When I listen to music, unless I’m working hard to focus on the words, I have no idea what the song is about or, if I do, I have only a vague idea. I’m wondering if this is an experience shared with others.
When a child has two eyes that see different things, without correction the child learns to block out the image seen by the weaker of the eyes. I wonder if I do something similar with the verbal and the non-verbal. Instead of putting them together, I focus on one or the other.
I remember as a child being told by a day camp counselor to stop fooling around in the water. I knew what her words meant, but the message that I got by her tone was that what we were doing was ok. When I then got in trouble, I was very upset. A method that had worked for me previously (listening not so much to the words, but to the meaning behind the words) hadn’t worked, and this made me feel unsafe.
I think I’ve always had trouble understanding some non-verbal communication (particularly visual). When I read, I skip over descriptions, rather than forming pictures in my mind. I understand words intellectually, but don’t usually relate them to real things. (e.g., when I was a child and read about a cat, I intellectually knew what a cat was, but wouldn’t think about a real cat.)
The other day I was playing a matching game on the computer. It involved quickly matching a number of pictures of fruits and vegetables. I’ve been practicing a number of similar maj jong type games for over a year as a way of increasing my visual discrimination, visual memory, and matching skills, so my matching has gotten much better. What I became aware of, was that I wasn’t verbalizing any of the names of the fruits and vegetables that I was matching. I was doing the task purely visually. When I first started doing these types of matching tasks,I would choose objects that couldn’t be verbalized e.g., multicolored stones, but I would imagine that for fruits and vegetables, most people would have inner language while doing the matching. I didn’t. It seems that my natural tendency is not to combine the visual with the verbal, but to process them separately unless I need the verbal as a way of being able to do the visual.
I don’t think in pictures. I don’t always think in words. I seem to think without words a lot of the time.
What would be helpful to me is to know other people’s experiences with processing like mine and any knowledge that people may have about what this all means. Is it typical, for example, of nonverbal learning disablility or asperger’s to process like this? I was recently diagnosed as being on the NLD-asperger’s continuum.
Re: Sensory and Verbal Processing
Hi PT,
Thanks for the feedback. From what I’m reading, NLD and Asperger’s are close and the neuropsychologist who tested me thought I fit somewhere in the NLD - Asperger’s continuum. I think what she meant was that I fit somewhere there, but she wasn’t quite sure where.
This whole thing is very confusing. I had previously been diagnosed with ADHD, but she thinks that the characteristics of NLD and Asperger’s account for the problems that resulted in an ADHD diagnosis. She may be right. I don’t know.
So much fits and so much doesn’t. That’s why it’s so hard to figure out.
When you wrote that you think in musical tones, what came to mind was synesthesia. Have you heard of it? What it is is an additional sensory experience that most people don’t have. For example, some people see words and/or letters in colors. A friend told me that he learned the days of the week and the months of the year by their colors. For people with synesthesia the color of a word or letter never changes. The friend who learned through colors also hears tones in response to something else, I forgot what. I find it fascinating that you think in tones. How does that work? How do you know what the tones mean?
I have no ability to remember a tune (hear it in my head) unless I sing to myself internally. With words, it’s different. When I write poetry, lines come to me spontaneously. When I write, it’s sometimes as if what I’m writing is being dictated from a place within of which I’m not aware.
Arlene
Re: Sensory and Verbal Processing
Hi Arlene, I write poetry too sometimes. What kind do you enjoy? I like contemporary poetry. Have a whole bookcase full of it. I wrote a poem for my husband’s funeral, and got up and read it with family members supporting me. I was afraid I couldn’t do it, but I did. I don’t know what to do with myself. I used to look forward to my husband coming home, and now no one comes through the door. I don’t have any friends locally. I was planning on my son coming this weekend, but he isn’t coming. I’d hoped he could help me load some boxes from the office. I just still can’t believe this happened. When people don’t come, I think automatically they don’t care. I think my dogs only love me for my food supplies! Maybe I’ll go see my grandson on Sunday. I really need to get out of the house. I wanted to go see my kids, but I have to be caught up with filing and stuff so I’m ready on Monday. It’s really getting late, guess I’ll go back to bed. It’s difficult changing my life. I used to balk at changes in anything. My mother would move the furniture, and it was such an adjustment for me. I bump into things, go through periods where I fall a lot, but don’t know the reason. It’s like one day I wake up and have two left feet, and they don’t work together, and I trip over my own feet.
Alva
Re: Sensory and Verbal Processing
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Hi Arlene,
Yes, I have heard of it. I will associate numbers in my brain with colors.
I don’t know if it is accurate to say I think in tones so sorry if that’s what I inferred. But they are always running in my brain. Not sure what it means.
Interestingly, the neuropsych said I didn’t have ADHD but I disagree and other professionals have said I do. There is also a strong family history of it. I think you have to go with what your gut feeling is about the situation. Since my psychiatrist is still willing to prescribe Adderall, that’s all that really matters.
Yeah, it is confusing.
PT
Re: Sensory and Verbal Processing
Alone and different feels real bad
Also makes me very mad
When I’m told, “It’s because of you.”
When there’s something I really cannot do.
When sometimes my brain acts in a way
That makes my functioning go astray
Why won’t others try and see
Not to place the blame on me.
The gift of compassion
On this board runs free
I give to you and you give to me
So alone in life we need not be.
Thanks for the responses.
Arlene
Re: Sensory and Verbal Processing
Hi Arlene , I would like thankyou for sharing your experience. I ‘ve diagnosed with ld. Where I get
tested for sensory & verbalProcessing problem? Chris [email protected]
Re: Sensory and Verbal Processing
Hi Arlene , I would like thankyou for sharing your experience. I ‘ve diagnosed with ld. Where I get
tested for sensory & verbalProcessing problem? Chris [email protected]
Hi Arlene,
I read your initial post and identified with it because like you, I don’t quite meet the diagnosis of NLD even though that’s my primary LD. I also have dyslexia, ADHD, and probably undiagosed CAPD. In response to the various points you made, I will make some comments. At night, when my Adderall starts to run out in my system, it is hard to focus on a whole post.
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I do the same thing but I don’t think at least for me, it is a processing issue. I have tested very high for remembering music tones so it is completely logical in my opinion that I would not be focusing on the words.
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I do that and even though I am definitely not the worst case NLDer in reading body language, I realize that integrating it all effortlessly is quite difficult. I will know something isn’t adding up but I am not sure what.
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I can certainly understand why you would feel unsafe. I don’t think I ever got into trouble in school for misinterpreting what people said. But it sure caught up to me in the workplace before I was diagnosed and started to do some self remediation techniques.
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I used to do the same thing until one day, I read a book on comprehension and begin to truly understand what it meant to comprehend something. I think in my literalness, I didn’t realize that you could step outside the boundaries of the words to relate them to what you already knew about the topic.
I have also tried to practice forming images but I am probably at some point, going to seek tutoring in the Verbalization and Visualization Program through Lindamood Bell.
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Congratulations. I am always afraid I’ll get so addicted to these games and that’s why I don’t play them. But I might need to reconsider.
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What do you mean? The reason why I am asking is I think my experience is similar. One day, on the NLD List, a whole bunch of NLDers said they thought in words. I felt weird because it seems I think more in music tones.
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Does that mean that folks think you also have AS? I have never thought of NLD being on the AS continuum because I definitely have very very AS traits. But I know other people disagree.
To answer your question, it does sound familiar to NLD but I am reluctant to make a generalization because I despise the gloom and doom literature that already does that. For example, we supposedly don’t have a sense of humor which I think is the biggest myth going.
Take care,
PT