Did / does anybody else learn things the same way?

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I think I sometimes learn(ed) new things in a kind of unusual way, I can't really describe it abstractly, so I will rather give some examples:
When I started talking it was only about five or six words (the usual first words). Then there was a long pause, no two-word-sentences phase etc. And with three years I just started talking normally.
When learning to read I asked in the grocery store or when my dad was reading the newspaper about letters. But this all happened more in passing, never did anybody actually teach me. Then one day I just grabbed a book and started to read out loudly.
Also nowadays it often takes me forever, really forever to learn a new thing and then suddenly it makes "click" and I can do it, but I don't know why.
Anybody else have this?

Not sure if this counts, but i can't remember alot of things unless I physically write them down.

A similar thing had happened to me. My dad used to get me to read street signs, when we went on long trips. Those big signs that are usually green, which have locations on them.

Yeah, I find that I have to recopy my class notes, for them to sink in. Typing doesn't seem to work, either.

This might not be relevant to the original post, but I heard there are three kinds of learning method...visual, auditory, and kinetic...

Visual learners learn through visual cues...For them looking at images is the best way to absorb information...
Auditory learners learn through listening...listening to lectures might be the most effective way for them...
Kinetic learners learn best when learning is combined with movements...

Having to write things down in order to learn them might be related to kinetic learning...

I'm more of a kinetic & visual learner... Sometimes I walk around the room in circles in order to cram for exams...


As for things clicking...I've experienced it when trying to solve sudoku puzzles...No one was teaching me how to solve the puzzles, and I didn't have any guide to follow, other than to just stare at the puzzle with the intent to solve it...and all of a sudden it becomes clear how I am supposed to solve it...and I find rules that I need to follow...
I'm thinking that this might be related to new circuits being created in the structure of neurons in your brain...

risingphoenix,

It didn't happen with me with talking, but I HAVE had similar experiences. As for having to write, I try to do everything virtually. I don't generally write, but I do everything else in my imagination.

Steve

I did the same thing, one day my mother was going to read me a book, and I ended up reading it to here instead, much to my surprise. She later told me that she learned to read in much the same way: one day she couldn't then the next she could.
I was able to read stop signs before this, however, but I convinced myself that this didn't count because I could also identify them by shape and color.



I'm the same way, though I find that usually I don't have to actually look at what I wrote down to remember it, I remember having written it so I remember what I wrote. It's probably half and half visual and kinetic memory: remembering the act of writing and the image of what I wrote.

That has happened with me on few occasions as well, including writing. I remember that in first grade, after learning 4 letters (the Persian alphabet has 32 letters) I decided to teach the rest to myself, so I grabbed the book and tried to read it, but I couldn't... so after about 4 more letters, I gave up and slept. The next day, I could read newspapers and signs in the street with only a little difficulty.

i never understood the explanations of math in younger grades. they had blocks and sticks and boxes and all this crap. but i always found word problems verrrry easy. i used to do the weeks worth of math probs every monday and use that class to sleep the rest of the week. then when i moved to NB, here they have a different approach to math in school, and i stumped. a nice girl sat behind me and i used to turn around and ask her stuff, cuz she was pretty she was cool, we never "small talked" it was just "whats this mean?" "whats this say?" etc. anyways a year after that, it clicked. fractions = divide. wow a whole new world of understanding opened upto me, these arnt random useless unrelated rules to apply to numbers written on paper, it was simply different ways to write simple simple ideas. i excelled in math from then on. i memorized nothing and wiped through pages of questions like nothing. i understood concepts like factoring w/out it ever being explained to me. when we got to algebra, i could still do all the work w/ my previous knowledge. i took 3 years of algebra before i had to algebraically work something out. before that i would see the prob and be like "the answer of 4 plus 9 times the answer of 7 over 2, the answer of that cut in half, and 2 added to the answer of that etc" the teacher thought i rearranged it algebraically in my head, but in all honesty i didnt even know the order of operations. i was in IB math (the highest level u could take at my school) when i stared running into probs. i had to learn this whole new way to write down my ideas because it was too big to fit in my head at once, stuff like cubics/nth degree polynomials and trig identities and everything. but once i learned that, i got a whole set of new tricks to do math faster. than came calculus. i learned the derivative the summer after grade 10, cuz i knew it was coming. its what my dad said he got stumped on in math, but i found it really easy. i thought i understood the concept of it thurally, but it wasnt until the next year in math when we used the integral as a summation that i fully understood it. now that i understand what the "dx" means, i went ahead and figured out things like cross sections and curve length and s**t. i derived the volumes to every shape i could think of, thought it was amassing how everything just worked out.
and thats how i learned math

I write things down and make lists, too.

