Use the "Kariokie-Dokie" to Remember Song Lyrics

I've written before about how Meredith loves music and has an uncanny memory for song lyrics. Today, Meredith explained that she is able to do this because she designed a system in her mind to help her remember the lyrics. All she has to do is head on over to the "Kariokie-Dokie!" 

The Kariokie-Dokie is a karaoke place where Merebith loves to go sing. The Kariokie-Dokie is a bit like a theatre with a big screen and seating. Songs play on the screen with the lyrics, just like you see at any typical karaoke bar. The background visuals on the screen are the synesthetic colors and patterns that Meredith sees when she hears that particular song.

Merebith and her friends love to have karaoke competitions. Merebith has won three karaoke trophies already! Of course, Dogot always loses competitions because he sings in his robot-like voice. The security ants like to participate as well.   

Meredith explained that it takes about three times listening to a song to get the lyrics down--the first time to get the tune and two more times to get all the lyrics. Once she's got them, they are permanently in the Kariokie-Dokie system and she can refer to them anytime she wants to. Pretty soon, however, she has the lyrics committed to memory and doesn't need to look at the karaoke screen anymore.

Meredith and I always talk about the irony that she can remember all the lyrics to songs even when words are not her friend in other settings. Now, however, it makes sense because when she is singing, she is accessing a dynamic, mental visual system to "see" the words.  And the fact that after a period of time she no longer needs to refer to the karaoke screen is testament that processing information (even words) through a visual thinking circuit is what ultimately solidifies information into knowledge and long-term memory for her and other highly visual thinkers

Photographic Memory

Meredith told me that in science class one day, her friends wanted to "test" her to see whether or not she truly has a photographic memory, which she often claims to have. To do this, a student showed Meredith a picture of a fish--an outline of a fish that was meant to be colored in by the students as an assignment--and then asked her to draw it from memory. She drew most of the fish, but didn't get it all. "Gotcha!" I'm sure they said. Meredith was upset that her classmates now didn't believe she had a photographic memory.  The problem, she told me, was that the person who was showing her the drawing wasn't holding it steady and as a result, the mental picture Meredith took of the drawing was partially blurry.

Something about that story amazes me.  I think the fact that Meredith's mental picture was partially blurry is more amazing than the fact that she can hold images in her mind for a long time (whether or not that is truly a photographic memory).  It demonstrates that she actually does take a "snapshot" of something to remember it and her memory will only be as good as the snapshot she takes!

Update:
Since this post was written, we discovered that Meredith also has Irlen Syndrome--a visual processing disorder. One of the symptoms of Irlen Syndrome is perceiving high contrast things, like black words or lines on a white page,  as moving. There seem to be classic ways that things are seen to be moving--floating, shaking, moving off the page, etc.  With this new understanding, Irlen Syndrome seems to be the logical explanation for why Meredith thought her classmate wasn't holding the picture of the fish steady.  

Memories That Are Too Real

I've been hearing different examples from Meredith lately about how she places a visual memory over top of what she sees in real time.  She says that when that happens, it is really blurry around the edges and then she sees the visual memory clearly in focus.  I think most of us probably have visual memory, but can you actually "place" that memory on top of what you're seeing in front of you? 

For example, today we were dropping my younger son off at Elementary School where Meredith used to attend.  I made a comment when we drove past the playground that she must think of her best friend everytime we passed it because they played together almost every day on that playground for six years.  She said that in fact, when she looks at this particular piece of playground equipment, she sees her and her best friend playing.  The way she described it kind of reminded me of "Wayne's World" for those of you who remember that skit from Saturday Night Live.  She thought it was funny that she could actually see herself there.

I asked her if she had other experiences like that and she said that she does.  This past year, we moved, but only two houses away.  Since we've moved, another family has moved into our old house and they have a little girl who Meredith has become friends with.  I imagined that when Meredith goes to play over at her old house, she probably has a lot of experiences like that because of her long history in that house.  Then she told me a funny story.

She said that when she was in the living room of the old house one day, she could see our old furniture there, kind of like how she could see her and her friend playing on the playground.  Except that she must have forgotten that the furniture really wasn't there anymore.  So when she went to sit down on the "virtual" couch, she actually fell on the floor.  Her friend laughed at her wondering why in the world she fell right in the middle of the floor. 

How in the world can you explain to someone what happened in that situation?  "Oh, I was just going to sit down on the couch that I saw there, but really isn't there anyore."  Makes me wonder how many times she has done things like that and I made some snarky comment to her wondering what she was up to.  And who in the world would think to ask, "Did you see something there from an old memory?"