Female/Mild ASD: Describing & Summarising

Post Reply New Topic

The Aspie Quiz includes the question "Do you have difficulty describing & summarising things for example events, conversations or something you've read?".

I wondered how many relate to this description and I'm particularly interested in how it manifests in females and in those with a mild/suspected ASD.

I have absolutely no difficulty with this whatsoever (that I'm aware of anyway). I'm usually highly articulate and pride myself on being a crystal clear thinker most of the time too. I've always scored very highly on comparative analysis in IQ tests - it's possibly my strongest faculty - and in many ways I associate this ability with many of those traits which put me on the spectrum (albeit at the very mild, e.g. BAP, end).

I'm also probably mostly a verbal thinker which may make this sort of thing much easier, but I'm very visual/pattern based too.

Is this something more specific to severe ASD and/or purely non-verbal thinkers?

I can summarize things very VERY briefly, like "Spin is a book where the Earth gets caught in a sort of time warp." but if I need to be even a little bit more descriptive than that, I'm totally befuddled. I'm either going to read you the ENTIRE book, or you're going to accept my brief description and move on.

If you give me some time to do it in text, though, I'll probably manage a pretty decent job of it.

No, I don't have problems with describing or summarising, I never have. I have always been very good at it in fact, better than most, which is something that doesn't seem to fit with the AS. It's one of the reasons I have found it difficult to accept my diagnosis. I do find it much easier when I can write it down though, as mentioned in the previous posts, I tend to forget things and mix things up if I'm doing it verbally. Is this one of the ways in which females with AS differ from males? Or is it one of the ways that high functioning AS differs from lower functioning AS?

Yeah I have a very hard time summarizing things as well but Im not a huge verbal thinker. Its mainly cause I have a hard time finding the right words in describing things. And Im trying to get my message across.

I have difficulty describing things in that it takes a lot of effort for me to describe something, and my spoken descriptions are often incoherent. It is probably related to me not being a verbal thinker and having to translate into words from non-verbal thoughts. When I write something, I always start with a picture in my mind, then translate the picture into words. That is harder to do in speaking than writing. I would rather show the picture and have people understand than use words at all. It is a hassle to describe pictures.

Easy
But I am a non-visual thinker, only verbal thoughts. Don't know if that makes a difference

(not all aspies are visual thinkers, even though some people try to emphasise this trait)

Also, I don't know how to summarize. I only know how to verbally describe the parts of pictures, one part at a time.