Have a problem understanding when there is background noise?

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Do other Aspies have a problem understanding people when there is background noise?

I was in quite a noisy restaurant the other day and I could not understand the waitress. I could hear her but the noise in the background made it all sound like a jumble of sounds.

I have had this before but I only just realized that everyone else seemed to understand her perfectly well. It never occurred to me before that this might be due to Aspergers.

not aspergan,but yes,it is a part of aspergers and autism as a whole-it's a sensory processing problem- with filtering out sound.

all the time. and if there's a tv on in the room i can't pay attention to either it or another person who's speaking. can't be on the phone listening to someone and have someone come try to ask me something else, either.

Yes, I have to close my eyes to listen to one person when there is a lot of back ground noise. No one else seems to have the issue, and I have had people get hostile if I even mention it. ("Well, no one ELSE is having that problem!" )

I also have to turn down the radio if I want to find an address while driving.

Merle

i thought autistic people were usually good at catching subtle background noises

Yes,I have that issue constantly. So annoying.

It's called auditory processing disorder, seems there are very few autistic people without it, if any at all. The problem is with the processing, not the perception.

that is true,back ground noises are automatically picked up without choice and extremely easy to hear for many including am,the problem is when multiple background noises happen,and because it is impossible to block any of it out-it overloads the brain,am experience of it is the brain is only able to process very little at any one time and person can be left in a crippling agony-and have a meltdown set off if go into area with background noises going off.

this problem can be quite hard to cope with for autistics because ignorant people might question an autistics acute hearing and call them a liar when they find that the autistic cannot make sense of what they are saying with a background noise going on.

Yes, I have major issues with this. If there is any music on or other people talking, I find I just cannot catch the words of someone talking to me.

Yep. I find I can't filter out the background stuff like I guess others can do...so I get distracted or I can't process it all I guess. Someone may be right in my face talking to me...but my mind is still focused on someone's three kids whooping it up 3 seats away. My mind doesn't assign a priority on where it's focusing.

heh, indeed i 2 suffer from this. People get confused, i hear noises like hums and something very suttle, and tell someone, like at work, they dont hear it or then after i said so realize it and hear it, but then when they talk to me clearly, i always say 'what' and want them to repeat themselfs (usually to process and formulate a response, so i need it said at least 2 times). If their is backround noise i ask multyple times, and it does not have to be too loud eather. I work where it is very noisy, much of the time i work alone, they allow me to work alone thankfully cause they know how i am. Definatly something that affects us all..

Kaleido,

OK, I admit it! I have this problem also.

Steve

Eureka!

I didn't know that auditory processing disorder was also a symptom of AS.

I saw an incompetent psychologist last year about my AS. His comment was that since I wasn't waving my arms around violently I didn't have AS. (On my first consultation with him he had to look up AS in his reference book. That should have been sufficient warning for me not to try a second visit.)

So, one more suggestion that I DO have AS.

CAPD is just a possible comorbid of autism. FRANKLY, I don't think this is really CAPD. CAPD generally is something you could have EVEN in silence(Outside of what is said). CAPD primarily has to do with properly parsing spoken sentences. So the problem specified here which IS a possible symptom of autism(WITH OR WITHOUT CAPD) can be had with no CAPD.
Frankly, some think this issue has to do with hypersensitive hearing.

Well, I do have a propensity for shouting "ONLY ONE OF US CAN TALK AT ONCE!! !!" if I'm interrupted mid-conversation or people nearby start a side conversation. It generally doesn't go over too well. Furthermore, if I'm working on a project and there's a source of noise in the background, I'll get up and wander around until I've found the source of it, and I'll make a bit of a putz of myself trying to demand silence without being too rude. It's a bear.

I do that too, lol.
In fact, when 2 of my aquaintances decided to start talking loudly to me at the same time I got very angry and shouted at one of them as it really was as if my head was going to implode.