Aspergers and literacy

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we are all more comfortable on loin eor on the phone it is the lack of face to face ness that we enjoy...your posts are easy to read and they do flow....i wanted to learn latin and greek too when i was at school for no reason at all just an atraction to do it it was the aspie and laguage thing in me.....

Donkey: Actually, I hate talking on the phone even more than I dislike talking in real life. Because I have poor listening comprehension, I can't hear what the other person is saying very well at all without making the phone so loud it hurts my ears, and the idea of dialing the phone to call someone makes me very upset and anxious.

interesting, as i do prefer to rtalk on th ephone as it avoids interaction but when you mention it, i have a diffucult time haering what the other is saying and will often throw my phone in disgust/annoyance..mebe i have the same thing too but didnt know it. i will be more aware of this next time.....3 phones ina year...i know this i sbad.

It's going to vary from aspie to aspie. Some people with AS are hyperlexic, some are not. Some (but definitely not all) are picture thinkers while others are linear thinkers. That affects a lot. Some fixate on writing, while some could care less about neatness in that respect. Each person with AS has slightly different characteristics with how they learn and process language.

I have a problem with reading!

Although I've always been able to read difficult books for my age, I'm at the same time a very slow reader. Infact I have trouble following simple sentences from left to write - instead I tend to skim over them and guess what they says Usually I can't even tell that I'm doing this, and I don't realise how much what I read differs to what is actually there.

Does anyone else have this problem?

I was reading stories to my parents as I started kindergarden and was reading books to my class in first grade( teacher thought it was neat that I could read ) however I can not write cursive and any one including myself be able to read it I am very good at printing though.
I have no ablity to spell, I mean I could misspell it( ti) I am not sure of this a result of dyslexia or that I have problems slowing my thoughs down to the point where I can spell. I am usually on the next sentence in my mind while I am trying to write this one. It is better on a computer but I still misspell alot of simple words

I've always done well with languages. Though i never did any past secondary school i learnt them without too much effort and i love the way language works. How words are connected so that you can listen to someone speaking german or french and here all the words that are used in english and things like that. I;ve allways been more interested in dead languages though, because there not all about talking to people. I also like codes and alternative alphabets, i'ev been writing in norse runes (rather like the ones tolkien used ) since i was a kid and have also invented my own laguage/alphabet, which i use in my writing. NOw that's fun!!

I have, according to all my school reports, been very good at writing and reading. I could read and write before I started to attend school.
I remember using words that I had a vague idea what they meant, (I remember in my Reception/Kindergarten year I said the weather was "quite mild" that day, and everyone just blinked at me silently. I didn't speak for the rest of the day, I will never forget. ) but not a definite definition.
I also have trouble with pronouncing words. I know what they look like, what they mean, how to spell them, so I know them inside out - but when I go to say them I get stuck.
I have also nearly always had full marks in spelling tests. Very confusing!

I was taught to read by my mother when I was three, and when I started school at four and a half I was really way ahead of everyone else. I'm not sure if we only had these in the UK or not, but does anyone else remember the boxes of reading practice cards where they would have a little story to read, and then a few questions at the end to see how well you'd understood it? And there was an 'easy' level box and a 'harder' level box, each of them getting progressively more difficult as you went through it. We used to have to take it in turns at school to go and sit with the teacher and practice reading the next card in the box - I started off halfway through the 'harder' box, finished that, and after that, when everyone else was having their reading lessons, the teacher just used to tell me to go and get a book from the library corner to read.

In my school we used to have reading comprehensions where you read a story and then answered several questions about it. I remember doing them a lot. I think they were just for people who were good in English though. Or the people in top set English got more of them. I'm not sure.
We also had a system with books, where there were different reading levels, which smaps reception - year 2. By the end of year 1 I was nearly at the end oft he system and was a free-reader all through year 2. I had to change my reading book so frequently I got questioned about it (and that scared me a lot, lol) but I truly honestly just read fast.

