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Forgetting how to understand English for short periods?

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I just wanted to know if this is normal and if there is a way to prevent it.

I have Asperger's, this is not professionally diognosed but I have a friend that has it (professionally diognosed) that suspects so and friends that suspect too.

 

I would like to know if it is normal to forget English for short periods (my native language, I couldn't think of another way to say forget how to understand people talking. Actually, maybe that is better) and also is there a way to prevent or remember how to quicker.

 

Also, the thing I find odd about this is I can still speak just not understand. My professionally diognosed friend says this happens to him too.

 

Thanks in advance.

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I can start stuttering under stress or fatigue when trying to talk. Also I loose the description or word of what I want to say.

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I also stammer under extreme stress: in such a stress situation I will either only partially hear, or else immediately partly forget, what is being said to me. I suppose one could term these events 'forgetting English', only the same thing happens to me in Welsh as well.....

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Different areas of the brain process different facets of speech and language. The connections between them can be disrupted by a variety of things; variable levels of neurotransmitters, early, undetected early brain damage, physiological changes... so various aspects of speech and language can be affected in isolation.

 

This video isn't quite what you describe, but is one of several intelligent summaries by Paul Isaacs of speech and language deficits that are common in autism. I notice he cites Donna Williams, who would be worth checking out on this topic.

 

cb

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Are you saying that sometimes you cannot 'process' spoken language? That you hear the 'sound' but it does not register as any meaningful language to you. But that you can still formulate your own speech?

I would not be surprised at that happening.

There are many things that can happen with processing sensory information (and auditory information is a sensory thing). There is mono-processing, fragmentation, shut down, white noise - all things that other adult autistics talk about.

 

I am not on the spectrum, but have auditory processing disorder - and I definately have times when language just becomes noise that means nothing.

 

It might help if you could try to work out the kind of environments or situations that it happens in. It may vary naturally day to day depending on your own sensory, emotional, anxiety state. But it may also depend on the amount of sound sources, volume, pitch, acoustics etc.

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Thanks for your replies.

When this happens it feels as if someone is just talking absolute jibberish. I cannot remember what was said so I can't repeat it in my mind to work it out, it just leaves me confused.

 

"Also I loose the description or word of what I want to say."

In reply to that, that happened to me yesterday, I knew I wanted to say Shredded Wheat and I could describe what it is I want to name but I still cannot remember the name. The more I think the more annoying it gets. I also forget what I'm doing while doing it and I can think of many times where I've thought of something to Google but by the time I get to search I've forgotten it.

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Sorry, I didn't post a link to the video.

 

 

cb

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There can also be language impairments and language disorders.

My son often cannot find the word to formulate the sentence, then later can real off a very complicated narrative.

 

Another suggested explanation is that some autistic people are learning language differently and storing it differently. For example, most people may learn what a cat and then a dog is. Then they see a picture and hear 'bird', 'horse' etc and begin to "group" those words into an "animal" category. Sorting and grouping words makes the processing and retrieval of them much quicker - rather like a filing system in a library. If the autistic person has a different filing system, or none at all, then searching for the word maybe the equivalent of walking into a library and having to go through each book before you find the one you want. It simply takes forever or maybe impossible to do.

 

And as with most skills, many people on the spectrum find that their abilities fluctuate alot from day to day and throughout the day and depends on many internal and external things.

 

Justs being aware of it is more than some people manage, so don't be hard on yourself. See if anything helps you, such as having a notebook and pencil handy to write stuff down to help you remember or you could write a description of the thing you have forgotten the word for. Now I am over 40, I must admit that this happens more and more to me. Sometimes I find myself peering into the fridge and I have forgotten what I went there for and sometimes when I remember, it is not even related to the fridge! :ph34r:

 

And there is Auditory Processing Disorder, and Sensory Integration Disorder, and Agnosia and generally I think there can be a lack of "connectedness" of information which just makes things very hard overall and sometimes impossible.

Edited by Sally44

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Again, thanks for the replies.

Earlier today (yesterday now) I found myself searching inside my computer for a USB Flash Drive. I had the side off for an upgrade and I was downstairs, I came up and had forgotten what it was I was about to do, I thought to myself "Maybe as the side is off the computer I was about to do something with it", I remembered it was computer related though which is why I looked inside. I was hoping looking inside would remind me or... Infact I don't know what I was doing

 

I really think I should be on here during the day, I use my whole day programming as a hobby (people call me obsessed with computers, to the extent that when I see people with an iPhone I have to have a look to work out what generation it is, the differences are:

iPhone 2G (first iPhone): Silver back with black at the bottom (I think of it as dipped in chocolate for some reason). (412MHz ARM CPU)

iPhone 3G: Like the 3GS, black, curved back with the subtle difference that the writing at the bottom is grey. (412MHz ARM CPU)

iPhone 3GS: Like 3G but writing is silver. (620MHz ARM CPU)

iPhone 4: Curved edges, silver antenna around edge with a slit at the top left and two on either side at the bottom. I have heard the US Verizon iPhone 4 has a different set of slits although I haven't reasearched this further. (suspected (unconfirmed) variable core multiplier with clock varying with load, at minimum load it runs at 800MHz and with full load 1GHz ARM (Apple A4))).

