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Watching TV- autism vs cognitive deficit?

daniegirl6224

daniegirl6224

Member
Does anyone else like super struggle to follow/take in things on TV/movies? I am trying to figure out if it’s due to autism or some sort of cognitive deficit. I don’t think it’s ADHD because it doesn’t improve like other symptoms do when I take my ADHD med. I think it could be related to auditory processing disorder but I am not sure.
 
Yes, auditory processing is a big part of that. Youtube training videos are useless to me because I have to keep going back and replaying bits over and over to understand them properly. It can take me 45 minutes to watch a 10 minute video.

Another issue became obvious to me when I got my diagnosis, and that is that I have a very narrow field of focus and that when I watch videos I tend to only focus on small areas of the video at a time. I have superb peripheral vision but the region that is in focus for me is very narrow. What started me noticing this was when the diagnostic team got me to watch a short video and then asked me questions about people in the video, I had only been watching one of the people in the video and was unable to answer questions about the others.
 
Outdated said:
Yes, auditory processing is a big part of that. Youtube training videos are useless to me because I have to keep going back and replaying bits over and over to understand them properly. It can take me 45 minutes to watch a 10 minute video.

Another issue became obvious to me when I got my diagnosis, and that is that I have a very narrow field of focus and that when I watch videos I tend to only focus on small areas of the video at a time. I have superb peripheral vision but the region that is in focus for me is very narrow. What started me noticing this was when the diagnostic team got me to watch a short video and then asked me questions about people in the video, I had only been watching one of the people in the video and was unable to answer questions about the others.
Click to expand...

You probably know but men have narrow, laser like focus because of our hunting ancestors* and women have better peripheral vision, probably for gathering and survival. Also I think women see more colours than men, to identify berries and such

* You might have an extreme version of that
 
There was an interesting experiment where they got people to focus on a basketball game and then a man in a gorilla suit walked openly in the background and no one noticed. Which is a good indicator of how we ignore stuff were not focused on. A lot of our bias' work on the same principle of selective attention.
 
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thejuice said:
You probably know but men have laser like focus because of our hunting ancestors* and women have better peripheral vision, probably for gathering and survival. Also I think women see more colours than men, to identify berries and such

* You might have an extreme version of that
Click to expand...
I didn't know that, it matches common complaints woman have had about me though. Around the home I struggle to find things that are right in front of me, yet out in public my eyes are instantly attracted to a quarter inch of exposed knicker elastic 300 metres away. :)

Women call it Husband's Disease.

thejuice said:
There was an interesting experiment where they got people to focus on a basketball game and then a man in a gorilla suit walked openly in the background and no one noticed
Click to expand...
I saw a much more interesting one where they got people in a grandstand to wear glasses that monitored their eye movements and what they were focusing on while watching an Aussie Rules football match. It proved that women perve every bit as much as men do.
 
daniegirl6224 said:
Does anyone else like super struggle to follow/take in things on TV/movies? I am trying to figure out if it’s due to autism or some sort of cognitive deficit. I don’t think it’s ADHD because it doesn’t improve like other symptoms do when I take my ADHD med. I think it could be related to auditory processing disorder but I am not sure.
Click to expand...

I have anxiety or ADHD, or my brain is trained to want short, junk food entertainment so sitting watching a film is painful, unless I've seen it before so it's not so bad.

I have information processing disorder too, I'm very sloooow. Luckily not a problem on forums. 😁
 
Ever watch a movie for the second or third time and catch new things every time you watch it?

My wife sees a program or movie once, she doesn't want to watch it again. Whereas, I can totally enjoy watching a movie 2-4 times and discover new things each time.
 
Neonatal RRT said:
Ever watch a movie for the second or third time and catch new things every time you watch it?

My wife sees a program or movie once, she doesn't want to watch it again. Whereas, I can totally enjoy watching a movie 2-4 times and discover new things each time.
Click to expand...

I have a compulsion to watch the same movies over and over. Wanting to notice every small detail, trying to improve my understanding.

Games often exploit that obsessive autistic drive.
 
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