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Jul. 7th, 2017 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. For Game of Thrones devotees...HBO released the episode titles for the first three episodes and a S7 synopsis, GOT episode titles and synopsis courtesy of the daily dot.
2. Years ago my Aunt told me about a course she took in graduate school. It was a psychology course about how people think and learning disabilities. During the course they had an interesting little exercise...in which everyone in the class was asked to listen to a piece of music and then write about it. Everyone in the class except for my Aunt, wrote down colors, musical notes, symbols, lyrics, number schemes, while my Aunt wrote a story. She saw the music visually. She went on to explain to me how her son thinks numerically and auditory, and how fictional stories make no sense to him. He can do a complex physics equation in his head, but he can't explain what happened in The Great Gatsby.
I thought this was a good description of how differently we all think. Most of the people I've met appear to have auditory memories or think in sounds and numbers. I think visually, and often see patterns in things -- I can look at a story and clear as day see where it is going, and why, not only that, I can see all the possible directions it could go. I also can remember visual images. Paintings and photographs stick in my head, but I can't remember a sonnet or poem to save my life.
For me, a painting is poetry and I'm very good at it. It comes naturally to me. I can see almost intuitively what colors to use, and what to put on the paper. I can also easily understand and interpret what someone wanted to convey. But a poem or a song...I can't do as well. And I can't sing because I can't remember the tune to save my life. And I can't recreate it. I may have a sense of it. I can certainly appreciate it. But I can't get the tonal quality right or remember it.
When I took theater courses, it was very hard to do the poetry recitations. Lines, yes. Poetry, harder. I could do anything that had a definitive visual pattern to it. But auditory patterns were harder to pick up on. I could. But not as easily.
I don't like radio. There's a reason for it -- I can't follow it effectively. My mind wanders. I mishear words, and often forget what is said. I'd rather read the transcript. Listening to interviews and documentaries makes me crazy, because again my ability to remember things that are conveyed in an auditory manner is limited. I have a tendency to mishear what people are saying. And there's no way of double checking like with a book or television show or movie or piece of writing. But the majority of the population is the exact opposite. They think in auditory terms, or so it seems. Most of school was taught in an "auditory" manner. People would prefer a meeting to email or written correspondence. I want it in writing. I want to see it. I want to edit it. I find meetings a waste of time and difficult to follow.
I think it is hard for us to understand someone who thinks in the opposite manner from us. Since most people I've met think differently than I do, I've had to find ways to compensate and to adapt to how they think. Or capitulate to their way of thinking. I do it at work all the time. I will repeat back what someone has said, or summarize it back to them to ensure I did not mishear it.
I also think...how we perceive the world and what we like or dislike has a great deal on how our mind works. What comes easiest. But it is hard, sometimes, to perceive that someone else, another human being, doesn't perceive the same thing. That when they hear a piece of music they don't see the color purple, instead they see a bunch of people dancing and making love. Or two lions running across the jungle, as opposed to notes on a scale or a mathematical equation.
This popped into my head today, when someone explained to me why they weren't into television and preferred listening to the radio or writing a poem.
3. From John Scalzi's blog - a Reading List of new books he's received because apparently traditionally published professional novelists get a lot of free books to read and review...(so unfair, although the rest of us have no time to do that, so maybe clever)...
Two titles, okay four caught my eye:
"The Art of Starving" -- there is an art to starving? Okay, then.
"Shadows and Reflections by Roger Zelzany" -- I thought he was dead? I've noticed this lately, apparently they can't find enough books to traditionally publish, so they are publishing the recently discovered writings of dead writers. Bonus - you don't to pay them, or argue royalties or for that matter, editorial changes.
"Sea of Rust" ???
"The Wild Book"???
4. Apparently a Teacher Banned Bottle Flipping in his 6th grade Class, then practiced and released a video of it, depicting how easy it was to do -- apparently, bottle Flipping is now a thing, who knew? Kids, these days.
When I was a kid we didn't have bottled water, we had soda.
