NEWBIE--JUST DIAGNOSED with huge Verbal/ Performance Discrep

Howdi :)

There’s a striking difference between your plain ol’ verbal ability and what it looks like when it’s applied to reading. Seems if you’re talking through it, you’re very intelligent but you lose it when it’s on paper.

In fact, it seems that when you have to figure thigns about about something you see, things get difficult. I’d first be checking out just plain vision, and then visual processing things.

DO you do better with comprehension of lectures than books? Or are they just as confusing and you need to tape them and hear them repeatedly?

You didn’t get a lot of the nonverbal stuff administered - how are you with unspoken social cues? I’m trying to figure out if you get ‘nonverbal” information that you don’t have to *see.* So, let’s just say that you’re a slob and your roommate is very neat. Would you be able to realize that just because she *says* “no problem, man!” that little things she does might mean that actually your messiness *is* bugging her? Or do you tend to take things right at the literal - hey, she said it was okay, so it’s okay, and somebody has to sit you down and inform you that having a week’s worth of very old stinky garments piled in the corner *is* bugging her, but she just can’t believe you can’t figure that out for yourself?

Actually, I’d rather read the textbook (especially a clear, structured one like intro science, for instance, although my college grade in it wasn’t great but that’s a different issue) than hear a lecture. I don’t understand and retain things right off the bet (unless the teacher is incredibly methodical, structured, step-by-step, secondary school style ). I have to sit and figure things out first and learn better if the lecture serves only as a review, rather than as a main source of information.

In reading, I am an automatic decoder and do link the sound of the word to its meaning, but I often find that I don’t grasp the meaning and am just reading words. I need to read and reread sentences and paragraphs before I understand the train of thought. I also forget what I’ve read a paragraph earlier. (I know one-sentence summaries after each paragraph or section, depending on the reading) are helpful. I often don’t even retain a sentence and have to reread it over as well. That’s why I’ve never liked reading which my family found strange since noone has else has this problem (at least not to a problem extent).

As far as the WAIS performance, I feel I could’ve done better on Matrix Reasoning if given as much time as I needed. (I’ve heard this subtest is untimed but still you have to keep within reasonable limits and my examiner rushed me.). I am bad with blocks, no offense, and planning and strategizing are hard for me under pressure. For picture completion, I could not see the missing part. Also, for the train picture, I didn’t figure out it’s missing wheels because I did not know what a train must have and got distracted by other details. Coding was bad due to poor visual memory; I needed to look at the key every time and wouldn’t remember through repetition.

I might initially trust the face value, yet if the nonverbal hints from my roommate are persistent, for a week for instance and gradually get more overt, I would of course, percieve her unhappiness.

Hi itsme,
Difficulties with visual-spatial processing are quite common with NVLD.
Here’s a link to an NLD site which provides plenty of helpful information:
http://www.nldontheweb.org/NLD_forum.htm

In regard to reading comprehension and NVLD, I would mention an idea of mine that I’ve recently begun investigating?
Basically it involves learning “Speed-Reading”?
Which crucially involves learning to read ‘Blocks of Text’, rather than ‘Word by Word’. Given that people with NVLD tend to get caught up with more intensively reading each word in sentence. This has the effect of disconnecting the words in a sentence, and a loss of comprehension.
Whereas, with ‘speed-reading’, a block of words is read in a way parallel to the way each single word is read. Where only ‘key-words’ in a sentence are noted individually.
This is only speculation at the moment, though I thought that might mention it?

Geoff.

George — the concepts of “speed-reading” have been totally disproved. There was an excellent article in the mid 1980’s titled “How Fast Are The World’s Best Readers”. It is scientifically accurate and also quite funny. Unfortunately this was pre-internet so you have to pay ten dollars for a reprint, but worth it before wasting hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars. An ERIC search will find it.

HOwever, there is something to be said for making sure you’re focusing on the “big picture” instead of the individual words. A common NVLD issue is seeing all the needles and bark on the trees and not seeing a tree, much less the forest and the assorted interactions between the animals and the plants and the sun and the streams. It sounds like that’s what’s happening here.
Would it help the memory to jot down those short summaries? How about trying to visualize? (I’d try it for a bit… but if it’s a flop, I wouldn’t force it — I know *my* brain doesn’t do pictures well at all.)
Do you have the same difficulty comprehending movies?

Sue,

Visualization also isn’t my forte. And I am amazed that you hit it right on target with the movie issue. I’ve always had difficulty comprehending movies. Often, I would suffer through the entire movie and still not catch on to the plot. I think that’s because movies are not retold linearly but as the details unfold, one is able to put them together. I don’t have the patience to wait and thus get discouraged from the outset. Also, I have trouble retaining and synthesizing when the action is unfolding rapidly.

I don’t have the problem with simplistic sitcoms, though, but I do often have problems with the news where some prior knowledge is assumed and thus the story is retold in pieces which are again hard for me to grasp. I also get lost when listening to a fast flow of a complex speech.

I am able to think well, but I need more time and conscious forethought and effort.

What other general comments might you have based on my testing?