Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone im new here.I was diagnosed with autism only a week ago aged 32, and my son is 7 and has autism and was diagnosed aged 3.Anyway, throughout my life we have always known my mother has APD (Audio processing disorder) which basically means that even when she hears what youre saying (which is rare as she is almost completely deaf now) it seems to take the brain extra time to process the words, it just sounds like gobbledygook.I quickly realised i have it too, people can talk directly at me and it just sounds like an alien language, then a few seconds after it'll finally click in my brain.This often means someone will say something, and i'll ask them to repeat it, then halfway through them repeating it, it'll click in my brain from the first time.It also means i rely more of lip reading than i do on the sounds, which means that i always like people to speak facing me. Meeting new people can be a nightmare too, with their new, different speaking patterns it can take me time to get used to their speech patterns, so i will often just look confused the whole time.Since being diagnosed as on the spectrum my partner suggested maybe the APD could be linked to my Autism. She works with autistic children herself and pointed out that autism is a difference in processing, so that the APD could be caused by my ASD.Does anyone have this issue?Could they both be linked?
Thanks
I think I might have something like that. I live abroad for decades in a country with a tonal language, which I have never really got to grips with. I can read the local script (nothing like English) quite well, but it is always listening that I find difficult; even though I do what most people would do in this circumstance by lip-reading. (But, of course, tonal languages are not particularly labial. Locals can be so deeply involved in activities, but still understand what is being said by rising and falling tones, but paying no attention at all to the lips.) It just takes too long for me to process the local language spoken at a normal speed (which is naturally very fast, abrupt and terse). But I also seem able to process it when someone is speaking very politely and slowly. And yes, it seems like, as you say, gobbledygook.In fact, it frequently seems to bear almost no relation to slow speech in the same language. And sometimes the brain does seem to click and recognise something when it is repeated. (This might be because the context is often clearer the second or third or more times around.) I've noticed similar listening problems with another (UK) language too; which is definitely not very tonal. (In terms of local accents, I reckon the greatest problem I've ever had was trying to understand a Dudley person operating in a very noisy environment. I had to listen about 8 times before I began to recognise just one or two words. And I'd say that I rarely have to ask someone to repeat in British or American English, or most UK regional accents. (I love listening to different accents, and can imitate quite a few, I used to have quite a heavy accent myself, but have lost it abroad.)
It has occurred to me quite a few times that this listening difficulty might be a comorbidity. About 20 years ago I had a whole battery of hearing tests here. I was after told I had a slight problem with high frequencies. At the time, I put that down to previously working in a noisy environment. (And this is also a very noisy country). But when asked what I could do about it, I was told that at my age it wasn't yet practical to take any measures. i have thought about going for hearing tests again, but as the whole spectrum thing is taboo here, I imagine they would probably just write it off as a need for a hearing aid. But of course they can't really do much more than that; even if I were to ever convince them that they could constructively break the taboo.
Another thought on this. I have many of the balance problems of dyspraxia. That might indicate damage of the inner ear or its neural connections at an early age. Certainly, there were problems at birth and a couple of years later that might have had that impact. The speed of my mental processing is undoubtedly a bit slow, and there are obviously also problems with multitasking.