About noticing details and observing people.

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I like to observe and I notice little details other people tend to miss. I also quickly spot patterns and whether they are repeated - and if so, how often. And I notice if some minor detail is changed, eg on food packaging and things like that.

TV programmes and films are my thing - if there's any inconsistency or inaccuracy, I'll spot it and comment on it. Details that just don't make sense tend to irritate me a lot.

I also have a thing for spotting errors in written documents, newspapers etc - eg missing apostrophes, incorrect use of a word, grammatical errors.

That's a good one. Food packaging and if ingredients changed in them. Spelling errors! Oh, this kills me! I want to write on the paper and correct it.
That reminds me that I like to look in the background when I'm watching shows, to see if anyone looks like they're doing a poor job acting or just at the scenery in general. Entertaining.

Yeah, I do over-analyse details sometimes. I'm not exactly sure what I usually think of when I analyse them but I know I just rant on and on about it. Out loud. I tend to verbalize my thoughts. Sometimes when analysing things the things I say aren't really coherent. I say something and then several minutes later I start talking about it again and people are like "what are you on about?". Do you know what I mean?

Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I do these SAME things on a daily basis. That's why I'd rather be tired all the time so I don't stimulate myself to the point of my brain wanting to explode.

This!

Yes, I often feel like my brain could explode at any moment because there's always so much going on in there. But I enjoy it. Most of the time. Not when I worry and not when I'm anxious though. Anyway, I enjoy noticing details and thinking about them and I wonder what a life without doing that would look like. Like I said before, I think details make life exciting!

Me too. There have been times when I've literally felt dizzy because of a spelling mistake or misplaced apostrophe.

I never thought of myself as observant in any other way, until I got the diagnosis and began to pay more attention to my quirks and strengths. I've noticed that NTs, in general, don't notice a lot of things that I'll see immediately. On the other hand, I don't recognise faces very well. I think I pay more attention to my surroundings than people.

I actually love peoplewatching, in streets and shopping malls. Just as long as I can be in an unobtrusive situation. I also see small details in the environment and come up with connections to the 'bigger picture'.

I see the macro and the micro, I just don't notice the things in the middle.

I'm not really good at seeing the bigger picture. Maybe I do that without even realising it but I don't think I do. Might be a stupid question but what does "seeing the bigger picture" mean? Or, I know what it means but have you got any examples of seeing the bigger picture?

When you first look at a recently completed jigsaw puzzle do you see the individual lines and patterns the pieces make, or do you see the farm house and the animals?

Hmm. I recently completed a jigsaw puzzle of the Wall of China. I remember I first (just for like a couple of seconds) looked at the whole picture and thought "there we go, it's done" but then I started to look at all the lines of the bricks and the lights from the villages around the Wall, and the colour of the mountains etc. Would you say that's looking at the whole picture or at the details?

I think most people don't notice details because they have an inherent trust that things will continue as they are. I have always lacked this trust. I notice the slightest changes and subtleties. People often think I'm off base, but later they realize I was right.

I'm a font geek because of my penchant for noticing details. I'm also a great copy editor because of it as well. I've never really understood why counterfeit things are often so sloppily copied...it seems to me like it's a dead giveaway when things are poorly copied.

For example, I once got a DVD set on eBay that I had to report for fraud because it was so clearly a counterfeit. There were lots of quality and font clues, but one of the most egregious was that there were two different (non-standard) fonts on the UPC code. I mean, is that so hard to check? I would imagine that Aspies would make amazing counterfeiters or counterfeit detectors.

On the flip side, I once noticed that my paychecks had a line at the top about anti-counterfeit measures that was completely bonkers: it said "ORIGINAL DOCUMENT HAS ULTRAVIOLETY FIBERS AND AN ARTIFICAL WATERMARK." I had to get the payroll person to verify that this was a real check, because c'mon, you can't even check for typos in the fraud line? That's ridiculous.

This trait is also helpful in my line of work, which may be the most Aspie-favorable line of work possible. I'm a systematic botanist. I get to professionally obsess over details between types of plants and categorize them. It's awesome.

I notice changes and differences all the time. Sometimes I feel that something has changed but I can't figure out what it is. I just know something's different. Then it drives me crazy until I realise there's one new graffiti word on the wall, a tree has been cut down or someone's cut their nails or whatever it is that I've noticed. Does that happen to you too?

Yes ... it's like a "spot the difference" game. I love trying to figure out what's different.

I love those games. I play them all the time in magazines or in video games. I loved them in Fun Pads. But in a magazine, I think it's in People, the game is a lot harder because they make everything the same and you need to be very very detail oriented to find it and the change in the different photo is so well blend in you can easily miss it.

Plus I have always loved the books I Spy and other versions to it. At one of my autism groups I was doing one of the books and I was so busy looking at objects and all the details I didn't realize all these little objects made a person. I was like "Oh my god" when I finally noticed. Then I said to someone in the group I was so busy looking I didn't even realize the shape of these people the objects made.