personal 3: My Cognitive Test (v1.0)

Just had a cognitive test by a psychologist ordered by my doctor. Never had one before. I was having issues with dull headaches and brain fog. I suspect it is due to a sleep disorder. MRI was fine. Blood test was fine. Turned out to be sleep deprivation. Once I started sleeping for 8 solid hours, the problem went away.

My reading comprehension is fine. Writing ability is fine. My ability to remember sequence of numbers and manipulate them by saying them backwards is fine. My pattern recognition is fine. My ability with pictures is fine. But what was glaring was my weakness in auditory assimilation of spoken English and ability to remember that.

This is not unexpected. For one thing, shortly before retirement, I had a virus infection and woke up one day with substantial hearing loss (90%) in my left ear that never came back (my manager at that time was hugely surprised!!). Also, age has markedly degraded my right ear hearing. My wife gets irate at me when I don't put on my hearing aid, but they are not so comfortable, so I avoid wearing them. But besides that, I have always suspected I had some degree of auditory learning disability. This was not a good learning mode for me. My primary problem was retaining much of what was verbally communicated and tracking conversations and speeches. A problem with concentration? Do not know. When I watch movies, I sometimes do not follow the dialogue and I ask my wife to summarize. I typically watch TV with close caption on so I can read what they are saying else I sometimes have trouble following. In school I did not gain as much by listening to the schoolteacher but did a lot of self-studies at home and was 1st in school. In college I either daydreamed through parts of lectures or skipped them altogether since I had difficulty remembering much of it. I always attended for labs, quizzes and exams and my grades were fine 4.0 GPA for master’s and 8.7 out of 10 in Bachelors. My preferred means of communication at work was reading and writing, and for digesting information is reading and thinking through. My conversations with my good friends are mostly through texting or email. I do not socialize much because I have difficulty following and participating in the banter. The only language I ever managed to learn well was English. I find it difficult to learn a new language. Was exposed to Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, French.

Despite my auditory learning shortcomings, I worked around it throughout my life. My mental processing was fine. I think people with a learning disability develop new perceptions and strongly enhance other cognitive skills to compensate. I still managed to thrive!

You know everyone has some challenge or another. Some have dysfunctional families. Some have money problems. Some face built in structural barriers. Some have learning disabilities. But all one can do in life is strive as hard as possible to overcome. You got to play the hand dealt to you as well as you can.

Examples of other rankings to illustrate how I thrived despite the handicap:

Personality type INFP (measured in 2021). Was an INTP earlier in my life.

IQ 132 (measured in 2018) - My wife's and sister in laws is higher.

GRE engineering advanced 99+ percentile

GRE quantitative 99+ percentile

GRE analytic 92 percentile

GRE verbal 85 percentile

TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) 99+

IIT joint entrance exam (college admission in India) 124 out of I believe 30,000 applicants.

Had a technical very successful career. Total count of 55 US patents with me as author or coauthor. (some resubmitted by patent attorney)Part of body that created the XOPEN/XA standard. LinkedIn resume: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jaykasi (Experiences deleted since I am retired)