Actually, I've always felt that everyone Autistic or NT learns in differing manners.
In an interesting way of wording it, I've often learned by seeing something done in an demonstration of sorts, not to say, I'm not good with learning from reading a manual or instructions in a written context just, that for me learning comes better if explained to me from the visual style of illustration if this makes sense? On a side note, it was Bruce Lee whom always taught that everyone does not utilize the same movement within martial arts therefore, one must use one's skills that fit him/her the best in all situations.

ProfessorX

i have to do things with my hands to learn haha

What do you mean exactly? That you can't remember things if someone just tells you about them or shows you? Or that it's important to you to be writing it down with your hand, rather than typing it on the pc for example?
In lectures I also feel like I can only (or mostly) remember things I write down on paper, sometimes professors will say "just listen now, you don't need to write it down", but I'll write it down anyways as otherwise I'd really forget everything they've said, and then what would be the point in saying it at all. Before the exams I then usually summarize everything on the pc again, which is helpful too, but I also think one learns more by writing it down by hand.

I agree, but I also think, as sunnycat already mentioned, that learning styles can be categorized. Most people will have an individual mixture of learning styles though. There are several tests on the internet about it too, but I don't know a really good one.
So of course when I learn something I also have my preferred methods, for example I talk a lot to myself while learning (repeat the vocabularies out loud to myself) and often walk around in the room. I also take frequent, but just very short breaks, where I listen to a song in order to be able to concentrate again and so on.
But the way I learned the things mentioned in my original post, I've never heard them to be associated with a specific learning style. I suppose they are, but I'd be interested to know which one. Maybe it could also be called a more intuitive way of learning, as I feel like I start at point A and jump to point D and everything else happens subconsciously. And as there happens nothing between A and D and it takes me with some things a really long time to get from point A to D, I often am very near to totally giving up on it already and then suddenly I can do it perfectly well without having any idea why.

I learn too slow.

This makes sense to me.

I had a strong spoken vocabulary at 5 but difficulty with learning the alphabet. i'm not sure what a typical 5 year-old's vocabulary was supposed to be but I know that words like "acquaintances" popped up more often than "friends" and I was asking my parents questions about death, nuclear warfare and reproduction. I suppose I must have seemed like someone who spoke a foreign language to other students.

Heck, I remember challenging my teachers because I heard them say that they did their job for the paycheck. I have strong philosophical issues with that aside from any feeling that myself and my classmates were cheated.

I had a number of verbal confrontations with teachers for what I perceived as a lack of dedications to education, overly slow concept development, overly fast memorization expectations and, my true bane, discipline that involved punishing more than one person for one person's action.

You ever remember when recess would be canceled because of two people whispering? Or when something would be stolen and the whole class would be penalized until the culprit surrendered?

It's unequivocally immoral. I believe it trains people to be evil, unfair and hurtful. It may have good short term results but results DO NOT MATTER. Methodology matters. That's what the NT world needs to learn.

Anyway, my reading skills were about a year behind everyone else's as long as memorization was a component.

However, around third or fourth grade, I suddenly became a spelling bee champion and I had a reading level about eight years ahead of my biological age.

Prior to that, I had been more fascinated with mechanisms. I once took apart most of a cabinet while inside it; that was one of less than ten times when my parents were ever abrupt with me as a child. I used to build little machines with notecards and posterboards -- which I recently found my parents didn't understand.

They would have these little levers and strips on the inside.

I remember I designed several working safes (as much as a paper safe COULD work) with keys and vending machines that would distribute little comics or trading cards I had made. (I was drawing little comic books prior to really learning to read and was of the belief that if I could scribble in a meditative state that people could read my intended words even if they weren't expressed.)

These devices looked like a mess (my hand eye coordination was bad) but they worked.

My attempts at programming (which began at around 8 or 9) were much the same.

I can't write clean code or efficient code... But I can write code that will generate results that other people insist aren't possible.

I passed computer programming in high school after blowing off my homework by creating a mouse-based, point & click GUI in Turbo Pascal on an old DOS 486.

And I might say that mine looked better than the Windows 3.11 GUI on that system.