5. TNT's riff on William Shakespeare -- entitle "WILL" is sort of in the same vein as Reign, Star Crossed, and The Tudors. In short more emphasis on fun, less on history.
Which is actually better, considering how dull the one's that try to follow history too closely have been of late.
6. Off to read, and it appears that the only thing dripping in my apt tonight is rain on the air conditioner, and not in the living room or in the bathroom. Although apparently there's a leak on the roof and it is dripping from floor 6 all the way to floor 3. Which is absurd.
I spoke to the super's wife, Monika, who told me per usual more than I needed to know. Apparently they've had worse situations...one tenant left the water on, hot water, in the sink, running, while he took a nap. He just forgot to turn it off. It flooded the entire kitchen and the downstairs apartment. They found out, when the downstairs tenant called to complain about their living room being flooded from a leak upstairs. They knocked on the door, and the guy apologized. He forgot to turn it off. The super's wife replied: "you're a young guy! how can you forget to turn it off??"
I repeated this story to my mother over the fun, she could not stop laughing for twenty minutes.
2. Years ago my Aunt told me about a course she took in graduate school. It was a psychology course about how people think and learning disabilities. During the course they had an interesting little exercise...in which everyone in the class was asked to listen to a piece of music and then write about it. Everyone in the class except for my Aunt, wrote down colors, musical notes, symbols, lyrics, number schemes, while my Aunt wrote a story. She saw the music visually. She went on to explain to me how her son thinks numerically and auditory, and how fictional stories make no sense to him. He can do a complex physics equation in his head, but he can't explain what happened in The Great Gatsby.
I thought this was a good description of how differently we all think. Most of the people I've met appear to have auditory memories or think in sounds and numbers. I think visually, and often see patterns in things -- I can look at a story and clear as day see where it is going, and why, not only that, I can see all the possible directions it could go. I also can remember visual images. Paintings and photographs stick in my head, but I can't remember a sonnet or poem to save my life.
For me, a painting is poetry and I'm very good at it. It comes naturally to me. I can see almost intuitively what colors to use, and what to put on the paper. I can also easily understand and interpret what someone wanted to convey. But a poem or a song...I can't do as well. And I can't sing because I can't remember the tune to save my life. And I can't recreate it. I may have a sense of it. I can certainly appreciate it. But I can't get the tonal quality right or remember it.
When I took theater courses, it was very hard to do the poetry recitations. Lines, yes. Poetry, harder. I could do anything that had a definitive visual pattern to it. But auditory patterns were harder to pick up on. I could. But not as easily.
I don't like radio. There's a reason for it -- I can't follow it effectively. My mind wanders. I mishear words, and often forget what is said. I'd rather read the transcript. Listening to interviews and documentaries makes me crazy, because again my ability to remember things that are conveyed in an auditory manner is limited. I have a tendency to mishear what people are saying. And there's no way of double checking like with a book or television show or movie or piece of writing. But the majority of the population is the exact opposite. They think in auditory terms, or so it seems. Most of school was taught in an "auditory" manner. People would prefer a meeting to email or written correspondence. I want it in writing. I want to see it. I want to edit it. I find meetings a waste of time and difficult to follow.
I think it is hard for us to understand someone who thinks in the opposite manner from us. Since most people I've met think differently than I do, I've had to find ways to compensate and to adapt to how they think. Or capitulate to their way of thinking. I do it at work all the time. I will repeat back what someone has said, or summarize it back to them to ensure I did not mishear it.
I also think...how we perceive the world and what we like or dislike has a great deal on how our mind works. What comes easiest. But it is hard, sometimes, to perceive that someone else, another human being, doesn't perceive the same thing. That when they hear a piece of music they don't see the color purple, instead they see a bunch of people dancing and making love. Or two lions running across the jungle, as opposed to notes on a scale or a mathematical equation.
This popped into my head today, when someone explained to me why they weren't into television and preferred listening to the radio or writing a poem.
3. From John Scalzi's blog - a Reading List of new books he's received because apparently traditionally published professional novelists get a lot of free books to read and review...(so unfair, although the rest of us have no time to do that, so maybe clever)...
