Re: Inability to visualize

[Anonymous]

Interesting article on synesthesia – I don’t have it, although I had photographic memory as a child and that may be how I learned in school.

I have strong auditory memory, just the other day a song popped into my head without warning – when I looked it up, it turns out it was a popular hit in 1960 (I was about five years old), and associated with my dad. I hadn’t been thinking of either. But the song pops up, some of the lyrics, but the melody is very strong and accurate. I can’t usually hear lyrics in songs as I listen for the harmony and rhythm (I am a former classically-trained musician, dropped out of honours performance at uni in the mid-70s, thank you ADHD).

This has happened a lot more recently, I am hypersensitive to sound. I couldn’t listen to the radio as they were already playing non-stop Christmas songs, I just had to hear one, and it would be playing in my head for days on end. Rocking Around the Christmas Tree, full orchestration with choir of Handel’s Messiah (which I played years ago as a student in orchestras), Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, etc. TV commercials do the same thing, they are strongly embedded in my subconscious mind.

I read the wiki on number lines, and I don’t think of numbers that way. A one or a seven or a minus 1 doesn’t mean anything to me, well it does sort of, but I have to think about it. I guess when someone says something to me, I “see it” as a written word since that’s the strongest association for me other than sound. Say apple, and I am likely to see the word, not think of a an apple. I was an excellent speller as a child.

Saw the second last link this morning, he doesn’t seem to think people who don’t mentally visualize exist, so not much help there.

I am thinking that I need to sort out how I DO learn and see the world, and come up with a strategy to make up the difference or deficit in visual mental imagery that I appear to have. I must have mental images or I wouldn’t recognize objects, I guess, but that’s different than making a whole movie happen in your mind’s eye.

Let me know if you find anything else. Sorry to have distracted you from your mom’s phone call!

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