Dyslexia and Aspergers, Very Similar?

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I have both Aspergers and a Dyslexia diagnosis.

From birth my mother thought I suffered with Autism, but I was first diagnosed with Dyslexia when I was 9. At that time the child psychologist said to my parents, that my on going assessment over the years showed strange results that couldn't be explains.

Anyway I have a very hard childhood with not fitting in and general struggling to cope with day to day life, not mention the trouble at school as I have great trouble learning in the normal school situations due to sensory issues and the inability to understand verbal teaching / learning in class rooms.

To cut a long story short I never finished school and lead a very self distractive, misunderstood life for awhile. It wasn't until I was 24 that I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I started an Open University Degree.

I've been told that Aspergers and Dyslexia are not related, but I do wonder some times if dyslexia was a miss diagnosis to start with but I still have terrible spelling and auditory learning issues so I guess it is possible to suffer with both.

To try and help I have come up with a list of me to try and help

what I would consider my dyslexic traits.

- didn't really start to read until I was 10
- find it very hard to learn from verbal instruction
- still to this day I suffer from terrible spelling
-Confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences, or verbal explanations
-feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading, writing, or copying
-get left and right mixed up (Not so much these days due to alot of practice)
-Difficulty putting thoughts into words; speaks in halting phrases; leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress

My AS traits

- lack of empathy and come across cold and or insensitive
- obsessed over my obsessions
- easy over stimulated by light, loud noises, clothes to tight or not soft enough
- find it hard to keep friends for a period of time
- I like routine and have to be able to plan my day / life and get very distressed if anything changes
- totally androgonus
- chameleon in social situations by mimicking those around
- prefure my own company or animals rather than humans.
- list could go on and on.

Anyway hope this helps.

I think there are some similarities. I'm thinking about them right now, that's why I answered

dyslexic people have more often:
- speech delay
- auditory processing disorder
- pragmatic language impairment

those symptoms have especially an overlapp towards HFA, not that much towards AS, just the auditory processing disorder who is common there too.

That's also a very interesting article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteri ... f_dyslexia

I think I have learning difficulties alongside AS. The things I am good at just fall as average, otherwise the things I am not so good at come below average, if that makes sense (couldn't think of another way to explain it).

I remember having a tape recorder when I was 8 what I used to tape myself speaking on, and I still have the tape today. When I listened to it last, I heard me talking to my cousin on the tape and the conversation got to the alphabet, and I heard me say, ''I've only just learnt how to say the whole alphabet''. I don't know what the average age for being able to say the alphabet is for kids, but something tells me that 8 is a little late to have just about learnt to say out the whole alphabet.

I also have trouble with right and left. To help myself with this, I imagine holding a pen, which automatically is imagined in my right hand, so I then know immediately what hand my right hand is. I do know which is which, but if somebody asked me for a simple direction, I have to think a little to work out how to give the direction, especially if I am facing them and so have to give directions from the way they are facing, so their right is on my left and vice versa.

I hear a lot of members here saying that they are good with picking up foreign languages. I done French and Spanish when I was at school, and was the slowest in the class of picking it up. Spanish became my special interest, but it didn't increase my ability to learn it any quicker than the others, although I found it easier than French.
I was also behind on reading when I was a small child, and I didn't enjoy reading either. I've always been good with spelling, but that's about it.

Maths and science were the two subjects I struggled with the most in school.

I wouldn't really say that I have dyslexia per se. But, when I am writing or typing I tend to write d instead of b, p instead of g and q instead of y. I catch myself as soon as I write it but I do have to cross out or rewrite those words. It is dyslexia if you write the wrong letter but catch yourself?

My cousin, the physics professor, cant tell his left from his right. And he is around 60.

Actually he can- someone recently told him a trick: "when you drive-- your wife always sits on your right, and your wife is always right."

But though he may have some of my aspie related genes he is presumably nt.

Im an aspie and I never had trouble with left vs right beyond some point in grade school (like most people)when I would think to myself "If I were to grab a crayon to color a picture which hand would I use?" That worked for me back then, and I guess it has stuck with me.

Always hade spelning problems, my short time memory is lousy. No problem with left - right. I l I love the spellcheckers. I have no problems learning foreign languages but only talking and hearing.
I know many Aspergers with excellent handling with writing and grammar. I think that it is rather common for Asipies. What I found out from hanging around at aspies forums, and from reading about ours problems. We are persons with different problems. But also a lot of us has some skills that are not so common for NT's.

