Watching lips when people talk.

Post Reply New Topic

I wonder this about myself all the time. I know when I was in elementary school, they suspected I had some hearing loss. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility given how many ear infections I suffered as a kid.

I do it subconsciously, but I'll either look at the eyes or lips depending on... Well, I dunno what it depends on, it's all subconscious

I don't look at eyes thats weird

I usually look at the lips when they're talking. Otherwise, I can't really understand them. I have to pay close attention.

I watch lips when people are talking, but I seem to miss things anyway.

I was just thinking about this some days ago when I was sitting in the cafeteria with one of my colleagues - well, I'm working hard to have her as a friend, but I don't know if I'll succeed, I'm kinda worried for her not to get hurt by me -, so she was talking to me (I don't exactly know what it was about because I was hardly receiving the message). I usually tried to look in her eyes, because I know how important that is for NT's, but I'm rarely able to do that for more than a few seconds.

So I started to look at her lips - I'm usually doing that when talking to someone. But then I thought that maybe this would be very weird for her, so instead I started to look somewhere else, sometimes looking into her eyes just to make her feel that I'm "listening".

But I think now it's obvious that instead of listening to her, my mind was full with thoughts about how to act as an NT.

Actually, I told her I'm most probably an aspie and told her about some of the symptoms, so I think maybe she won't mind if I act weird. As she studied communications in the university, I've asked her about what she learned about not keeping an eye contact. She replied instantly: "not telling the truth".... aww

Mostly, I watch someone's lips...but if they have some other feature that catches my eye...say a mole...I cannot divert my eyes from it. Sometimes during conversation, if there is nothing that stands out, my eyes will wander off to whatever else catches my attention. I've gotten better at glimpsing at eyes than I used to be, but if I'm really tired or stressed, all bets are off!

I watch lips nearly 100% of the time. If I'm in a quiet environment I don' t need to so much but at work or in a store where there's extra ambient noise I'll lose almost everything that's said if I don't. I didn't really pick up on the lipreading habit I guess until I was 12 or so, and that's when my comprehension went way up. Before that, even if it was quiet, most people's speech was just a jumbled mess of sounds. watching mouths is my biggest work around I think.

It depends. If lips are f.e. dry or teeth are yellow, or something else is interesting, I watch. I usually find interesting object and I look at it. It can be anything - lips, eyes, cheeks, shirt, shoes, hair... whatever.

I definitely watch the lips.

I am starting to appreciate more and more how, if I can't predict the context of the conversation, I am HORRIBLE on the phone. Even worse if both of us are on cell phones--I find myself having to use probing questions/statements to figure out what the hell the person just said (and thought they were perfectly understood) without letting on just how little I actually heard, until I get the context of the conversation and I can predict and respond appropriately.

Is this a normal thing for someone with only an ADHD diagnosis?

I haven't seen anything about it in the ADHD literature I've read. I learned about it with regards to APD and then learned that APD can be a part of autism.

Really? I'm surprised...my dad isn't as bad as I am with that (that or he covers it up REALLY well), but he has only ADHD that we know of and was taken to the doctor when he was little because his mother was afraid he was deaf. The doctor informed her, much to her chagrin, that he was just "ignoring" her.

My mom says she doesn't believe I heard a full sentence when I was little, and she had to teach me to read in order for me to learn to speak. (I could repeat back things, but actually getting from a question to a statement, switching pronouns, and stuff, wasn't happening.)

I'd be interested to know more about this, though, because this is starting to cause me problems at work now that I'm in a job where I get a lot more very involved cell phone calls than I did before. Minor at this point, but I'd like to nip it in the bud somehow before it gets worse and it gets me in trouble or impacts someone else that I am supposed to be advising or listening to.

Wait, I did find an article addressing APD and ADHD... interesting....
http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/731.html

Add in my problems with being touched and certain textures, and I definitely seem to have a lot going on. But the phone thing is getting annoying and it's kind of renewed my desire to see someone to find out if I can get a clear diagnosis (or two or three?!), before I end up having a major screwup at work.

Like with the lip reading thing I first started doing that just a few years ago (had no idea why) but have noticed the last few months I went back to focusing on eyes again! Any ideas on that one. Maybe shifting stress levels? Or am I just an extra strange aspie?

I always look at the lips. I almost never make direct eye contact when in a conversation.