Greetings,
Thats interesting. If anyone else here is a synaesthete - do you have similar colour associations with shapes as with numbers and letters?
It would seem that these things are all assigned space in 'symbol memory'. If you've noticed that whole words can have their own colour which is different from the letters that make it up I think its because they are assigned as a separate 'symbol'. This is why people recognise words right away without having to look at all the letters individually.
Anyway - getting back to shapes. If you see them in a similar way it could mean that they are assigned space in symbol memory just the same as the letters, numbers, words etc.
Yes, I see triangles as green, circles as red/orange, squares as blue and pentagons as yellow.
Ummmm.....I couldn't recite my alphabet until 2 months ago. (I'm 16 1/2 half) but I could read a little before age 2.
I could read young too but still have to sing the alphabet song to remember the order --and I do a lot of filing!
Letters look very much like "word art" in my head.
The old saying "unable to see the forest for the trees" applies to people with autism, describing how many of them excel at matters of detail, yet struggle to comprehend the larger picture. For example, some children with autism may become champions at spelling bees, but have difficulty understanding the meaning of a sentence or a story.
You know, that consistent assumption of "struggle to comprehend the larger picture" isn't because we can't see the "big picture", it's because we can see TOO big of a picture. Too many interpretations can be applied to most sentences or stories (especially if the sentence or story has been created by an NT in the first place.)
NTs believe they can see the "big picture" and autistics can't. That's not correct. NTs see the "middle picture". WE see the "big picture" hence the confusion and shut-down! Man this aggravates me, not only because I keep seeing the misinterpretation of classic autism, but because I have such trouble in attempting to find the language that NTs will understand in order to explain it to them!
Oh....and for whatever reason......I can read much faster AND still comprehend better than most NTs by somehow "seeing" the whole word and sometimes the whole paragraph. And I also find myself saying often that something "tastes" the same as something else "smells." (Does that count here?) Or is that common to NTs and others, also?
Not sure, because unfortunately the analogy you used doesn't "compute." (Not your fault, it's just my brain frame of association reference wasn't created by me with or including details of "wine".)
So, I guess it could be probably considered "normal" and not any type of "disorder" associated with autism.
Ummmm.....I couldn't recite my alphabet until 2 months ago. (I'm 16 1/2 half) but I could read a little before age 2.
I could read young too but still have to sing the alphabet song to remember the order --and I do a lot of filing!
Letters look very much like "word art" in my head.
hahaha, thats just like me.
i can never remember the alphabet without "singing" it in my head.
its more having a melody rather then singing.
funny
I often get looked at oddly for mentioning that something smells like a certain taste or vice versa. However, this may be because my choice of example: "This water tastes like how a sweaty sports player smells!" Also, I can taste pretty well even with my nose stopped, not sure why that is.
The "blackberry boquet" is one among many fragrance related wine taste analogies. So that points to the somewhat refined palate of a wine taster being able to understand a taste/smell comparison.
I have to sing the alphabet song to remember what the order the alphabet goes in as well. I hate doing it, because lately I've been skipping portions (accidentally) so I have to go through it three or four times before I find the letter I'm looking for.
Both groups successfully completed the task. However, the fMRI scans revealed different brain activation patterns between the two groups. Compared to the control group, the volunteers with autism showed more activation in the right hemisphere, or half, of the brain, and less activation in the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere takes the lead in processing letters, words and sentences, whereas the right hemisphere plays a larger role in processing shapes and visual information.
What about the 8 or 9% (or so) of people with language centres in the right hand side of their brains?
That would explain my handwriting. My brother is always telling me that I write slowly because I "draw" the letters instead of "writing" them. I'm not sure I understand the difference, but it's true that I write slowly and have rather blocky, childlike handwriting. I don't know how I would "write" letters, other than what I'm doing now...but it does make sense in light of the fact that when someone says "Draw a right triangle", I do basically the same thing I would do if someone said "Write the letter B". I don't think I even quite understand how they are different...I mean, what are letters if they aren't phonetic symbols (shapes)?