Processing Words

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It seems to come and go with me. Definitely if I'm tired or distracted but sometimes it just happens. I usually do ok though.

I like to have the caption or subtitles. It helps me understand much better. I find it rather distracting without that sometimes.

Volume doesn't matter if there are no other distractions.
Volume does matter if there are.. i need it higher.
I'm not one for subtitles, but a friend of mine has gotten me used to them... and i do find it helps, though i miss out on the action of the movie, cause i can't take my eyes off the words... but i understand the plot much better that way.
I think the subtitles also force me to concentrate more, just like when i'm reading, i am harder to distract.. when i'm talking, a nearby conversation can throw me right off and make me forget what i'm talking about.

Where I have the most trouble is when someone starts spouting off a phone number or spells something out. It is as if my brain just trips up after the second number or letter. If I can predict the flow of the dialog, I can usually follow it, but if it is a series of semi-random numbers or letters, I get lost and confused unless it is spoken very slowly. It is extremely rare that I don't have to ask for someone to slow down and repeat phone numbers.

With general dialog in film or in person, I'm mostly okay unless I need to take in a lot of information. I find taking notes helps and still I find I often miss key points.

Lars

I am especially bad at understanding the lyrics of fast songs. Also during conversation sometimes I get stuck with some words, I need it to be repeated 3-4 times.

I find I talk quite loudly because I can't really hear /perceive my voice if it it at a normal loudness. People are always tellng me to quieten down. This becomes worse if I am in a noisy public place, I shout so that I can still hear my own voice, but I end up being far louder than I had intended.

There is online test for this: http://www.positscience.com/braingames/speech-in-noise-game

I got 0 db, which means I can't recognise speech if it's volume is lower than noise. Average person has around -6db , which should mean noise can be 4 times more powerful than speech and they still understand.

So this pretty much confirms my preceived inability to understand people in crowded places, and being treated like idiot because I really can't understand them. I do hear them speaking, but it sounds like it is blended with noise. If someone has to tell me something, I have to press my ear with finger, and have someone yell directly so I can get acceptable signal to noise ratio, otherwise it owerloads my ear and hurts. Imagine how dumb that looks...

When I was young, I was also asking 'What?' all the time while someone was speaking, and 2 seconds after I would know what has been said. I still have same problem, but I stopped asking, knowing I will understand a bit later. But I think it still is a problem because people seems to read on you did you understand what they said, and if I don't understand some sentence, I have to rollback conversation 2 sentences.

It seems like people are speaking on some alien language I have to conciously translate into my thoughts.

This is probbably quite big factor in my social ineptness.

EDIT: added link

I got -5 but I had to stop and think awhile and look at the words to pick the most likely ones. I had to do this even at the early part of the test.

I do the same thing. It works.