On any given week I engage in a conversation, with someone other than a family member, on average five or six times. I am introverted by nature and don't go out very often.
Last week I ran into a friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in a few months. We played catch up and easily bantered back and forth. Once again, I noticed my Aspie trait of watching her lips move so that I would know when it was my turn to speak. When her lips stopped moving for a few seconds, then it was my turn.
Conversations do not come easily and watching lips is one of the tricks I have learned in order to carry on a normal conversation without interrupting at the wrong time.
When someone speaks to me, there is a...delay in my ability to process what is being said. It's as if...sentence A is a round red ball and it bounces in, hits one wall, then the next, and another and a nother and then hits the button of comprehension, which is way in the back, on the right.
Thus when someone is talking for ...say...a few minutes, I've got all these little balls bouncing to and fro and I am trying to decipher their meaning. The longer a person talks...the more confusing it becomes. Those balls take a long time to slow down enough so I can grab them and read what they say.
It is very common for me to get the full jest of a conversation the next day or even two or three days later.
One could say that I had very limited eye contact during chats, it is quite true, but I find it quite necessary in order to keep the flow of talking back and forth smooth.
Funny, I tend to identify people by the shape of their lips and teeth not by their face and eyes...because that is where I spend most of my time looking.
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