Autism and ADHD have a pretty significant overlap in symptoms. My wife and I thought our son might be autistic, but as he's gotten older it's gotten easier to tell the difference -- it's severe early-onset ADHD that resulted in developmental delays. He's not showing the flattened emotional response that characterizes autism and as he's gotten older he's picked up the emotional perception abilities you would expect to see in typical development; they're just delayed. Having grown up with ADHD myself I get how to work with him on that, but it's really hard seeing a 12-year-old with obvious signs of depression, too...

As far as reading speed is concerned, the average reading speed for adults is 200-250 words per minute. College students usually score better than that, interestingly; 300wpm isn't unusual at all. It's believed to be because they get so much practice at it. So unless you feel like everyone else is always really dragging when reading stuff that you find easy, your reading speed is probably in the 200-300wpm range.

For me, I think the big thing is that -- through whatever mechanism that I don't really understand -- my reading is decoupled from speech, which is very much not normal. Most people can't read much faster than they could theoretically talk if they didn't have to worry about tripping over their tongue, and from what I've heard an EEG will actually pick up the neurons in your mouth and throat firing when you read in the same patterns that they fire in when you speak. I've never had this evaluated in me, but I DON'T subvocalize when I read (I don't imagine hearing the words in my head). I imagine this allows the concepts to skip a step and go straight into processing. I have no idea how that works.

ngl i wonder whether it's because i was a gifted kid-- whether that caused me to go undiagnosed for a long time, because schools don't think there's anything wrong with someone that overperforms to try and meet expectations of them, or because it wasn't spotted early enough to be of concern.

it just sucks because i know there's something wrong here but can't tell people what it is.

that's interesting.

The same thing happened to me. Everyone knew I was a gifted kid; I was sitting in a 3rd grade class when I was 6 years old. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was 10, but by then I'd been held back just because even though I could keep up with the work I wasn't getting the social development I needed because I wasn't in classes with kids my own age.

In my experience, a lot of it is just that a kid that doesn't cause trouble doesn't get the extra attention needed to identify a problem.

Aww, I don't deserve it, but thank you anyways Trystan! <:} <3

of course you do, Merskelly. you're welcome! :D

Aww, Derpy, your skirt is super cute!
:D

Derpy honestly deserves all the sweets and valentines he gets! ^w^ <3

me, who is afab and has never been diagnosed with a mental illness, ever:
doctors, already not giving out enough adhd diagnoses to afab people:

anyways, i'm gonna be real surprised if i do manage to get a diagnosis ever, considering several factors.
in better news: a friend of mine found out they do have autism, so at the very least, that's been diagnosed.

Found the perfect gift for Derpy! (And me...)
https://i.postimg.cc/8CLKZJRV/20200214-182223.jpg

That's the perfect gift for anyone 8D

I especially appreciate that instead of being a cheesy "all you need is love", it is coffee and chocolate.

Dear chocolate company,
Thank you for making a more aromantic-friendly box without love quotes or valentine puns, which would also be perfect for a friend or family gift without being awkward.

Yes. Cause coffee and chocolate = love 8D

i... don't like coffee. tea, on the other hand... :)

Chocolate, coffee, and tea are all good. And they can be good together. Like in the military latte.

>Goes to Joann's and thinks she got everything she needed
>REMEMBERS SHE FORGOT TWO THINGS AFTER GETTING HOME

rip me ;u;

I know the feeling. I'm building a fancy headboard for my new bed, and I went to Home Depot and bought $300 worth of lumber...

... went back a couple days later to get more because I totally forgot about a few parts from my design drawing.

Coda, was the moon on top of the page changed to stay in position when scrolling? Or was it always that way? Something seems to have changed here that makes scrolling stutter.

I don't like coffee at all, but I certainly love how the chocolate company made a non-lovey-dovey valentine's box ^^


Funny thing is, I'm the complete opposite to those subvocalizing folks: my reading speed is like quadruple my talking speed, and whenever I hear someone speak about complicated matters, I need to concentrate and imagine the words as a written text to fully understand them.

I had my hearing tested in elementary school, because they noticed I was sometimes slow to respond, could not retain all information on the phone, or identify my name among other background noise. Results proved I hear well enough, and I was smart too, so since then my aunts considered me a snotty brat.

i am a feral little man.

It's had the same scrolling behavior ever since we changed the header graphics, but scrolling behavior is one of those things that humans are particularly sensitive to -- we notice those kinds of disruptions to what should otherwise seem to be natural movement. It's probably a bug introduced in the latest update of your browser, and I would hope the developers notice it and fix it in the next release.

Quadruple isn't that crazy. 100-120wpm is a fairly typical speaking speed in English (with professionals who actually practice talking able to get up to 200wpm while remaining intelligible) and 300wpm is considered common among college students as I mentioned -- so that's triple already. Subvocalizing isn't limited by the physical constraints of your body. You can't flub your words when you're subvocalizing, so that's capable of going MUCH faster than actual speech.

