Attention span

I'd meant to add before logging on started playing up, something about concentration when reading.

This is a widely reported phenomenon and not necessarily connected with AS but I do wonder if AS (or a co-morbid factor like ADHD, as David suggests) plays a part.

When reading a story the thread of the story (or "storyline") helps you overcome the boring/less stimulating bits. However people on the spectrum may have trouble imagining the characters in a story. Also some people with dyslexia, because they lose retention of the beginning of a sentence by the time they get to the end, may have trouble with continuity.

Consequently if you are reading something where the "storyline" is hard to follow, such as an academic paper or textbook, or an engineering specification, you will find it difficult to concentrate because you cannot identify a connection between one bit and the next. You may be having to remember lots of information, and that in itself is distracting.

I frequently sat for days reading engineering specifications never getting beyond page 2, about which I feel very guilty, but also glad no-one seemed to notice. Engineering specs are often written on a template on a computer where dry facts are just set down in pre-determined spaces.

I'm currently reading a book about Welsh Kings. Trying to remember the regions, like Dyfed and Deubareth as a non-Welsh speaker and the complex patronymic names, which all seem much the same, the reading process is just tortuously slow. I'll often pick up after a short break and find I'm reading a page I've already read fifteen minutes earlier, the content of which I hardly recognise. 

The only way round this is to keep a notebook, or just bits of paper, on which you record the facts you feel you need to remember, and draw some arrows, spider diagrams or flow diagrams to show how things connect. This provides points of reference and some degree of "thread" or "storyline". For visual thinkers this may be especially helpful. Conversely number fanatics may find it easier to give blocks of information codes.

There are also systems for structured reading where, instead of reading from the beginning to the end of a chapter you read the key bits (if you can find them) then a little bit round them to get the context, then fuill in the gaps, making notes as you go. If this seems repetitious, yes it is, but so is reading and re-reading linearly, if there's no storyline.

I'd meant to add before logging on started playing up, something about concentration when reading.

This is a widely reported phenomenon and not necessarily connected with AS but I do wonder if AS (or a co-morbid factor like ADHD, as David suggests) plays a part.

When reading a story the thread of the story (or "storyline") helps you overcome the boring/less stimulating bits. However people on the spectrum may have trouble imagining the characters in a story. Also some people with dyslexia, because they lose retention of the beginning of a sentence by the time they get to the end, may have trouble with continuity.

Consequently if you are reading something where the "storyline" is hard to follow, such as an academic paper or textbook, or an engineering specification, you will find it difficult to concentrate because you cannot identify a connection between one bit and the next. You may be having to remember lots of information, and that in itself is distracting.

I frequently sat for days reading engineering specifications never getting beyond page 2, about which I feel very guilty, but also glad no-one seemed to notice. Engineering specs are often written on a template on a computer where dry facts are just set down in pre-determined spaces.

I'm currently reading a book about Welsh Kings. Trying to remember the regions, like Dyfed and Deubareth as a non-Welsh speaker and the complex patronymic names, which all seem much the same, the reading process is just tortuously slow. I'll often pick up after a short break and find I'm reading a page I've already read fifteen minutes earlier, the content of which I hardly recognise. 

The only way round this is to keep a notebook, or just bits of paper, on which you record the facts you feel you need to remember, and draw some arrows, spider diagrams or flow diagrams to show how things connect. This provides points of reference and some degree of "thread" or "storyline". For visual thinkers this may be especially helpful. Conversely number fanatics may find it easier to give blocks of information codes.

There are also systems for structured reading where, instead of reading from the beginning to the end of a chapter you read the key bits (if you can find them) then a little bit round them to get the context, then fuill in the gaps, making notes as you go. If this seems repetitious, yes it is, but so is reading and re-reading linearly, if there's no storyline.