ASD and spatial intelligence?

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I've had this problem as long as I remember... it's a big problem with spatial thinking.
I am completely incapable of telling left from right and I have no sense of direction.

And I don't mean what many people mean when they say "I have no sense of direction" but are actually exaggerating the fact that they're not that great with maps... I mean I get lost everywhere. Literally EVERYWHERE. Even inside buildings or bigger apartments I just can't remember what is where. In every doctor's office I have to ask where the exit was again when I am leaving. In college I was constantly late because I couldn't figure out what classroom is where - even after years of attending lessons in the same storey of the same building. If I have to go to a place unfamiliar to me it takes intense preparation and I usually STILL get lost and have to call people to help me find my way.
Even if there is a short way (say a ten minutes walking distance) that I've been walking almost daily for months or even years I might still get lost if something along the way changes its appearance - say a building gets torn down or a block is painted in a new color. If I have to walk a way in the other (backward) direction that I've so far only walked in one direction - no chance I am completely lost.

I often can't remember what hand to hold fork and knife in, and I often read the clock the wrong way round - like I think it's 8 when it's actually 4. Once or twice it also happened that I drove on the wrong side of the road and almost got killed because of it...


Now I started seeing a psychiatrist who is apparently a specialist for autism spectrum disorders and she told me that this is actually a very common thing for people with ASD (and she also said do NOT confuse it with things like photographic memory or thinking in pictures as those are entirely different things). How come I've never heard of this?


It doesn't sound that bad at first, but it really feels like a disability. I can't even manage to do simple errands like taking the mail to the post office at work, or get from one room to the other room in a congress hall without getting lost (and they don't know about my AS there so it's a source of constant embarrassment).
I can't even go to a doctors appointment without someone bringing me or at least someone being ready to be called by me in case I get lost and then direct me back on the right way (happens 90% of the time). Not to speak of traveling alone, driving anywhere alone, meeting friends, ...
Maps don't help either, as I can't really read them. GPS also doesn't help very much because when it says "turn left" I don't know where left is...
I feel like I am something like half blind and everyone constantly has to baby me because of it.


Is there anyone else here who has the same problem?
Any suggestions how to cope/improve the situation?

I am exactly the same.

Rather worryingly, the problem occurs in both new and old environments. Thankfully, the Google maps application has helped me an awful lot in this regard.

I don't think this is the same for everyone on the spectrum, though. I would have thought that those with strong visual and abstract skills (neither of which I possess) would be excellent at navigation.

I have this problem too. I get left and right mixed up a lot, and can never find my way anywhere. Even with GPS I have been known to get lost, and if I'm taking a familiar route somewhere and am faced with a detour, I have zero idea of how to go about getting around the blockage. Even when I've been somewhere two dozen times, I can still forget where it is and how to get there. People tell me, "such and such is just off of X street, right next to the Y store" and it's like they're speaking a foreign language, I have absolutely no frame of reference to put their directions into context, even if the street they're referring to is right around the corner from our current location. When I started elementary, middle and high school, then college, I always had to be shown around the building(s) multiple times, and even then I'd still sometimes get lost. People don't believe you if you've been going to the same room for two months then suddenly show up late and claim you got lost. It's happened to me though. My little sister came with my to my university campus to help me find my classes, and I had to go back and forth from the main walkway to one of my buildings literally five times before I could remember how to get there. It's incredibly annoying, and it is a significant handicap, because it limits where we're able to go and what we can do safely.

I'm the opposite. I have a good sense of direction and good spacial awareness. I can tell the dimensions of something just by looking at it.

Thanks for your replies! Even though I know how much this sucks I have to admit I am sort of happy not to be alone with it... What do you guys do about it? Whenever I tried to get help and explained my problem in length I found it not to be taken seriously and people ending up really weirded out or even mad when my predictions actually came true.

I had TWO college exchange programs during which I had to stay with a host in two different foreign countries for a bit (Ukraine and Kazakhstan).
Both times I explained both different teachers indepenently that I have a deficit here, I even called it a disability, and that I need to be put with a host that lives close to the campus or that I will otherwise not be able to find my way to class.

