Tell-tale symptom of my ADHD/dyslexia? I scored in Auditory Attention 1st percentile

I dug up an old learning disability test the other day and looked over the results.

I noticed that I scored in the 1st percentile for an Auditory Attention test where "I was asked to listen to a word while seeing four pictures, and then point to correct picture for the word. This task increases in difficulty in two ways: the sound discriminations become increasingly difficult and added background noise increases in intensity. "

I have always thought I was dyslexic, but I've never been diagnosed with it. I did get accommodations for learning and reading difficulty, but there was never really a succint diagnosis, and I have a feeling they tend to grant accommodations to most people who shell out the money for getting tested.

Still, what is surprising is that I did fine on Phonemic Awareness (89th percentil): 68th percentile on Sound Blending (integrating phonemes/syllables into their whole words), and 99th percentile on Incomplete Words (identifying words that have one or more phonemes missing; auditory "closure" ability).

But I guess this makes complete sense. I've always felt I had hearing problems, but I guess I never explicitly realized that it had to do with negotiating inconsistent auditory and visual inputs. This explains why I do fine on standard hearing tests.

I was surprised to do fine on Phonemic Awareness, because dyslexia is generally understood as a difficulty with phonemes. HOWEVER, this makes complete sense again, because it appears as though the test assesses auditorily receive phonemes and verbally produced answers, whereas dyslexia has to do with the connection of auditorily understood phonemes with VISUAL orthographic correlates.

Intuitively, I have anecdotal "evidence" in support of this deficit in Auditory Attention. I ALWAYS wear ear plugs, ever since I "discovered" them a few years ago. They really help me focus on reading, and I like to wear them even when walking/on the bus because it just helps me stay "insulated" and keep to my thoughts. I CANNOT read on trains or buses without them, because there are so many people around me. I wouldn't even say that the people and competing sounds/stimuli on the bus = too many distractions, because they don't feel like distractions, since I can't even START getting into reading, much less get started and THEN get distracted, if that makes sense. It would have to be like like the juiciest piece of reading material ever in order for me to get be able to read it in a crowded bus.


However, I still have trouble reading at a fluid pace, even if I am in my room, door locked, in total quiet. I take adderall now (these test results are from years ago, prior to getting prescribed adderall), which helps. But if my deficit is most salient when auditory and visual stimuli are competing, I don't understand why I am still generally a slow reader across all contexts.

So I guess it makes sense, since I've been diagnosed with ADHD. And it appears I do have an attention problem that was previously documented, and since that attention problem is specific to the interface or competition between the visual and auditory processes, it makes sense that I would experience a deficit in reading (a process where both are intertwined).

INterestingly, I've never had too much trouble paying attention in class, but this involves both visual and auditory inputs (teacher's voice, prosodice cues and body language/lip reading). But I guess htat just means that reading and listening aren't analogous, since one inherently involves two modes of external inputs, whereas reading only entails external visual and coded inputs along with internally produced auditory inputs.

Furthermore, I ahve ordered books on tape in the past, and found them useless. Because I guess it is not strictly the auditory format that I prefer, but rather the ecological validity of absorbing information in class, real-time, transient auditory and visual inputs, with prosodic, emotional, etc. cues to enhance the packaging of that information. Books on tape tend to be just as rote sounding as the look of text.

And I suppose adderall helping makes a lot of sense, too, since the ability to process information at a higher level, transcending any preference for low-level mode/type of input by which you are receiving that input. So it's a very frontal lobe type of process. (even if that is not the absolute 'root' of the problem, for lack of a better way of putting it).





I dont know how legit the test for Auditory Attention is, but 1st percentile is pretty low, even if I just screwed up or something....i guess my question would be if that might just be an outlier

 

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Dude, I didn't read your whole post (I gave up after the 2nd paragraph) ... but as someone who has ADD... or ADHD (I think) I can share my own experience.

I lose my attention whenever someone talks over me. Like if I sit at a bar telling a story to a friend, and someone in the next table is telling their own story, I lose my spot, and even forget what I was talking about. In university and at work I have to wear earplugs because people talking or even whispering throws me off so bad that I'm practically useless without them.

At the same time, I have a very sensitive ear for music. If I hear a song or track, I can easily list you the instruments / channels being played, and pick out the tune/rhythm of each, without being distracted by the rest.

It's kinda contradictory, isn't it?

 

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my son has severe ADHD and like otheadp he gets easily distracted and often for forgets what he is saying in the middle of a sentence, even eating his dinner is a chore for him

 

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Just to muck things up, I believe both Dyslexia and ADHD are groups of illnesses rather than 2 illnesses. Also these groups are groups more because they produce similar symptoms than because they are derived from similar causes. The causes are not fully understood.

Medicine has some success at treating the symptoms to enable us to function better at the tasks that we want to function better at.

I am dyslexic and probably have ADD as well. With my form of ADD I concentrate better and stay focussed better if I have background noise like a radio on.

In my form of Dyslexia I learn by attaching new info to a place in larger theory. I do very poorly in Isolated visual memorizations and also don't do very well in any form of isolated memorization.

For example I do better at creating a mental map of an area and adding details to it than I do in memorizing landmarks. More than other people I can pass landmarks over and over without noticing them but once I get a landmark into my map I can explain how that landmark connects to other landmarks better than other people can.

In music I learn songs very slowly and perhaps ver learn them as accurately as other people but I can create proper Harmonies or create a correct sounding variation or new ending to a song more easily than other people. In other words my mind understands the principles behind music but not the details.

In general I understand the principles but not the details. Trying to learn foreign languages was very hard for me because languages have so many isolated details.

I do have something of an unusually large encyclopedia of facts in my head which seems to contradict everything I have just said about how I believe I think. I don't know how to explain that except that maybe I just like useless information more than most people do.