How your attention is different from other people.

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Please give examples.

Something what I'd love to know:
How well immersed are you in your surroundings?
Do you notice everything others miss?

It is said that autistic people should be superior in this.

It's a little hard to fully answer here, as I don't know what it's like inside anyone else's head. Also, ASD varies quite a bit in presentation between individuals, so mine is not everyone's. But I do tend to catch things that others miss. Also, I tend to remember things better, so when any of the people I live with are looking for something, the first thing they do is ask me if I've seen it. Suddenly, I have a random memory of that object the last time I saw it, even if I wasn't "paying attention." It's nothing I thought about at the time, just my brain noted "thing in location" because it may be a useful piece of information later.
There is one difference... When I'm reading or researching something I am mentally elsewhere. If I have to suddenly come back to NOW, I'm disoriented for a few seconds. I mean, I remember where I am and what I'm doing, there's no amnesia, but for a moment I have this "mental vertigo" feeling and it's like I just woke up from a deep sleep. No sense of time passed and, really, no other thoughts at all during the research.
That's probably the difference between my attention and other people's attention. I don't have to spend any effort on "stray thoughts" because if I'm focused on something, there won't be any.

I have ADHD so my attention is all over the place.

I have ADHD along with autism, so my attention kind of varies.

When I ask directions, I can't listen beyond two items. I have to have the other person repeat any items after two items.

I have trouble sitting through lectures if I'm not interested in what is being said. I have to seek a way to "make it interesting." Sometimes, in order to do this, I "play" music in my head.

As a child, better -- I spot things people don't, my attention span is also excellent, and I read, heard and process well.
It was not some dysregulated mess, I simply absorb everything I observed.

As a teenager, it dwindled -- it became this tunnel like conscious filters.
But I still can spot things others don't notice.
Yet the attention's traction was a bit more off, the energy was also off, then this fog like mess... As if I'm slowly turning ADD-like, and losing memory over facial recognition out of habit.

As an adult, sigh -- it went down along with short term memory issues, to a point of getting it wrong or forgetting what it was said right after just saying it like a second ago.
Apparently gaining some form of processing disorders.



Yeah, I'm dealing with something else -- maybe past burnout, maybe some accumulated stress related, maybe not -- maybe it sucks having a body past puberty.

When I do not have attention and regulation issues, I got better than average of everything... Just like in my childhood.

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I've got ADHD, I'm more scatter-brained than Kurt Cobain.

I notice less about my surroundings than most, I think.
I sort of block it all out. Just automatically, it's not deliberate.
Seem to spend most of the day in my head and not noticing much else, really.

Does anyone else have a problem of paying attention to the wrong thing, and notice something completely different from everyone else? For example, in meetings I watch the person who speaks, intently. But if someone asks me what I have to say to the topic, I have no answer, because I didn't hear a single thing that this person said. Somehow, instead of listening, I watched the person herself, the way the person spoke, and thought about this person, about what she is like, about her relationships with everyone else in the meeting, about her intentions, and tried to analyze all that. But I had no idea what this person was actually saying.

They'll tell you: Other people don't think about you as much as you think they do.

This is patently false. It may be good advice for NTs, but not for Aspies. NTs think about people more than we think about people. Yes, we often relive events in our minds, but surface-wise, NTs think about people more than Aspies. Yes, they ARE thinking about you and more often than you realize.

I was quite oblivious. Didn't think people thought about me anymore than I thought about them. Older I get, the more I realize people I was neutral about/didn't think much about often did, in fact, think about me and come up with an opinion (usually negative).

They think more about PEOPLE than we think about PEOPLE. My attention to thinking about people (before an incident) is much more subdued than the run-of-the-mill neurotypical. People really do think about you more than you think about them. Truth.

I actually can't do paid work or volunteer with others because breaks are built into it and breaks annoy me. I see the point of a break for lunch (should be a lot longer than half an hour, I take 2 hours over my food) but I don't see the point in a socialising break - whenever I'm on here it's cos I'm doing something like right now I'm eating breakfast.

When I start on something, I go right through to the end. For eg when I was setting up my bookshelves in the last place I lived, I existed on a few hours sleep, ate where I was, went to the toilet & that was it. The rest of the time I spent an entire 3 days shelving books. 'Normal' people would have taken braeks.

But it's the same the other way around which is why I wake up so late. And why I watch TV for 5 hours straight.

Whatever I'm doing, I keep at it. Whether it's hard work or it's lazy.
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In terms of paying attention...

Double edged sword really. I can't tune things out. So I end up tuning a lot more in than regular people:

When I was in Florence was the first time in decades I was able to not catch all my surroundings. I love that place. Most NTs focus on socialising with other people. For me? I was staring at the walls and ceilings and floors of wherever I went, trying to 'capture' it.

That reflects in my art too. I put a lot of detail into my art. And my interior design - I want original, hand crafted items with unique detail (second hand mostly because otherwise it costs a fortune), mum likes Ikea. My family call my house 'beautiful' and plans for it 'lovely' etc.

But when I'm in a room and watching TV in the dark and someone has their laptop plugged in with a light on it that's about a centimetre (third of an inch?) small, my eyes don't know whether to focus on the big tv or the laptop. I need absolute dark.

I can't not eavesdrop. This means it's impossible to keep secrets from me if you mention it in the same floor and in the same house. Mum's foolish cos she keeps trying - even the other day she was talking about how she's going to stay here next week to her friend & I confronted her on how she should've asked me first.

But at the same time, it becomes impossible to tune into actual family and friends in restaurants because I can hear every single conversation in the place & my mind tunes into what's most interesting or what's noisiest or doesn't tune in at all and hears all of them which is actually really annoying as I can't follow the track of what's being said with the words, the meaning etc.

With taste: I love the taste of certain foods. I absolutely adore it. I savour it. This is probably why I'm under weight actually. A bite of my favourite food is like a whole feast for me.

But if I hate something, I can't just pretend to like it. And I can find that flavour of say a pinch of ginger inside of a whole meal and that meal is impossible for me to eat.
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So it's basically extremes on either end. Sensory experiences I love, I absolutely love. Sensory experiences I hate, I absolutely hate. I very rarely feel neutral or just 'like'/'dislike' a food/sound/visual thing.

Best way to keep a secret from me? Tell me it directly in a loud environment, the other noises will tune you out...