I told them everything I've written down in my first post of the thread.
Both times both different teachers assured me they would take care of it, but didn't take me seriously in the end and BOTH times my really very poor hosts (developing countries!) had to take WEEKS off work and ended up broke just to assure me getting safely to the university building because I ended up getting lost every single day even after people showed me the way 10+ times and I even almost got raped once and attacked by a pack of street dogs another time. And then everyone gets mad at me and I get called ret*d and stupid and worse things.

It came so far I developed an intense fear of getting lost and thus going anywhere by myself and nowadays I start panicking as soon as I lose orientation and I feel just so restricted...

That sounds like a terrible experience. I have the same problem with people not taking me seriously and getting frustrated when I get lost. I went to France with my dad and my sister this summer, and my dad wanted me to get out and try some things on my own. I reminded him how terrible I am at directions, and he just said that I could use a map or GPS. My mom knew it was a terrible idea and didn't want me wandering the streets on my own (my parents are divorced so she didn't come), but he didn't listen. Fortunately I wound up not having to deal with it because Paris is so big and loud that I was overloaded with sensory input just standing on the sidewalk, so I just spent most of my time comfortably in my hotel room. I literally felt like I was hiding out in a bunker while a war raged around me. Big cities are an absolute nightmare as far as directions are concerned.

That happened to me last year in China. Almost three weeks straight in a 12' x 12' room. And trust me, Chinese internet is no fun unless you know how to do all sorts of thins I was not going to try there.

As for directions, I have no sense of direction at all. I have flipped directions even reading a map, cannot keep east and west straight (north and south are no problem for some reason) and even though my school has been at its current location for more than 12 years, I still get tripped up on what street is where until I do a 'special orientation' of where I am, which way I am facing and double checking the street signs in my mind. I can find it. I am speaking of when strangers ask me for directions. I actually have to tell them that I have to orient myself. I just don't tell them that I am standing in front of a building that I've worked in for 12 years or more.

And, when I go long enough between road signs sometimes, I get paranoid that I have turned the wrong direction or something.

I have a good sense of direction, and I'm really good at following maps.
One thing that I have trouble with is judging distances. This affects me when I'm driving and I have to make a left turn. I see a car approaching, so I wait for it to pass, but it turns out that the car was a lot farther away than I perceived, so I end up waiting about 20 seconds when I could've gone right away. It often takes me a long time to turn because of this.

I also have this problem—it's called topographical disorientation. My verbal skills are much better than my spatial skills, although, according to my psychologist, my spatial skills are average. However, I continue to have problems with remembering routes and learning new ones. I used to get lost in my home town, even though it wasn't too big and I'd lived there for twenty-some years. I cannot create mental maps. That's why having a GPS has been a blessing. Sometimes I go down familiar routes instead of the shortcuts because I like taking the same route over and over again.

Interestingly enough, my best friend has trouble labeling left and right, but is still an amazing navigator. When she drives with me, she points her finger in whichever direction I need to go. Supposedly, she too has Asperger's, but she's very right-brained. There are a lot of other things about her that seem to point her towards neurotypical; I think that the people she knew made a mistake.

It's fairly common for autism to present with a non-verbal learning disability, actually. A drastic difference between my verbal and non-verbal IQ was the main reason why my school decided to send me off to be tested for an ASD when I was a child. Neither was really unusually low, but the discrepancy between the two was high enough anyway for it to raise some red flags.

As for why that happens, no one has any real idea, because the human brain is complicated as hell.

I always thought I was ok at direction but my family say I'm pretty bad. If I need to drive a long distance, I write my own directions in a list and that seems to work (I drove 24 hours from the UK to France without getting lost). I do get my left and right mixed up a lot. I'm a lot worse inside buildings and it takes me ages to learn layouts. I have problems with knowing where houses are even though I've been to them before (I still worry that I'm knocking on the wrong door when I visit my sister, even though I've been to their house at least twenty times). I think this is more an anxiety issue, though. Also, if I turn onto a road (that I know well) from a minor road, I never seem to know my position in relation to landmarks (shops etc.) on the main road.