Two titles, okay four caught my eye:
"The Art of Starving" -- there is an art to starving? Okay, then.
"Shadows and Reflections by Roger Zelzany" -- I thought he was dead? I've noticed this lately, apparently they can't find enough books to traditionally publish, so they are publishing the recently discovered writings of dead writers. Bonus - you don't to pay them, or argue royalties or for that matter, editorial changes.
"Sea of Rust" ???
"The Wild Book"???
4. Apparently a Teacher Banned Bottle Flipping in his 6th grade Class, then practiced and released a video of it, depicting how easy it was to do -- apparently, bottle Flipping is now a thing, who knew? Kids, these days.
When I was a kid we didn't have bottled water, we had soda.
5. TNT's riff on William Shakespeare -- entitle "WILL" is sort of in the same vein as Reign, Star Crossed, and The Tudors. In short more emphasis on fun, less on history.
Which is actually better, considering how dull the one's that try to follow history too closely have been of late.
6. Off to read, and it appears that the only thing dripping in my apt tonight is rain on the air conditioner, and not in the living room or in the bathroom. Although apparently there's a leak on the roof and it is dripping from floor 6 all the way to floor 3. Which is absurd.
I spoke to the super's wife, Monika, who told me per usual more than I needed to know. Apparently they've had worse situations...one tenant left the water on, hot water, in the sink, running, while he took a nap. He just forgot to turn it off. It flooded the entire kitchen and the downstairs apartment. They found out, when the downstairs tenant called to complain about their living room being flooded from a leak upstairs. They knocked on the door, and the guy apologized. He forgot to turn it off. The super's wife replied: "you're a young guy! how can you forget to turn it off??"
I repeated this story to my mother over the fun, she could not stop laughing for twenty minutes.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-08 06:04 am (UTC)For a long time I assumed my memory and brain style was visual, not auditory. But in fact I am just as bad at remembering or thinking in pictures. I am very bad at recognising faces for example - I struggle to visualise the faces of people I live with and see every day.
What my mind is is locational and spatial. I could take you to a spot where I saw an interesting plant twenty years ago and be right to within a few inches (botany is one of my numerous hobbies, so this has actually been tested) but if I was having a bad day I might not be able to produce the name. I could make a good fist at drawing a ground plan of every building I have entered in the last ten years (it used to be in my life, but I'm getting old now :D ) whilst not knowing the names or faces of the people I met there or recalling a word of what was said. I can recall the size and position of something and hold those dimensions in my head, rotate them or match them - so I am, for example, very good at dry stone walling - but I might not have even noticed what colour it was.
None of this is definitive of course - I can remember snippets of poetry and the occasional tune, I normally recognise people once I know them well, and names stick eventually. But the general cast of my mind definitely works differently to both auditory and visual people.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-08 01:28 pm (UTC)Horrible. I can't pronounce half the names people give me. And no facility for learning languages -- I took 6 years of French, went to France (granted it was Brittany or Bretagne, where they basically speak Gallic), and still have a rudimentary understanding at best. I can read it, but can't speak it, can barely understand spoken French, and can barely write it. Also, I struggle with understanding accents. I tend to repeat what the person says back in another way. Or figure it out by logic.
For example? Someone with a thick Irish accent - I can't understand a word they are saying.
I am very bad at recognising faces for example - I struggle to visualise the faces of people I live with and see every day.
Have a similar problem. I can recognize the faces of the people I deal with a lot or have a personal or close professional working relationship with. But, if I only see them occasionally, or only in a movie, television series, or on the stage. And their face isn't distinctive in some major way. I won't remember it. A famous person can pass me on the street and I'd have no idea who they are. This has actually happened a lot. Once I had a long conversation with an actress, who portrayed a character I'd loved on a television series, which I'd seen a few years back. She looked vaguely familiar but I could not place her, until she volunteered the information. And I've had people say hi to me on the street and recognize me, and I have no idea who they are.
I have to have had a very close relationship with the person, and have their face imprinted on me, for me to remember it.
I'm not really great at spatial though...because no real sense of depth perception. But I can visualize locations. I just can't remember dimensions.
