be delayed because it takes a fraction of a second to push their words through a couple of mental filters to arrive at a meaning for what's being said.

Should the speaker be 'grandstanding' and using my delayed reaction to bolster their own status amongst the group ( doesn't happen so much now I'm older but certainly when attending college in my youth)
I would tear their sentences apart and point out their generalisations or ambiguity and hand them their ass verbally.

I know 'nobody likes a smart ass' but I couldn't help myself.
I'm claiming self defense.

 

[Progster]

Possibly - I have no idea what people think of me because they don't tell me. I think that people might think that I'm not very intelligent because of the way I dress and look, or the fact that I don't always catch on as fast as they do in conversations and social situations, because I don't talk much and don't join in. At school, at one point, I had two very bad years where I wasn't doing well, so the teachers thought that I was slow and wanted to put me in the slow learners' class.

I don't know what my actual IQ is because I was never tested, but I know I can't be stupid because I have a university degree, and you don't get a university degree for being stupid.

 

[granolaturtle]

Sometimes, I think. I take a while to get words out sometimes, especially in intense interpersonal discussions. Although, sometimes the problem is the opposite. I have a very good grasp on language, words and understanding ideas and concepts - and it's an intelligence that's readily apparent from speaking to me. But people then assume I get everything that easily. Math, spatial reasoning and remembering directions and stuff like that I'm fairly certain I have a genuine learning disability in.

I hate the idea of my words, language and concepts being "superpowers" to make up for my lack of mathematic reasoning, though.

 

[OlLiE]

people tell me that i think and reason very quickly
so if it's a logical discussion no problem
if you have to emotionally sell an idea, well i suck at that

often, it is because they haven't realised that they re talking nonsense and have very little ability to question themselves

hence, stupid people, projecting confidence and assertively, while talking utter nonsense

can can't blame ignorant people for not understanding that you are smarter
it's like trying to explain to a caveman that lightning is not the expression of a gods anger

 

[Chance]

If its a drama filled human relations situation - I suck at understanding it in most cases, especially if it is someone I am not familiar with, or deals with lots of body language and emotion. I would rather run then stand there to try and hash through this stuff...

If its a mechanical, mathematical, logical real world issue I usually can have an answer before they get through asking the question. If not, my brain is smoking to find one. : )

 

[WereBear]

In my younger years certainly, though it was elementary school and their response was more like a puzzled withdrawal.

In junior high it was more a "it's not me, it's you" as I found a few people here and there who enjoyed reading, discussing intellectual subjects, and art appreciation. Being precocious about this without any other prodigies to be friends with was the problem, I thought. Which isn't wrong, either.

Had I been in a major metropolitan area, like NYC with its system of gifted high schools, the trajectory would have been different. Because I had no problem interacting with my family or my real friends. I could SOCIAL better than many NTs, in fact.

But I theorize now this social behavior is actually a bunch of lighting fast calculations, the way savants can figure out any day in history. I don't need to "calculate" nearly as much when I am with family and friends as I do with strangers. Alone time is vital because it lets this mechanism rest.

 

[Forgotten Aspie]

Hello Everyone - New to the forum. My experience has varied throughout life. One of my life's pursuits was to become an interpreter for the deaf. I believe this helped me fill in the gap of reading body language and look people in the eye when signing and now speaking. The problem I still have with English is that I automatically analyze all the possible meanings of what is said when the concept they were trying to express were poorly worded and too ambiguous for me. Hense, the stupid look on my face "What did you just say???" - My brains is thinking do you mean this.. or this.. or that? What did you mean by that word? Ironically that is the internal process of interpreting between languages. The truth is, many people are not good at forming clear, accurate, sentences... I find many people "parrot" their language.. Repeating common phrases and cliche's with little thought as to how accurately it represents what they wanted to express. They do not use the words like an artistic medium to create new strings of concepts and meaning... basically it is ' Uhhh...Grog want food!"

Another issue Is that when I try to have a conversation, its rarely superficial.. it is always "meaningful" and in-depth. When everyone else is out there is talking about the weather, I'm trying to solve major wold problems..

When I was just starting to learning ASL ( American Sign Language) I would get frustrated because I wanted the deaf to sign ASL to me not some pidgin mix of ASL signs in an English order. It was not until I acquired basic ASL skills that we could sign ASL together. My point is.. if two language structures (syntax) and symbolic meaning (semantics) are not at least similar, the conversation breaks down into a mix of the two languages... Then, both languages suffer the loss of effectiveness and efficiency. In essence.. some people are not speaking "our language" and don't have the ability to do so. Some of "us" have a greater ability to conceptualize thoughts and express them on specific subjects or in general. It could be argued that "they" have the disability.

 

[pjcnet]

NTs sometimes think I'm slow understanding because I often don't process what people are saying unless they say things slowly, especially if there's other noise going on and I'm always asking for them to repeat which can annoy them, I've been accused of not listening on countless occasions, but listening has absolutely nothing to do with it. There has also been numerous occasions where I've not picked up body language / the cues and I don't do as expected or I say the wrong things, sometimes I don't realise until I get a blatant negative response, but on occasions I suspect I never realise and I'm instead criticised behind my back. This is probably one big reason why I get negativity / dislike from some NTs while never truly knowing what I've done wrong.

 

[Gritches]

"Are you a fast learner?"

It's a question that you're supposed to say "yes" to. But I'm not a fast learner; I am slower to understand things than others.

But here's the thing: people who learn more slowly also learn more thoroughly. So whether being slower to understand is a disadvantage or not depends on what you're doing. If it's your first day at McDonald's, you want to be a fast learner because nothing that you're learning is terribly complicated. If you're an aerospace engineer and you have to understand the hows and whys of every single bolt in an extremely complicated machine, you want to be a slow, thorough learner.