My awareness of personal space is excellent though and I always know if someone is near me, even if they're behind me. I think this is down to very good peripheral vision combined with always looking around myself.

I could tell the difference between left and right at the age of 10 after being told left was west and right was east. Weirdly enough I knew the names of every single king and queen of England beforehand.

Look up non verbal learning disability. The profile is someone whose verbal IQ is significantly higher than performance IQ. It's a frequent occurrence in ASD but can also be a stand alone diagnosis. It's sometimes referred to as an atypical learning disability. My son was recently diagnosed with ASD-1, NVLD and giftedness. His verbal IQ is near genius level in some areas but his performance IQ is low average in most areas. Oddly enough he has no trouble at all with directions but doing other spatial related tasks are extremely difficult for him.

Alot of times this happens. I got a stern lecture when I got disoriented and wandered off and ended up in an area that was off limits.

I'm, pretty much, the same as the OP----not quite as bad----but, I couldn't find my way out of a wet paper bag.

I'm thinking it has to do with us always being in a different world (our mind not being on what we're doing), and not paying attention. Maybe if you paid attention, more? For instance, I can imagine that when you had to be shown to your classroom / building / whatever, that your mind was filled with, stuff like: "OMG, I can't believe I'm having to be LED to my classroom, again", "This person must think I'm really stupid", "What is the teacher gonna think, when he finds-out that I had to, yet AGAIN, be brought to class?", "Why do I have to keep needing this help?", "When am I EVER gonna learn how to do this, alone?", "Am I gonna be 80 years old, and still have to be led-around, like a ret*d?"----and on, and on, and on, cuz that's what *I* used to do----so, it takes you that much longer to learn, cuz you're not paying attention (ASIDE from our always being in a different world).

People looking at me like I was an idiot----or, actually CALLING me an idiot----was a HUGE incentive for me to start paying more attention; and, it WORKED (for ME, anyway). When I had to start taking the bus, I was practically in tears, every time----it took a couple of years, but I now know downtown Baltimore, pretty well; but, I'm like someone else said, if a building gets torn-down, or I have to take a detour, FORGET IT.

Of course it is a little better if I focus and pay attention, and a little worse if I don't. Meaning: My performance at everything improves if I focus, and gets worse if I don't. That's a very normal thing I guess. But it's not that it is so bad for the sole reason that I don't pay attention. I tried literally everything. Using maps, preparing for a route I have to go like others do for an exam... walking along a way and stopping at every turn and trying to find a landmark, even standing there on the street and repeating "red house, turn to the left" over and over again before moving on... it does help, but only a tiny bit. Not so long ago I was lost on my way home in my own neighborhood where I've been living for 8 years now in the middle of the night. No one was expecting me to be on time, I simply tried to get home, no anxiety related to making someone angry. I ended up calling a friend from another city who had visited me only once and by simply describing her where I was standing she could tell me over the phone how to get home, because it was that simple...

I do really horribly bad at those tests about spatial intelligence too. Like the ones where you get a geometrical figure and then another picture with a few fractions and then you have to tell which of those put together make the geometrical figure. I literally have NO clue. To me it is like looking at a Chinese newspaper and being asked what it says.

I did an IQ test once before I was diagnosed with AS. I was classified as gifted, my memory skills, verbal skills and mathematical skills were excellent, but my spatial skills were horrific. Apparently the other three areas were still good enough to up the overall average enough to be classified as gifted, but the psychologist who evaluated it said something like it being very strange that I have such a low score in the spatial field and if maybe I got distracted or bored in the end because it was the last part of the test. Otherwise, he said, it doesn't really occur to him how this could be possible. I come from a somewhat backwards and rural area in Europe, I figure "Nonverbal learning disability" was something he had never heard of...


Thanks everyone for the input and also some useful information! I will definitely look into that NVLD thing.