That said, it's probably completely irrelevant to your case. :P Some people are just wired differently, and your language center is probably built a lot more visually than the average. (People who are fluent in sign language take similar advantage of the fact that you can process language independently of any specific sense.)

I've tried visualizing words in my head as I listen to someone. It's interesting, but I actually can't do it very well. It takes too much attention to translate the language from auditory form to visual form, so if I'm trying to see the words in my head I'm more likely to forget what it is I'm actually hearing. I have a similar issue when listening to music sung in Japanese; I'm good enough at the language to pick up on key ideas in the lyrics, but if you ask me to translate what they said I'm going to blank out on it because trying to retain that mental context AND synthesize new information at the same time... yeah, that doesn't work too well for me.

That's a symptom of a sensory processing disorder, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that at least some types of ADHD fall into that category. I definitely have that issue myself -- my hearing is perfectly fine, but my ability to pick up on sounds against background noise is awful and it's been getting worse as I get older.

totally accurate. i've done this myself, and have seen customers where i work do it as well...like yesterday, in fact!

>xD Ha HA! *high fives trystan for alike vibes* Yea! >X3

i pretty much like tea, crochet, chocolate, books, and cats. :)

Same but add coffee, dragons and chainmail/chainmaille and swap crochet for loom knitting

I pretty much like tea, cardboard, chandeliers, books, and cats. XD Also dogs.

add dragons on my list too. :D

...especially cute cuddly baby dragons?

Strange, my browser hasn't been recently updated other than the webview side which was the 11th and it was noticable the 14th. The moon even bounces around when trying to scroll or the page jumps when trying to tap the links. Tried clearing caches, restarting phone, etc. Doesn't happen on any other sites.

Never officially been diagnosed with anything other than getting slapped on the "cheeky kid only listens to you when he wants to" label. The phone issue was quickly solved by me leaving a sheet of doodle paper next to the phone. Big advantage about being wired differently: you already figure out at an early age what works for you and what doesn't.

i've pretty much wished for subtitles in real life for a while now because auditory processing? in my brain? it's less likely than you think.

>n>; I'm trying REALLY hard to fight temptation and NOT just grab a cup of lucky charms cereal for dinner and send myself spiraling down into the sadness of sweetness. ;_; Again.

Hnnng... <x'{ I already had a cookie and a huge slice of Pumpkin PIE! I am so damn lazy I can't cook myself DINNER??? Ahhhhhhh whaddo I make??? <x'{ I'm gettin' hungry. ;~;????

You want to talk about subtitles, I have a story about something that pissed me off.

I have a lot harder time learning stuff from videos compared to being able to read it. Video is fine if it's entertaining stuff and it doesn't matter if I forget a few things, but if it's supposed to be important and I HAVE to remember it, video is less than ideal. This stuff all counts as a learning disability. Legally, I'm disabled. This means that employers are obligated to make good-faith efforts to provide reasonable accommodations.

It's a requirement for tech companies that handle personal data to make their employees take classes on how to handle data securely. It's basically the law -- if you don't do that, and there's a security breach, there are fines and legal damages. But at one of the companies I worked for, the required class was not only a video class... the video was NON-SEEKABLE. One-way. Can't rewind. Can't fast-forward. If you miss something, the only option is to start over.

I complained about this, asking for accommodation for my learning disability.

... they turned on the subtitles.

Bloody heck, that made me mad. That didn't solve the problem at all. I'm not DEAF. The problem isn't that I have to see the words to process them. It's that I have to be able to process them at my own pace. But that was all they could do. No written alternative available.

I muscled through it. I tried to pay attention, specifically looking for stuff that was surprising so I could take notes. Fortunately, I had read up on this stuff in the past for a different job, so it wasn't too terribly different from what I already knew. But it still was really upsetting that a company dedicated to making educational material would make such a RIDICULOUS system.

They told me that they had to have a way to verify that people actually consumed the material in order to be allowed to give certifications, and the only way they could do it reliably was to make the video to where you couldn't just skip it... but that just feels like an excuse, because there are plenty of other ways to do it.

I like coffee, cats, sewing, bears, chocolate, tea, fruity chewy candy....

You know what I love? <:]

When people don't shut the door all the way. JUST the way I want it.
They don't shut it.
They don't leave it wide open.
They just leave it........ajar.~ -w-
It's the little things yo. <3

especially. and also if he's named Derpy. :)

Derpy, by coincidence, is also a little thing. ^-^ It's the little things.~
And the little dragons. <:} <3

how could someone not like Derpy anyway? :)

o-o I can think of a few that might not...like mean jerkwad knights that think all dragons are bad. >8/

Derpy waddles through.
"I got a flower!"
https://i.postimg.cc/YSGT6YBx/20200215-104728.jpg