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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 10:49:29 JST Adrianna Tan

   Some more thoughts on #aphantasia and language. So, I don’t have visuals in my brain at all (I cannot picture my wife, or my parents, even if I try). I always thought when people said they were thinking about me, that it was in the same abstract sense that I think.

   Somehow; this also means that my language skills are over-developed. I basically think in chunks of text. I was talking to a coworker about how she feels she needs to translate her spoken thoughts or words into written words, whereas I have the opposite problem. I used to have great difficulty translating my thoughts into speech. They come out as fully formed.. essays. And that is how I write.

   I can write large chunks of texts quickly because I ‘see’ and ‘feel’ language in that way.

   As a not-visual learner; mind maps confuse me: but I can scan complex academic texts and speed read and digest text very quickly.

   This somehow doesn’t work with non-Latin languages. I have great verbal hearing (I can ‘hear’ and understand almost all Asian languages quickly to a fairly high level) but even though Mandarin is my primary other language perhaps because of the graphical nature of it, I can’t ’perceive’ or ‘feel’ it as well.

   #Languages

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 10:55:18 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Jeff Smith

     @sumisu3 I have to learn by doing. So stroke order and putting pen to paper is very important for me. And also why I lose it quickly if I don’t physically write it

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     Jeff Smith (sumisu3@mastodon.nz)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 10:55:19 JST Jeff Smith

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte how have you been able to learn to write Chinese characters? I know that I have an image of a character in my “mind’s eye” as do my kids (who learned from their mom of course, and describe characters in their components or looking like some other character in some part, etc). Fascinating to think of memorizing them without an image in the mind. Your posts on this topic really continue to intrigue me as they challenge my concepts of perception.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 10:56:15 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • cognitively accessible math

     @geonz I guess I brute force puzzles. It’s no based on any higher level spatial thinking

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     cognitively accessible math (geonz@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 10:56:16 JST cognitively accessible math

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I am a fellow verbal gerbil, tho' if I *work at it* I think I am sort of visualizing but I"m not sure I'm not just assigning labels. Do you work jigsaw puzzles? I'm "that blue with swimminess..." but I can match if I look back enough times...

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 11:02:37 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Jeff Smith

     @sumisu3 no! Will check it out at the library now. Thank you!

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     Jeff Smith (sumisu3@mastodon.nz)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 11:02:38 JST Jeff Smith

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte have you ever read Walter Ong’s “Orality and Literacy”? That is probably the first thing I read that made me step back and think about perception, learning, memory and how societies capture and preserve knowledge (I first read it decades ago and my copy has notes all over the margins)

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 11:05:13 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • categulario 🐍 🦀 🦎 🇵🇸

     @categulario zero visuals. Other senses instead. Smell, touch, taste even.

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     categulario 🐍 🦀 🦎 🇵🇸 (categulario@mstdn.mx)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 11:05:15 JST categulario 🐍 🦀 🦎 🇵🇸

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte what about your dreams? how are they?

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 13:18:46 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • May Likes Toronto

     @mayintoronto yes!

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     May Likes Toronto (mayintoronto@beige.party)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 13:18:48 JST May Likes Toronto

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte When you look at the aquarium, is it like new every time? I presume you don't have the visual memory of it, so every time you look it could be the most incredible thing you've seen in your life! Over and over again!

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     GLC (glc@mastodon.online)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 14:00:33 JST GLC

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte

     DeHaene's "Reading in the Brain" is very interesting, at more or less the opposite end of the scale (mostly low level processing, from the eyes to the visual centers to the letter/word recognition modules and the language centers). With some quick trips along the corpus callosum to mix things up a bit.

     So he doesn't address this sort of high level issue at all directly, but it provides some interesting—and intriguing—context.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 22-May-2025 14:00:33 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • GLC

     @glc thanks!

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Friday, 23-May-2025 08:10:54 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Brendon Justin

     @brendonjustin I don’t, that’s the point of this post: my thoughts arrive as fully formed words (but I struggle in other areas)

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     Brendon Justin (brendonjustin@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 23-May-2025 08:10:55 JST Brendon Justin

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte Do you ever get frustrated at how long it takes to get a thought from your head into paper? I get that sometimes even as a (probably) heavily visual thinker