Getting to the Point

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It almost always takes me too long to get to the point. I can sometimes tell people are getting impatient to get a point in. My language also tends to become muddled in oral conversation. I mean I break syntactical structure because the next part of my thought doesn't fit the syntax I've already created. There are long pauses while I try to grasp for the right word. I gesture a lot with my hands as I speak too. I sometimes slur my words, too, which definitely doesn't make things clearer. I recorded a small sample of my voice, but that didn't really show the problems.

I know I also tend to perseverate on a topic of interest at length, but this is a little different. It's not going into too much depth about an idea but merely taking too long to express the full idea at all.

:: struggles to find the point of this thread ::



GA

my son sometimes does that too. I do it too sometimes. I lose words - I mean, I know what I want to say but the word eludes me. It's frustrating.

i think i have the same problems. one of the main problems for me, though, is when i'm trying to put together a sentence to say out loud several words of similar meaning impose on my thoughts and makes it difficult for me to identify and select the word i'm looking for. it's like i have a thesaurus in my head that insists on helping me when i don't want it to and it just ends up getting in my way. on the odd occasion when this doesn't happen i end up speeding up my speech so much that it is too fast for most people to understand but my priority is getting the words out of my mouth before the over-enthusiastic thesaurus catches up with me makes my vocabulary go chaotic.

Ok... Looks like I was a bit clueless then... hehe

GA

I know, in many cases, people who are at a loss for words describe their thinking style as pictures instead of heard words. Their train of thought is an image that they must transform into words, and sometimes they have the visual but not the words for it. This isn't the case for me. I'm not primarily a visuospatial thinker. I have the meaning of what I want to say, but I can't get a word for it. There is no picture in my mind—it's just a sort of semantic awareness without the lexical knowledge. I think this is the result of injuries to the head than some neurodevelopmental problem; it's not my AS. I guess I have a minor aphasia. I have bumped my head more times than I can count.

I think I do this as well, because sometimes I'm trying to explain something to somebody; but then I become lost for words because I'm trying to describe a picture in my head. I also talk really long on some subjects; sometimes too long.

But is it really about a loss for words or is it about meandering thoughts which take too long to make the point you're trying to express?

If it's the latter, theory of mind could play a role. If you are unable to infer what your listener is already aware of, or conversely, not aware of, then it's possible that your difficulty in reaching your point comes from this. I know I have a tendency to speak backwards, as I believe I just did, not in the sense of reversing words and so forth but in the sense of giving the information that would normally come first last instead.

As you can probably tell, I am having a hard time expressing my own point, here. What I'm trying to say is that without awareness of another's thoughts and knowledge, it's easy to give either too much or too little information necessary for their understanding. Your difficulty in relaying a point may be the result of giving too little information for the other person to be able to grasp what you are saying. Or, it could just be that you require some kind of dialogue before you are able to even conciously reach your conclusion (I find this is the case with myself quite often). Do I know what I'm saying here? Not really. But I figured I'd offer a couple of ideas.

I tend to derail too much and want to get in every single detail. I also pause often and many times forget what my point was in the first place. Then I take a LOOOOOOONG pause to try to remember. Sometimes I never do...

I get to the point right away.

I have the same problem, I think there are a number of factors at work (at least in my case)

i) Theory of mind (as already stated by Civet) - inability to recognise what your listener may or may not already know, thus the tendency to include everything, or in other cases to not include relevant details on the assumption that your listener knows about them already. I'm certainly guilty of both options at different times.

ii) Visual thinking. Although if you're not a visual thinker this would not apply to you, in my case it certainly does. I don't think linguistically, hence I have to 'translate' the mental image into words in order to put across an idea. This leads to me getting in a right old muddle about how to phrase things. My syntax is appalling. Often I will not bother trying to express what I'm thinking because of the effort involved.

iii) Relevance of information. I think this is to do with executive dysfunction (could be wrong), but the inability to determine priority, importance, and relevance of data makes it difficult to present that information in a way that is coherent to your listener. The tendency to present full detail even if it is not all relevant to your point, the inability to sift out that which is most relevant, and thus trying to cram too much into one sentence or phrase. Results in overlong meandering sentences filled with a lot of irrelevant information which buries the relevant data and also the point you are trying to make.

That's the way I see it.

I tend to take awhile to get to my point across to, however I expect others that are talking to me to get direclty to the point. Doesn't sound fair does it....

I think I mention my point once, go a bit into detail, and almost summarize the point again, at least that's what's happened with me as of late.

Sometimes it's because my thoughts meander away from the original point and I make what I wanted to be short asides to explain something into long tangents, but I'm talking about a trouble merely "finding" the word. It's funny because this happens a lot less when I write or type. Sometimes hand gestures help me "reach" for words, too.

Hmm...I suppose I should start being conscious on how quickly I get to the point. Although, I don't think I'm at either extreme.

Now, on a semi-related note, one problem I seem to have is answering questions directly. In particular, it drives my mom up the wall. And, in spite of what she thinks, I really don't do it on purpose. At least not most of the time.

If you're really stuck, have you tried describing the word you're looking for? That way you can elicit the help of those you're speaking to.

I overdo details too sometimes I suppose you have to trust the intelligence of the person you're talking to. Express your main thoughts first, then if they are confused or need more context they should ask for it. If they don't care enough about the topic to enquire further, then saying more is pointless since they won't really be listening.