Reading Lips

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Does anyone else have trouble reading lips? I absolutely can't and it seems to frustrate a LOT of people around me. I don't know if it's the fact that I don't stare at people's faces very often or just me being thick, but I'm wanting to know if this is a trouble for anyone else as well...



(hope this is the correct thread)

People are always doing this to me in school until I quit trying to "get it"

I can't read your lips, just talk to me.

I'm actually the opposite. While I'm not good enough to tell what people are saying without sound, I do look at people's mouths to reinforce my shaky auditory processing when I'm in a noisy place and can't quite catch what they're saying.

I depend highly on reading lips. without it, I find it hard to concentrate on what people are saying.
I find my brain turns what people are saying into written words and then I get an understanding. That process doesn't work as well without the lip reading.

I am deaf, so therefore I depend on lip-reading 100% of the time when having a conversation with someone, even if they are deaf. There are few deaf people that just doesn't even move their lips at all and it irritates me. I can understand the words that are spoken if they are signed in combination with the words - I prefer English and not American Sign Language version of English.

When I went in for a neuropsychological evaluation, the psychologist was skeptical about the whole eye contact thing because I did keep a good focus on her face when talking with her. I had to tell her that I focus on her lips for communication purposes only. I told her it was the best way for me to understand what people are saying/what words they are using exactly to convey whatever signs/word combination they want to say. My psychologist can sign, which was rather nice and also quite rare for a specialist that can diagnose people on the spectrum.

With hearing people that doesn't know how to sign at all, I can read lips about 25% of the time, and about 50% of the time with my cochlear implant. It is subjective to each individual because they are all so different. Some I can easily understand, some it's just impossible to read lips at all.

Yea. I really can't. IDK if this is an AS thing but I've never been able to, people always get frustrated with me about this. I really don't understand how other people can do it.

I sometimes can, but I usually can't. I see it and I go, "Oh crap, what was that? Was I supposed to understand that?" If it's a word or phrase that's commonly mouthed, I'm just fine, but something I'm not used to, you're going to just have to outright tell me, because I'm never going to get it.

Myself, I had some hearing issues as a young child with significant impairment until I was around six after getting my tonsils taken out, adenoids as well, and tubes put in place in my ear canal.

Between this, and my autistic traits, there are 3 things I do now in conversations. I do keep eye contact when needed, though normally especially if talking myself I prefer to look away( I doodle alot in meetings), and when I do look people in the eyes I tend to have such an intense stare or gaze that it makes people uncomfortable. Residually and what I tend to revert to most, especially when in chaotic environments where it can be noisy and overstimulating, is staring at the lips. As I said, part of this comes from having the hearing impairment as a kid, I've done it on an off since then, and its usually why people feel like I give them "eye contact" even when I'm not looking them in the eye, so it has also become a means of me coping with that.

As far as lip reading in the strict sense of being able to tell you what a person is saying without anything other than lip movement, I'm about 25-50% of the time can get it correct perfectly, but usually at the very least can get the gist of the conversation. But when it comes to a conversation where I'm forced to either look the person in the eye, or can't see their face, I do have issues sometimes taking in what they are trying to say.

I lost a part of my hearing a few years ago and to my surprise I discovered that I could read lips rather well. When I started thinking about it, I realized that if I have to watch people in the face I always watch their mouth. I had probably been subconsciously lip reading for years without realizing that I could. This has been useful for me since my hearing got worse, since I can use the lip reading to fill in the gaps that I don't hear.

I can only lip read if people are actually talking though. When people fake talking and just move their lips without a sound, they don't move their lips the same ways as when they talk (they tend to exaggerate lip movements when they are faking) and I don't understand what they are pretending to say.

So this thread is several years old but I'm bringing it back to say I'm grateful for it - I'm currently designing a character who I was thinking would be deaf and autistic, but wanted to check that having her good at lip reading was realistic (I'm an aspie and fail completely at lip reading completely, and from other things I've read, we do tend to be a lot worse at it than neaurotypicals) so thanks for the reassurance that it works!

I'm too busy looking away.

Reading lips, reading eyes... all body languages are difficult.

Some of my close friends are deaf so I've learned to read lips fairly well.

During times I've avoided eye contact I've tended to focus on reading peoples' lips as they speak.

I used to think I just had a habit of reading lips due to communicating with my deaf friends.. it wasn't until a couple years ago when I started learning all this ASD stuff that I realized I didn't simply have a habit of reading lips, but rather, I was avoiding eye contact with others and defaulted to reading lips.

It came in handy while bar tending in loud bars/clubs as I could still take orders while the music was rattling glasses off the racks.

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