APD and Directional Hearing

[Walkie]

Somebody on this forum was recently complaining that a 4% difference between  acuity of right and left ears had screwed with their directional hearing. Sorry, can't find the original post , on account of the utterly useless search engine we have here (Odeon? any chance of ever fixing that? )  I thought the OP was DD, but looking at DDs recent posts didn't help, either.

Anyway this post got me thinking. My own directional hearing is next-to-useless.  eg if I happen place my mobile firmly on my LHS, or RHS, and not too far away, I can usually tell where it is -more-or-less- when it rings.  But most often , i have to walk around the room and judge the direction by variation in loudness as i walk towards or away from it.   Yeah, as you probably guessed, I don;t often find the damned thing before it stops ringing , and often get into trouble for Not Answering The Phone to Important People (who almost always withold their number, ofc.  If it's a friend, I simply call them back...erm, anything up to three days later, once i eventually locate my phone) .  I've also found out, recently, that it's a peculiar type of hell being bereft of directional hearing if you live on the ground floor of an apartment block  especially when your your most antisocial neihbours live down the road (in a rehab centre for crackheads...or "people with complex needs" as they prefer to call ém )  and like to hang out in your doorway, but your noisiest neighbour lives right on top of you. (And , no, i do not jump and down, nor climb up a ladder  in an effort to check if  it's just him.  I laboriously rule out  all other possibilities)

So, anyway,  that post got me wondering if my ears have a similar disparity?  but then I recalled that I passed all hearing tests , in my youth, with flying colours. And (whilst i haven't had a hearing test in decades)  I was just the same back then.  So it can't be that.  And then I recalled that I have APD (Auditory Processing Disorder) and it occured to me to wonder if APD affects your directional hearing? and the answer turns out to be yes.

Now, ofc,  I'm wondering why the heck I never thought of that before.  But  seeing as APD is pretty damned common amongst autistic people, thought it worth posting about it here; and thinking that might just be an additional  factor in that Original Poster's issue (whoever the hell it was)

I'll leave it to one of you whizz-kids to find a good link about APD. Sorry, but I've just discarded a bunch of them as being not especially explanatory, from the sufferer's POV, but more designed for teachers/parents/ psychologists/ busybodies, and I'm therefore bored shitless with APD by now.   

[odeon]

^The search engine is probably not something I can fix. I'll take a look at the available mods to see if someone's written something that might help, though.

[Parts]

I do the same thing trying to find my phone  

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

I remember my niece asking me about APD, she has been diagnosed with it. For her it manifests as "processing delays", where she feels a second or so behind a conversation that is happening in real time. I think she had some kind of therapy to learn coping mechanisms. I am quite sure that I have APD as well, but over time you do learn to cope with it.

A lot of people on the spectrum have very acute hearing. I did when I was younger. Unfortunately myself and my siblings all managed to inherit the "gradually going deaf with age" gene from the non-spazz side of the family. I don't notice it most of the time except when I'm trying to listen to something when there is background noise, or when I can't hear high pitched sounds that everyone else can hear.

I've never noticed any issues with directional hearing.

[Walkie]

over time you do learn to cope with it.

I don't know if tthat learning curve ever ends, or if one can ever totally adapt. One way in which I cope is by always switching on the subtitles when I watch TV. So,  now i catch twice as much dialofgue as i used to and follow the freaking plot a lot more easily.  What did  I do before the subtitle option was available? I just rarely watched TV, IIRC, and annoyed the heck out of my son (with "Did you catch what he said?"more often than a kid asking Äre we there, yet?" ) whenever we watched it together  But now what happens? My freaking eyes start playing up, such that sometimes I can't read the subtitles for the blurriness and double vision.  So now what? extra-large subtitles that obliterate the picture? 

And then there's the trick of avoiding meeting friends in busy coffee bars and such, Avoid applying for jobs that might require you to man  the phone, use a walkie-talkie, or remember people's names.  Avoid , avoid , avoid. Oh! and carry a little notebook with you and get people to write their names in it, cos you'll all-too-likely mishear the name otherwise, and try to ignore the peculiar look they give you,

Actually, in normal conversation (so long as there's no heavy accent, nor a shedload of background noise)   I seem to be adapted to the hilt.  That is, my brain automatically picks the right words out the hat , judging by contextual cues, so rapidly, I don't even notice that process going on and forget that I jave any problem, until suddenly some name comes up, some unfamiliar word, or the context is ambiguous; and i'm straight back to asking ""Erm,  I'm not catching that. can you spell it out please? " and then getting stared at in disbelief when, as it turns out, it's a totally common name.

A lot of people on the spectrum have very acute hearing.

I'm no exception. That's what makes APD  so embarassing. Peiople understand deafness. They don't often understand why somebody who clearly isn't deaf would suddenly make like they're deaf  at random intervals, or why talking louder doesn't help.  Or why the noise of a running tap can seeminly drown out their best bellowing voice.  And we all know, don't we, that your average NT will smell a rat when confronted with a problem that they can;t understand.

I've never noticed any issues with directional hearing.

Hmm curious.  But then, apperently, therë are a number of different conditions that are loosely  lumped together under the umbrella term ""APD"(according to one of those websites I just checked) so maybe one shouldn't generalise? What issues have you noticed?

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

Walkie, for me it is mostly that if someone is talking, I am about a second behind in processing what they are saying. My niece calls it "processing delays" and that describes my experience perfectly. I don't know if that would qualify me for a diagnosis of APD.

Also filtering out background noise is difficult.

Accents aren't an issue.

Subtitles are good. BUT have you ever watched stuff where the subtitles are different to what they characters are actually saying because the subtitles have been generated by voice-recognition software or by a non-native English speaker. That drives me nutso.

[Walkie]

Subtitles are good. BUT have you ever watched stuff where the subtitles are different to what they characters are actually saying because the subtitles have been generated by voice-recognition software or by a non-native English speaker. That drives me nutso.

It usually cracks me up... in a good way . Must start noting down the best examples .

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

It actually stresses me out because I am subconsciously trying to reconcile the spoken dialogue with the subtitles. If it's a foreign language movie or if the sound is turned off then I'm fine.

[Tequila]

Often the subtitles are shortened and not literal.

[sg1008]

Don't know if I have APD or hearing problems (probably not)...but I do tend to be sensitive to loud talkers. Sometimes my mom will get in this very loud "teachers voice", and I have to ask her to speak quietly, seeing as how I am standing right in front of her.

I also have this thing where if something is being asked of me, too many extraneous details will throw me off entirely. I need simple, clear, and concise requests made.

[renaeden]

An example of the subtitles not matching speech is in Ghost in the Shell. Had to turn the subtitles off.

If someone is talking to me and there are other people close by also talking, I often can't understand the someone talking to me.