A sign of Aspergers or plain stupidity?

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graceksjp
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24 Aug 2018, 11:35 am

So, I’ve always been told that Im a fairly intelligent person. However, I also hear a lot that I’m very dumb. Actually, scratch that. People like to complain to me a lot that I “play dumb”.
I can sometimes get totally lost in a conversation and have like a “Wait, what” moment and need to be caught up. That gets me looks. Also, sometimes I’ll be inserted into a conversation or asked a question where I have a “wait, what” moment even when I really do know what they’re talking about. It just takes me a second to get caught up. Or sometimes I seriously have no clue what we’re talking about until I turn it over in my head several times. Or I’ll blurt something out while talking to someone and then figure it out the moment the words leave my mouth when its too late. Or I’ll take things way to literally and they’ll look at me like “Come on you’re not really that stupid are you?” Or even worse, I’ll just stare blankly at them till my brain catches up.
My brothers are constantly chastising me because “She knows it, she’s just playing dumb”. Its embarrassing, and for some reason that always makes me blush because they’re right! I /should/ know it. And it makes me feel like such an idiot when I say the wrong thing or can’t think of it till its too late.
Anyways, is that a me thing? Am I really just that dumb? Im kinda new to this whole Aspergers thing (I’ve only just started looking into it despite having been diagnosed for a while) and Im trying to pick apart which traits of mine are just me being weird or something that links to me having Aspergers. Thanks in advance for any responses!


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BTDT
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24 Aug 2018, 11:54 am

It is common for Aspies for having difficulty processing social situations that an normal person would instantly understand.



BeaArthur
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24 Aug 2018, 12:30 pm

I wanna say that suggests a little bit of attention deficit disorder, but I'm no expert.


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Trogluddite
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24 Aug 2018, 2:20 pm

Long before my autism was diagnosed, I would say to people; "I'm not stupid, but I am slow."!

BeaArthur's suggestion of attention deficits is certainly one explanation; in conversation, my brain often goes off on a tangent if something was said that interests me, and I can find it hard to pull my attention away from it so that I can attend to the conversation.

Another explanation (which doesn't exclude the previous one), is that there are certain things which you process in a different way to other people. For example, most people might interpret the mood of the other people in a conversation totally instinctively - they might not even realise that they're doing it at all. An autistic person, on the other hand, might not be able to do this automatically, so has to consciously analyse the situation... How similar is it to previous experiences? What happened recently that might change that person's mood? Have I learned a rule about this before? Does the way they're sitting give me a clue? And so on. This is where the idea of measuring emotional intelligence versus systematising intelligence comes from in some tests for autism.


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25 Aug 2018, 2:50 pm

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Biskit69
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27 Aug 2018, 4:14 pm

I'm not really sure, do you have ADHD? People who have that and aspergers do this a lot. Don't worry, I do the same exact thing, all the time :lol:.


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Arganger
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27 Aug 2018, 4:24 pm

It's a slow processing speed, not being dumb. It is part of autism.


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graceksjp
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27 Aug 2018, 9:08 pm

Biskit69,
I do actually lol


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komamanga
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28 Aug 2018, 5:09 am

Quote:
A sign of Aspergers or plain stupidity?


I just hope it's not the latter.