I think one of our problems are that it is most our drawbacks that are analysed. If you read some of the new publications about Autism/Asperger, you will find that they not only write about problems.Two books I can recommend that has some about our skills. Tony Attwood's “The Complete Guide to Aspergers Syndrome”
And Lara Honos-Webb “the gift of adult ADHD”.

I am a dyslexics, had big problems I school. I apologise for my writing, my native language is Swedish.

Seems as thought you might have a comorbid of both but there are a few things that can not be shown unless its seen but i know you said that you havent put everything down.
I have some symptoms that are classed as dyslexia but when I explain to people, they think serious dyslexia, I just get letters the wrong way around when typing.
Left and right also, and right and write, and there thier and thayre. and those phonicly things.
Some people thought I had audio sensitivity as pens distracted me in tests and that I found was more out of irratation.
I tend to overanalise my wellbeing and this can be problematic for diagnostic finding when I am not sure if something is valid. I came to a decision that I dont have certain difficulties but I do have long term emotional issues from when I was a kid which were unresolved and a lot of youtube links are compensating for that. Luckly i didnt have to have much problems with b and p as main reletives i interact with have those inisuals and are rememberal.

I don't find dyslexia and Asperger's to be very similar at all.

Frequently, people with Asperger's have a "nonverbal" learning disability, rather than a disability involving reading and writing; in fact, people with Asperger's, pretty frequently, are just the opposite of dyslexics, in that they have superior reading and writing abilities.

Additionally, I have known quite a few dyslexics. Many of them, I have found, are actually very deft socially--diametrically opposed to the "social abilities" of Aspergians, who frequently are not very "deft" at all socially.

I had quite a battle with dyslexia in my 3rd and 4th grade years. Had previously been some trouble, and occasionally still is, especially when I'm stressed or tired.
I am curious why the trouble peaked in those years but am also not putting much effort in to researching why. In part because we're talking around 1970 to 1972 for the calendar years.

Here's this for a reference,
https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia ... -37-signs/

(Hmm, is it just me or does that "characteristics can vary" thing sound kind of like a certain spectrum we all know and love?) (And "can vary from day-to-day or minute-to-minute" sounds just like a couple of the other neurological and endocrine things going on with my body)

And then about other things which can happen concurrently with dyslexia,
https://www.understood.org/en/learning- ... g-dyslexia

Last edited by kitesandtrainsandcats on 03 Apr 2017, 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am three years older than you.

I used to have great problems in long multiplication and long division in third and fourth grade because I wasn't able to "space" the numbers properly in columns. Through assiduous practice, though, I mastered both by fifth grade.

Interestingly, I learned how to read purely by word memory. I had no concept of sound-letter correspondence; I used to get zeroes on phonics tests when I was in first and second grade.

I couldn't write on a straight line until I was about 8.

I am fortunate in that I've always been quite a decent reader. I was reading what are now called "chapter books" in first grade.

I would swear having somewhere along the way been told that my interest in building models was good for dyslexia therapy.
And Dad got me started on that when I was 5 or 6.

It seems as if you're a visual learner, then.

Are you good mechanically? Do you like going to IKEA, and buying things from there, and putting together things?

Sometimes, it is stated that the difference between Asperger's and "high-functioning autism" involves relative verbal strengths in Asperger's, and relative visual-spatial strengths within "high-functioning autism."

I wish I could find that post which gives an excellent exposition of the "types" of Aspergers. In one type, people are quite mechanically-inclined, but are relatively "weak" academically.

I'd say that it kinda depends. Hmm, wonder how that text on paper works better for me than a video or even text on screen for learning things relates to that?

Well, at model train club they call me "Doctor Scott" when something needs fixing. Except the electronic DCC control systems, I do not touch that!

No, no, no, and NO!
Even though I worked in retail on and off for a couple decades I hate big box stores, malls, hate, detest, loathe, them.
(and how I survived working in retail on and off for 23 years is something even God can't figure out. it defies all rational, and even half-baked, attempts at explanation)

and taking apart things

Dyslexia and autism are not similar.

However dyspraxia and autism are.

For me in some areas it's hard to say what gives me more difficulty, my autism or my dyspraxia.

If you like typed text better than videos, you are not a visual learner. You're a learner like me.

Had to look up what dyspraxia is!
http://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/about-dyspraxia/