Oops, I didn't mean to proove it but I typed it anyway so there is no point in removing it.

 

Anyway, as I was saying, this makes me very tired by the end of the day.

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Hi Callum,

 

This probably has nothing to do with what you're feeling - just wanted you to know that my daughter has epilepsy and has episodes apart from her seizures where her understanding/communication is impaired.

 

The time involved can range massively and includes times where she cannot understand what is being said - she has said on several occasions its as though someone is speaking another language. She also has times where she wants to say something but cannot get the words out - her head knows what it wants to say but she cant find the words to say it and will just say like 'um' like when you're thinking of a word. She also finds herself in situations where she's forgotten what she was doing.

 

Also, when she was seeeing the Neuro at the beginning before diagnosis - they mentioned that sometimes people with autism have episodes that are very similar to epilepsy like going into a trance and having lapses in communication leading to confusion - and they wanted to make sure it wasn't just that.

 

Take care,

Jb

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Hi Callum,

 

This probably has nothing to do with what you're feeling - just wanted you to know that my daughter has epilepsy and has episodes apart from her seizures where her understanding/communication is impaired.

 

The time involved can range massively and includes times where she cannot understand what is being said - she has said on several occasions its as though someone is speaking another language. She also has times where she wants to say something but cannot get the words out - her head knows what it wants to say but she cant find the words to say it and will just say like 'um' like when you're thinking of a word. She also finds herself in situations where she's forgotten what she was doing.

 

Also, when she was seeeing the Neuro at the beginning before diagnosis - they mentioned that sometimes people with autism have episodes that are very similar to epilepsy like going into a trance and having lapses in communication leading to confusion - and they wanted to make sure it wasn't just that.

 

Take care,

Jb

 

That's it exactly! That is an exact description of what I feel when this happens, thanks.

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I keep appending to this:

I would just like to add that when people repetitively say things for example:

Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.

 

Something happens and it starts just sounding like tones rather than words. Inside my head and I can feel something like a tap or similar near the front and then it happens, tones rather than words. I have to reset to fix it, I do something like covering my ears or, if you think of it as a computer, restart the listening process.

 

I would just like to know what is going on here and why do I get this indescribable feeling which I cannot link to anything <the next bit is odd and appears, to me anyway, unrelated> and then while I am thinking of it now not being able to I'm getting another indescribable feeling. Now I feel very slightly sick and... I don't know what happened there, I got yet another feeling and felt like curling up and rolling around or rocking to clear my head.

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I keep appending to this:

I would just like to add that when people repetitively say things for example:

Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.

 

Something happens and it starts just sounding like tones rather than words. Inside my head and I can feel something like a tap or similar near the front and then it happens, tones rather than words. I have to reset to fix it, I do something like covering my ears or, if you think of it as a computer, restart the listening process.

 

I think this is common even amongst people who are not on the spectrum. Our brains learn to discriminate between words by learning to recognise common word endings and beginnings, so it's not so much that repetitive words sound like tones, they are just tones, as far as the brain is concerned.

 

I would just like to know what is going on here and why do I get this indescribable feeling which I cannot link to anything <the next bit is odd and appears, to me anyway, unrelated> and then while I am thinking of it now not being able to I'm getting another indescribable feeling. Now I feel very slightly sick and... I don't know what happened there, I got yet another feeling and felt like curling up and rolling around or rocking to clear my head.

 

You and hundreds of brain researchers would like to know what's going on there. The links between the temporal lobe (that processes sounds) and the frontal lobe areas of the brain that process speech (patterns of sounds) are highly complex. They can be disrupted by all sorts of things; undetected minor brain damage, low blood flow, varying levels of neurotransmitters, mis-firing of neurones - associated with temporal lobe epilepsy - etc. It's not so much that there is something odd or different about your speech processing as that the speech processing of the whole population varies - some people's processing is more efficient than others'.

 

cb

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I think it might be sensible to go to your GP and have yourself checked out incase you are having any sought of "absences" related to epilepsy.

 

I think sensory processing resulting in physical symptoms is very typical of being on the spectrum - and to everyone but to a much lesser degree. My son gets overwhelmed or overloaded with sensory processing and feels sick/dizzy and even vomits.

 

And if you also have an all encompassing obsession that is taking up alot of your time, then you are going to be tired, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally too. So you may need to build in some breaks into your daily timetable and may need to set your watch to remind you to take that break.

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..so maybe here is the clue as to why i need subtitles most times i watch telly..which bores my flatmate to death lol :D:P

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