I'm not sure this is still live SailorS, but we possibly need some more clarification.

Your car has an auto box with a +/-. Unless you have the TCU mod for mnual and auto (not quite clear from your post) your +/- will only limit the max gear the box will run to up to 6200rpm when it will auto shift regardless of what gear you have dialed in.

So for example: If you minus (-) to 3rd - where I spend most of my <35mph driving around town....it should show a 3 on the dash. Our car will only go to 1st....to about 2500rpm, 2nd....to about 2500rpm and then third....but stay there all the way up to 6000rpm....(numbers depend on load, throttle position and the tranny's memory of your style - adaptation)
If - during this time you hit plus (+) your dash should notch up to 4 - the same 1st and 2nd applies, but 3rd also will then change to 4th at or around 2500rpm. It'll stay in 4th until it hits 6200rpm (at about ~107mph mnd you!.....)

As I stated in a previous post, for a stock tranny - W only limits your intial takeoff gear to 2nd, whereas put it in S and it will take off in 1st gear. I dont believe there are any other idiosyncrasies with W. That is in as far as change rpm etc.

Now if you have the specific (and after market ...paid for....) TCU tune where W is manual mode - then it should hold all gears up unitl the preset change limit (normally 6200rpm but can be ordered from the supplier at a higher number) at which the more recent TCU tunes will autoshift up to the next gear. Older TCU tunes had a problem where they bounced of the rev limiter and didnt autoshift up.....not so good.....

As long as your dash advances to a certain gear as you plus/minus - it should follow the example above. Otherwise as latemodel has indicated, your selector switches may be playing up.