There's a word for the difficulties I have... Dyscalculia, except like all these types of categorizations, it doesn't quite fit. But I've also over time come up with various compensation techniques to survive. I'm extremely resourceful and very good at figuring out ways to make something work by jumping outside of a box.
It sounds like you are too. Because the dyscalculia doesn't seem to fit you either, if you have no problems with spatial.
For me, spatial is weird. I was very good at geometry in school. And tend to remember 3D. I'm not really a linear thinker.
But I can't figure out the distance between objects or dimensions. I've no clue how much or how little space I currently have. And get claustrophic in confined spaces, although feel overwhelmed and exposed in wide open ones...I do not like the desert or the prairies for example. I require trees and hills. But could not live in a cave or a small studio apt.
So I'm not sure I can think spatially well.
None of this is definitive of course - I can remember snippets of poetry and the occasional tune, I normally recognise people once I know them well, and names stick eventually. But the general cast of my mind definitely works differently to both auditory and visual people.
I think this is a good description of how my mind works as well. In law school, I hit a wall, and ended up going to the Menninger Clinic -- a world renowned psychological testing agency, to determine if I had a learning disability. In the US - the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that special compensation for testing be provided for individuals with specific learning disabilities. The psychologist discovered that I had a visual/auditory coordination quirk or disability. And was impressed with my various compensation techniques which I'd taught myself.
She said I must despise driving -- I do. Now, I'm not sure it is a disability so much as a completely different way of thinking, that doesn't quite conform with others. I don't think right and left. Often I fail to see the difference between right and left, since it depends on where you are looking and perspective on which is which. I wore a watch for years to figure it out. Now I just figure out which hand I write with.
When I'm in a car, I have almost no depth perception. I can't figure out how far things are from me. I find it anxiety inducing.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-08 09:17 pm (UTC)Again, we seem to have some aspects in common and some areas of divergence. I cannot manage foreign languages at all, despite many years of teaching at one of the best schools in the country and heavy pressure and assistance from my family (most of whom are good linguists).
However for some reason I can understand accents quite well. I can understand thick Glaswegian or Tyneside accents, which many southern English people cannot understand at all. What I often can't do is identify which accent it is - so I will recognise the person has a thick accent but can't tell if it is Irish or Scottish. It is as if my brain cuts past the fine detail to get to the underlying words, so the fine detail escapes it. I think I am the same with identifying faces - I am very good at identifying species, whether it be birds, plants, insects or whatever, but I can't distinguish easily between individuals. Again, I am looking past the fine detail to just see the generic type. And humans are all the same species :D
I cannot spell. I have great difficulty telling the time from an analogue clock. I have a strong sense of direction but I rapidly and fluidly can rotate things in my mind, so I can read mirror writing and upside down writing at reasonable speed - yet I have to work out the names of left and right laboriously from scratch each time I need to name them.
Yes. A friend who is diagnosed dyslexic reckons I am as well but just with a very well developed set of compensation skills. I was tested for dyslexia as a child and was diagnosed as not dyslexic but 'just very bad at spelling'. But there is clearly a bit more to it than that, I just don't know if it has a name.
Hopefully she took it as a compliment on her acting skills! I often find I can recognise the voice or body language better than the face. Still photos are almost impossible for me to recognise. It can be infuriating because I will often remember the underlying person perfectly well - their personality, what we talked about last time we met, and a whole raft of other details - it is just their name and face that I forget. My crowning moment was when I met someone at a fandom event for what I thought was the first time. I introduced myself and was promptly told 'yes, I know who you are - you came to lunch at my house once'. When she said it I had perfect recollection of her and what had been a very pleasant day, but the face and name were in no way connected with that. I actually still have no idea what her name is or what she looks like because I've forgotten them again. It's as if I just don't have the storage mechanism.
My driving instructor very kindly told me the more intelligent people often have more trouble :)
I took ages to learn to drive. I also took ages to learn to manage a milking machine, and I can't touch type or play the piano. These are all complex physical tasks that require muscle memory of complex sequences with bad consequences if you get the sequence or precise positioning wrong. (Obviously a wrong note or typo isn't in the same league as crashing a car or messing up a milking machine, but you do get negative feedback for errors in each case.)
