[blackandwhite34521]

Hi!

Do you who have ADHD, find it harder to learn new material through listening, than reading? I myself have a very hard time absorbing information in verbal form. As long as I remember I always needed to reread everything in school, because I retained very little from the lectures. And now in college I never go to lectures, because it pretty much useless with my head. I read books instead.

Of course it also takes me longer time than other to absorb the material by reading, but once I grasp it, I noticed I'm pretty good at using that information.

I remember when I was in school, and we had to solve different math problems. It always took me longer than anybody else to go through easy problems. But when the tasks started to get more complex, I remember quickly catching on and being able to solve the hardest ones, that nobody else could. Pretty much the only thing that hindered me from thinking that I'm just plainly an idiot.

I think that part of the problem why it's always taken me so long to absorb information is, because I always needed to understand the underlying concept of it, even if we just swam through the surface of a topic. I have been struggling with social anxiety as well, which I know causes this effect.

It seems however that difficulty with retaining information in my working memory because of a mild ADHD is a bigger factor.

Sorry for a long post. Thank you in advance for your replies!

I will be interested to hear what people have to say about this, because I'm like this, but I never associated it with ADHD. I'm old enough that I took notes with pencil and paper when I was in college, and I found that the act of writing down the main points of what I was hearing somehow imprinted it on my brain. I have heard other people say that their brain works this way, too.

What you said about needing to understand the underlying concepts before you can remember something applies to me, too.

I have never been diagnosed with ADHD, and in fact, never even thought much about the subject until the last 4-5 years when I first started hearing comments from people about my inability to watch a movie, play a board game, etc.

I also have had lots of problems with forgetting things and losing things during my last episode of depression (which I suppose is still ongoing, but it has been much better for the last six months or so.)

I have been reading some books about non-drug methods to improve executive functioning and also about diet for the same thing.

I can look at my family members and see that ADHD type problems run on both sides of my family, although no one was ever diagnosed until one of my siblings was and now one of their children is.

Whether or not a person ends up with an ADHD diagnosis, I think it can be helpful to understand your style of thinking and learning. It sounds like you do, although I would encourage you to go to class for the social aspects of it and for interaction with the teacher/professor (unless it's one of those enormous classes with 100+ people in it.)

[Nike007]

Yes, for me, it is harder to absorb information by listening than reading. I know that most people with AD/HD tend to be visual learners than anything else. I actually had a test done for giftedness in grade 7, and they said my learning style was visual, and my siblings are mixed, so.

I think it might be because a lot of the time, our minds are somewhere else and when people tell us stuff, it's going through one ear and out the other. But if we read something, we can always relook at it if our minds are out of it and process the information. I know this is how I work. I think this is one of those things that aren't counted on an AD/HD diagnosis, but like the majority have this feature for them.

Note, I am not diagnosed with AD/HD. My dad was as a kid though.

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[Miswimmy1]

I completely agree with you. For me, it comes from being very detailed orientated. I have had a really tough time with math. As I got into higher level math, like Calculus, the concepts become very abstract. You get very seemingly broad questions that require you to draw upon all of the knowledge you have and figure out which pieces to use to solve the problem. If I don't understand how the pieces make up the whole, I can't go from the whole to picking out the pieces.

[unbreakablej]

I think I am more a visual learner as well but ironically, since it has been ages since I can sit down and read a book properly (unless it is really intriging) I've actually started on audiobooks a few years ago. And it works pretty well for me if I am playing a brainless game like 2048 whilst listening to it.

Probably still can't absorb it as much as I'd love to but it is better than not being able to read at all. I just got to rewind a few times here and there.

[lavendersage]

I don't remember much about my learning style before 5th grade. I may/may not have been a note-taker. I know that in 6th grade I got in to a class (science) and as the teacher began to lecture, and none of us were writing anything down, he stopped the class and said, "Why are you all just sitting there?? Start taking notes!" Thus began my learning "style" from that point forward. I'd take tons (and I mean TONS) of notes during class. Then, in a separate notebook, I'd re-write the most pertinent notes in a more organized fashion. The repetition of reading it twice and writing it twice, I'm sure, helped me learn it better. Did that all through high school and college. So long as a teacher could present his material in an engaging way, I could and would listen - and absorb - but by that point note-taking (and then note re-writing) was absolutely de rigeur so I can't tell you if I would have learned anyway even if I hadn't taken the notes. I don't know.

I do know that once out in the professional world, I continued (and still do to this day) to take notes whenever I'm learning something and when I'm in conversation with my manager because my memory is shyte - if I don't write it down...all is certainly lost. I simply can't keep anything in my head. Certain tasks that I have to do on a repeated basis I will eventually commit to memory - but, even still, I keep my notebook nearby in case I have a brain fart.

I can't read anymore but I don't think that audiobooks would work for me. I get the feeling my attention would just wander away.

I found it so amazing about needing to understand underlying concepts before being able to grasp something. I think that's why algebra always confounded me. I simply could NOT understand what the hell letters were doing mixed up with numbers. I drove my poor algebra teacher nuts constantly asking, "But....why?" I wasn't trying to drive her nuts - I really was trying desperately to understand whatever she was teaching on that particular day but my brain simply couldn't get a hold of it. One day, after my upteenth "But...why?", she exasperatedly said, "Just BECAUSE!" and then left the room abruptly. Somebody sneaked over to the door and peeked through the window out in to the hall. The poor thing was crying a little bit out there. I felt awful about that.

More recently (as in yesterday) I revealed to my DBT therapist that I was having a hard time filling out the diary card. If you're in DBT, you'll know to what I'm referring. Specifically, I was struggling to rate various emotional responses (joy, love, anger, guilt, shame, etc.) on a scale of 0-5. A number in and of itself means nothing to me - there's no context to it. She and I had to go through each emotion and ascribe words (sometimes a couple of adjectives or a phrase) that would match each number. Now the numbers mean something to me: I have an understanding of an underlying concept that I personally ascribed to each number on the 0-5 scale. I was so relieved when we finished doing that, I felt like a 2 ton weight had rolled off my shoulders.

[lavendersage]

[QUOTE=Miswimmy1;4670885]I completely agree with you. For me, it comes from being very detailed orientated. I have had a really tough time with math. As I got into higher level math, like Calculus, the concepts become very abstract. You get very seemingly broad questions that require you to draw upon all of the knowledge you have and figure out which pieces to use to solve the problem. If I don't understand how the pieces make up the whole, I can't go from the whole to picking out the pieces.[/QUOTE]

Exactly!