Comprehension problems?

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Does anyone else have comprehension problems?

I can be reading something and not understand it. I have troubles comprehending what is going on in the Harry Potter books. The first three books were easy but they got harder and harder in the later books.


What is comprehension problems part of? What condition? Is there a name for that condition anyway?


I think I may have something else I was never diagnosed with. I have this problem, that's one of them but I don't even know if it's part of autism or AS because I have never read anything in the books or online about aspies having problems comprehending.

Ugh...when I read difficult or verbose material, I have to re-read and re-read it constantly going "Uhh, what?" every sentence. Other times, I just read it once and have it down to memory.


Sometimes I even have those stupid days where nothing will hit. Like when told: "You will have to put your name on this line here." My mind thinks "Uhh, what? Under the line, over the line? What does on this line mean? I don't get it, this is confusing. Why am I here?"


An incident like that happened today--although not having to do with reading, where I was told "Just go to where that Asian lady is at." My mind just spun with thoughts "Asian?? Are we speaking about South Asians? Central Asians? Far East Asians? Middle-Easterners?" I ended up being pointed the way. Then there were chairs that blockaded the entrance and I thought to myself "How will I ever get through?"

Some days, things just won't "click" with my brain.

I sometimes get like that. Though mostly, it's when listening to someone/something, rather than reading.

In particular, I absolutely suck at understanding or comprehending directions that someone's telling me.

Have you ever looked into Hyperlexia?

I'm Hyperlexic (diagnosed) and I have this problem quite frequently. Sometimes I have to read something 6 or 7 times just to understand it.

Poor reading comprehension is a common symptom of Hyperlexia.

Yeah, in MY case, and possibly all of yours, I think it has to do with short term memory. If you get too many ideas in a section of writing at once, and can't absorb the idea fast enough, etc... you lose connecting thoughts, and things start to get blurry.

1. The way I read is to decode and understand a sentence.(easy)(i.e., one person stole another persons car, took it to the store, and went shopping)
2. Absorb certain details about the sentence.(harder)(The persons were alice and fred. The store was ralphs. They picked up butter, bread, and a copy of business 2.0)
3. Connect those ideas with known ideas in long term memory.(easy)(I might remember fred because he is a friend of mine, or ralphs because I went there as a kid)
4. Connect those ideas with known ideas in short term memory.(including items in this text)(harder)(earlier the text said alice was the sister of one of freds friends, and that alice LOVES making her own garlic bread and was just reminded that she had no bread or butter at home.)

THAT is why you can read about relationships, get the plot, and understand the text but, when asked how a given person relates to it, may stumble.

Luckily, that isn't often quickly needed in the real world.

The brain(With regard to storing, recall, and reference) works almost like wikipedia is supposed to work, and AS people are GREAT with the long term links. I guess we're just not as good with the short term ones. 8-(

I have problems with comprehension as well, my brain just never works right, shes always trying to vacate lol, sad but true hahaha

I have noticed this too. It sounds like a variant of hyperlexia, but not necessarily with the early reading skills and extreme fascination with letters, etc. But there is adequate to above average phonetic pronunciation. Almost like mini-hyperlexia or something.

I think at least for myself, there is a poorer connection between my visual areas and language areas, and I ABSOLUTELY NEED a visual image to be able to understand language. But with this poorer connection, it takes longer, or takes more effort and concentration, to be able to translate all of it over into imagery. Therefore, I'm a very slow reader, I have a distaste for reading, and I often don't finish a text. Ironically though, I do try to read often. But that is because of the information I glean from the text and not because I enjoy the act of reading itself.

And of course it gets worse and worse the more abstract the words become. (Which is unfortunately much of the text I read.)

I don't know HOW blind people so easily learn some abstract concepts. Learning things like LATER would seem, one would think, to be almost as hard as BLUE!

Anyway, if I imagine something while learning a word, I can remember it better.

I'd hope for their sakes if they're congenitally blind or go blind very young that their brains just aren't as dependent on visual stuff for understanding. Don't use it, you lose it.

That seems like such a strange world... to be so auditory... I really can't imagine it. My brain is soooooo hard-wired for vision and not sound. There's times I feel like I just ignore what's coming in my ears.

Do any hyperlexics read late? I never read at an early age.

I've ALWAYS had problems with reading comprehension. When I was in grade school, I would always score poorly on the reading comprehension section of standardized tests, whereas I'd score well on the other sections.

I can read well, but I'm a slow reader because of my comprehension problems. Sometimes I have to read something twice in order to "get" it.

I used to think that I probably have a mild form of ADD...
I don't know.

There's more than just visual and auditory, though. I'm heavily spatial and when I was tested there was no particular sense dominant. I seem to deal with spatial more as movement-through-space rather than as visual-spatial though. I think the problem was at that age that all senses of mine but smell can be heavily fragmented and not really that sensical. So I figured I was olfactory, although it's more like olfactory+movement through space+whatever fragments of other stuff I can get from any given sense.

After reading more about hyperlexia, I've thought that maybe some hyperlexics did read late, but had the same exact pattern as most hyperlexics do otherwise (easier to decode words than to understand them).

I have always had trouble understanding both print and speech.

If I need to increase comprehension, I often read upside down. Do it on a train with 400 Koreans watching and the results are hilarious. Seriously, though, I find that this helps slow my brain down enough and keeps it busy enough that it doesn't jump off every idea in the reading and distract me from the reading itself.

All the definitions that I've read about hyperlexics is that they read early.

Now for me, I didn't pick up the whole reading thing until I was 7.

A lot of people have reading comprehension problems. In my upper level classes in high school, we even spent time discussing reading comprehension. Best I can figure is that when you're reading something, you have to stop and think about what you've read every so often, and if necessary, take notes. Try to find ways to connect the words to physical objects either mentally or IRL.