Spatial hearing issues and autism

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I was wondering if there is any connection between having a hard time identifying where a sound is coming from and autism. I do not believe i am deaf in any way shape or form but i have issues for example if my phone is ringing i cant really tell where its ringing from. I seem to be worse at this than my husband. But he is also autistic. So I do not know what that says about me.


I also have a question about being an oblivious autistic. Sometimes im so unaware of stuff going on around me. I always here the opposite about how people see and hear too much stuff but sometimes i dont hear or notice enough because im in my own world.

I don't know if it's related to autism, but I'm autistic and I'm also horrible at locating sound. My phone can be ringing on my right side and I'll look in other rooms, go upstairs and downstairs, check my handbag, even look straight at it sometimes and not be able to find the direction of the sound.

I call it poor echolocation. Bats use sonar to find things and it's called echolocation ... obviously I'm not using sonar but that's what I call it because I like the word.

I'm not sure that there is a connection. I am like you, I cannot usually tell where a sound is coming from. My husband, on the other hand, who's also on the spectrum can always tell where a sound is coming from. He thinks it weird that I can't.

The thing about being oblivious, I am like that too. I always wonder what other people (for instance, my coworkers) would find out, when I didn't have a clue and when they talked about that and I would ask how they knew, they'd just say, "That's sooooo obvious." No, not to me, it isn't.

My spatial hearing is crap, it gets funny until it's not.

But so do certain spatial processing. Like someone pointing at something.
In fact maybe any less towards or away from a proprioceptive view, and more to other-spatial is crap in general.


I'm still ok with sensing space around me as long as it is traced back to my body/proprioception. Maybe because it takes the direct and least quantity of data to juggle.
Sensing spaces that doesn't have my body as a main base of direction is just somewhere in between, there are missing gap of info to take account to manually and intuitively calculate to trace where it goes and/or comes from.


Sometimes I thought that the more 'points' to take account to is autism related.
More or less why social distancing requires some 'think' because there's an already less predictable moving variable that is another person. Or why I tend to hear sounds where it was bounced off and hearing it equally over the places instead of directly hinting where it came from. Or why I kept missing where that other person was pointing at even with verbal instructions and all.
In fact this is why I don't do team sports on top of crappy reaction time due to the usual slower stimuli processing speed -- which may or may not be relevant why some spatial processing may get screwed up too.

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Yes, it is an auditory processing issue, which the psychologist who evaluated me for autism says is common for autistic people. I can't remember what it's called right now, but if you look up auditory processing disorder, you might be able to find the term.

Acoustical propagation is an interesting phenomena. Sound in air travels at 1000 feet per second. A sound generated at a location 20 feet away will reach the ear in 50 milliseconds. An echo (reflected sound wave) from a nearby wall might reach the ear a few milliseconds later. Another echo from a wall a little further away might reach the ear a few milliseconds after that.

Depending on the orientation of the two ears there can be quite a challenge to process the direction of the originating sound. This can even be made more difficult if a particular reflecting surface focuses the echo so that it is detected as having a higher amplitude.

The neurological configuration that results in Aspergers may not consist of a hearing deficit, but a more sensitive hearing such that the complexity of processing the incoming sounds is more manifest.

I am very good at identifying which direction a sound came from. Hearing is a mixed bag for me. Many sensitivities, especially to duplicated digital signals and acoustically active rooms.

I too am terrible at telling where a sound is coming from even though I have hypersensitive hearing. Not sure if there's any connection to either my ASD or the hypersensitive hearing.

I have auditory processing issues. Figuring out where sounds are originating is almost impossible for me. There was a rattling sound in my house a few weeks ago. I spent days trying to track the sound. I finally said something to my husband. He knew immediately where the sound was coming from. At the time, it was right beside me but I thought it was across the room. Sounds tend to be rather overwhelming for me but I can't tell where they are coming from.

Well I just messed up again.

I walked into my kitchen which has a stone floor. Something was rattling and making an annoying sound every time I took a step. I was sure the sound was coming from my baker's rack, although it had never rattled before. I decided that my floor must have become crooked or unbalanced because every step was making the rack shake. I carefully moved it an inch forward. Same noise. An inch to each side. Same noise. I took all the knick knacks, picture frames and cookbooks off it to see if the sound was from one of the items, rather than the rack itself. I removed about 50 items one at a time and took a few footsteps each time, but the rattle persisted.

Long story short, half an hour later when I was ready to have my entire floor replaced or get rid of the entire baker's rack (I can't tolerate rattle sounds), I realised the sound was actually coming from a china bowl on a glass shelf in a totally different room. It was my dog's footsteps causing it to rattle, and not even my own.

Duh. Then I realised this is more of my "echolocation" problem. I was about 8 metres from the noise and in the wrong direction.

The term is sound localization–the ability to locate the source of a sound.

I had no idea this was common for autism! It's something I've always struggled with.

For instance, I could be out on a hiking trail and hear a big rock falling somewhere in the distance - I have ZERO clue as to which direction it came from, but everyone on the trail with me will IMMEDIATELY look in the right direction. It blows my mind.

I try to train myself to pick these things out but always fail miserably.