That's interesting. Has an optometrist ever commented on that?
I'm fine with depth perception, and I have a good eye for catching or throwing things, ball games, archery etc.
But as a lawyer you presumably have a good memory for the law itself? I could never be a lawyer because I could never manage the memorisation. I do know the names of a large number of plants, but I have accumulated them very gradually over a great many years - I can't forcibly learn anything by rote. And nouns aren't always available to me - when my brain is tired they sort of jam in my mind so I recognise the thing but cannot shape the noun that belongs to it.
You mentioned that you were a good intuitive painter - does the distance problem affect your drawing? I am a good drawer in the sense that I can accurately copy what I see, but I struggle with painting because my aesthetic sense of desirable colour is at odds with how I see colours in real life.
no subject
Date: 2017-07-09 11:06 pm (UTC)Yeah, so was I -- and they didn't diagnose me as dyslexic. However years later, a poetry teacher told me that I was, because she was, and she caught me doing the same compensation technique she utilized while reading a poem aloud. I'd skip the line, but automatically go up, track with my finger, and reread under my breath, then aloud. I wasn't even aware that I was doing it.
Then in law school -- I had myself tested, and the therapist informed me that she despised the label dyslexia or dyscalcia, because it doesn't fit people. And a more appropriate definition is auditory and visual coordination disorder.
In short, they don't really have a word for it, and it's easier to say dyslexia.
I think there's a spectrum, and that people just happen to learn and think differently. While the majority thinks in one way, there's a good percentage that doesn't and falls through the cracks. Mainly because we haven't figured out how to educate on an individual basis, per individual needs, as opposed to the group as whole, and how to do it in a cost-productive and feasible manner. The internet may actually aid with that.
That's interesting. Has an optometrist ever commented on that?
It doesn't appear to be eye-sight related. Although it may be aggravated by the fact that I've had to wear contacts or glasses for distance since I was 15. And now reading glasses over contacts. If I wear glasses, the ground comes up to meet me. Contacts are better. Mono-Contacts, where one eye is near-sighted, the other far-sighted, will decrease my depth perception and since I have issues with that, they chose not to go that route.
You mentioned that you were a good intuitive painter - does the distance problem affect your drawing?
Yes. I have no idea of perspective. Anything requiring perspective throws me off. In a life-drawing class once, I , ahem, drew a certain portion of the male anatomy much bigger than his thigh and arm. I knew it was off, but didn't know how to fix it. Just had a sense that the proportions were off somehow. A picture or photograph is easier.
Same with buildings, I have a tendency to get the depth off. No understanding of the measurements. I can't measure dimensions to save my life. I asked my brother to come over to get the dimensions of my apartment to determine what type of furniture I can fit into it.
ut as a lawyer you presumably have a good memory for the law itself?
Yes and no. I remember anything that I can make sense of, has a definitive pattern, or can relate to something else. If I can't relate it, if it is illogical to me, or has no pattern -- I lose it. Example: I can remember legal concepts rather well, but legal terminology, particularly if it is in Latin, like Mens Rae, I forget. But legal concepts, rules, and how the law works, I remember very well.
I can remember certain numbers, like my phone numbers, my mother's number, my social security number, and most of my contract numbers...if used a lot, because they have a rhythm to them in my brain. I can remember complex words for the most part.
But I can't remember lines of dialogue in a television show. But I can remember bits here and there, if they resonated on a deep level or I wrote them down a lot. Or I can see them and hook them to an image in my head.
It's hard to explain. I don't really understand it myself. Or why I can remember a book I read in high school, but not when I last watered the plants or the name of the plants.
My driving instructor very kindly told me the more intelligent people often have more trouble :)
I think the key to driving is not thinking about it too hard. The people who drive the best, are good at turning off their brains or not focusing on the task of driving, and just doing it as an automatic reflex.
I can't do that. I get in the car, and I worry, about everything.