I used to get sent to just pick a book from the corner too!! ! I just remembered that, i guess i was reading much faster then the other kids. I know i was allways very much more interested in books and reading then anyone else in my class and would ask my teachers for extra books to read all the time. I also didn't like being held back and wanted to read anything on the shelf not just the books for my age range.

Varies; an example would be that I can read far longer (maybe triple) generally then I can play a game (say a wargame or spider solitare) on my computer, as long as I am interested in the topic of the book. After about an hour of playing any game even if I like the game I still get bored. On the other hand if I buy some TV series I can watch the episodes for hours on end (not the same with movies, though). Or if I am looking for some specific object to buy I will search around the area just do that all day.

My attention span, not surprisingly, isn't very good when conversations around me I am not interested in. My mind drifts off fairly rapidly usually. Even when people are talking to me directly I sometimes lose track of what is being said (especially if there is a fan on, or if I have been playing with a bottlecap or something).

I have pretty good reading retention, I won an inter-school contest when I was younger, first choice of the school for the competition but the youngest one on the school team.

I still read a lot, about a book a day, recently. I aim to become a writer.

I can spend a good deal of time with a book yet I hav trouble staying patient when someone is talking without coming to the point fast enough.

I started reading at age three and "could read almost anything" (according to my mother) at age four. But a lot of that may be due to her being a nursery school teacher... plus the hours she spent with me at home teaching me language.

Interesting enough, the WAIS test I took at age six indicated a HUGE discrepancy between my verbal IQ and my performance IQ, with my verbal IQ being MUCH higher. The difference was so pronounced that they actually refused to combine the scores to get a composite IQ score. However, because my performance skills were still average rather than below average, it wasn't indicative of a problem at the time. In fact, the guise of 'intelligence' is probably what prevented me from getting any sort of diagnosis until I was 14, despite the obvious problems I was having.

I also know that I used 'grown up' language from a very early age. That is to say, long words that most of my peers were somewhat flummoxed by, even in primary school. I don't think this is hyperlexia, as hyperlexia implies use of complex language without fully understanding it? (Correct me if I'm wrong). I, however, did understand the language I was using... I just didn't understand that other kids didn't understand it.

The only problem I have with language is the physical task of writing... my handwriting is not only atrocious, but I literally cannot write for more than a couple of minutes without getting a pressure blister on my middle finger from the intensity of my pen/pencil grip. I have very poor motor control in that sense... my fingers and wrists are weak (I can't open most jars/bottles) despite having plenty of arm strength. I do wonder if this kind of thing is also common amongst Aspies. For me, it was bad enough to require that I use a laptop computer in exams, as physically writing took far too long and was too painful.

Oh, and another thing - I am an _incredibly_ fast reader. I've been accused of 'skim-reading' by those who watch me devouring a novel, but can later prove that I've taken everything in. I have never had ANY problem with reading comprehension; in fact it has always been my strongest suit (although I'm strange/lucky in that I also happen to be good at mathmatics - an unusual combo.)

My grammatical and spelling skills are exceptional, and they always have been. It doesn't even seem to run in the family, so how I came to be this way is merely a mystery. There are a few aspie traits on my father's side of the family, but none of them are what I could call grammatically proficient. I could probably even be considered hyperlexic, and it is very hard to trick me where spelling is concerned.

I don't know at what age I started to read fluently, but I imagine that it was early on. I was reading books well above my age level in grammar school, though I hated fiction and novels. I couldn't maintain a train of thought for novels, and I'd get very confused in trying to picture what was going on. I was said to have had trouble comprehending what I read. I could write what I thought, but I had trouble retaining storylines as I read them.

I may be great with the English language, but foreign languages are a disaster. For some reason, I can't pick up on learning all the facets of foreign languages.

I imagine it has to do with discrepancies between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and that would be true for everyone, I would think.

- Ray M -