The Color Four - A Mini-Documentary

Last year, Meredith was the subject of a mini-documentary film challenge.  A group of three university students were looking for a topic and had recently read an article about how Meredith's school had created an innovative environment for students with learning disabilities.  They came to the school and asked to interview some students, thinking that their film was going to be about this unique school.

After they learned about Meredith's unique learning and thinking style during her interview, they changed the focus of their film a bit and focused more on Meredith.  In the beginning of the film, Meredith is drawing and describing her number 4's personality.  It's a bit hard to hear, but she talks about how her number four likes snails and in the drawing, you can faintly see the girl holding a snail with the number four on it.  This is an example of her ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP) and how she personifies numbers.

Getting Your Numbers Out of the Way for Math Class

As I discussed in previous posts (here and here), Meredith's numbers are characters.  This is a form of synesthesia called Ordinal Linguistic Personification, or OLP.  From what I've heard from other synesthetes, OLP can sometimes make math harder in the sense that the numbers are distracting to the task at hand.  For example, some numbers might not get along, so it is uncomfortable to add them together. Or maybe the numbers are in the middle of a cooking competition and are divided up into teams (as once was the case for Meredith); so when two numbers who are on different teams need to be added together, it doesn't make sense.

Recently, however, we've noticed that Meredith seems to be having a much easier time in math. When asking Meredith about this, she said that she finally figured a way to get her number characters out of the way so that they don't distract her anymore.  Before she goes into math class, Merebith and Dogot line up all the numbers on one of those "hold-a-ring walking ropes" used in preschools and walk the numbers into a closet, where they remain until class is over!  Apparently the numbers are pretty gullible and easy to manipulate.  When math class is over, all the numbers pile out of the closet and usually most of them are gasping for fresh air since one of the numbers has a little problem with gas...    

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

Do Your Planets Have Papparazzi, Too?

One day, Meredith and I were laying in my bed talking and one of those incredible conversations unfolded little by little.

She started by saying, "You know what the weirdest thing to me is? Gravity." We talked about it for a few minutes and the conversation took a predictable course into the topic of space in general. Meredith shared with me that she always thought of the planets as different colors. Pluto, for example, was purple. At one point, I asked her what color Saturn was and she said, "Whoops, Mrs. Toler forgot Saturn in that picture. Let me get another picture." What she was saying was that during our conversation, she was looking at a mental picture she had of the Solar System from Mrs. Toler. Mrs. Toler was her third grade teacher. Meredith must have been looking at a picture her teacher had drawn on the board of the Solar System in which Saturn was missing. Fortunately, Meredith has multiple mental pictures of the Solar System.  She said it's hard to count, but she estimates maybe she has about 100 pictures in her mind.

So, as Meredith buried her head in the pillow, pausing the conversation while she was looking for a more complete mental picture of the Solar System, I asked her where exactly she was looking for this new picture. She explained to me that she has three places to look for space. There is "space" as in a physical area like a person's bedroom or a museum room. Then there is "space" like in your personal space (or your "space bubble" she explained). Lastly, there is a file on "space" as in outer space.

I asked her if she remembered when one day she told me that she had gone to her mental pictures of the Solar System and started labeling it with words for the first time. It was about two weeks after we started our therapy with Dr. Florance to improve her verbal thinking system. It was one of the obvious signs that the therapy was really working.  It was so remarkable. Now instead of just thinking of the Solar System in pictures, she was thinking of it in pictures AND words.

Then, of course, Meredith started telling me all about each planet and how they were each different personalities.  (I didn't know this at the time, but this is another example of her object-personification synesthesia.)

First, there is Sunphie, the Sun. She is bossy and talks like a California teenager.  For example, she tells Vestean (Venus), "You should really get some life on your planet."  Vestean answers back, "Why don't YOU have life?"  Sunphie replies, "Because I'M smokin' hot!"

Mercury and Mars are brothers--Max and Mark Murcer.  Mark is always mad at Max because he copies him.

Earth is the Peacemaker and his name is Earthen.  He is SO happy all the time since he is the only planet with life.  Earth's Moon is kind of boring.  He says, "Hello...thank you for landing on my face."  He is sort of like a butler for Earthen.  But as he circles Earth, he moves close to Vestean who is always asking him for things when he passes by.

The funniest and most clever thing of all, to me, is that she said the stars are the paparazzi taking pictures of all the planets.  The stars' twinkling, of course, is the flash going off on their cameras.

Next comes sophisticated Jupiter whose name is SJ.  He says, "Hello, fellow citizens!"  The hurricane is his birthmark. Saturn is very mature, and Neptune is hyper, constantly saying, "Hi star, hi star, hi star..."

Poor Uranus is named Urinater and he always has to pee, as you can tell from the expression on his face.  Lastly, shy little Pluto is named Penelope Purple.  Everyone else calls her "Penelope P."

Meredith said she could talk about the Solar System for hours and hours, but of course that would bore everyone!

Music is the "Go-To"

I recently read this great post by a teen with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), "Music is my 'Easy' Button." Through that post, she enlightened me to three main reasons why music is so much more appealing than talking for people with APD:

1.  Talking (for those with APD) is monotone.  Music is the antithesis to monotone.
2.  Talking is fast.  Music has long pauses, which makes processing the words much easier.
3.  Talking is random.  Music has a beat or pattern, which helps in processing and remembering the words.

What a smart young lady to analyze why music is so helpful to her. I asked Meredith if this was the case for her as well and she definitely agreed. She expanded on the fact that music has long pauses by saying that each word itself is drawn out, and as a result, easier to process.

One thing I have always been curious about is why it is that Meredith struggles with repeating conversations that she has had, yet can remember all the words to almost every song she hears.

I suspect that synesthesia has something to do with how easy it is for Meredith to remember song lyrics. I know that Meredith sees colors when she hears music. When I asked her how she remembers the words, she said that along with the seeing colors from the music, she sees the words as well--kind of like you would see on a karaoke screen I imagine.  (This sounds like what some people describe as "ticker-tape synesthesia.") Each song has different colors and lyrics. For example, one song might elicit blue and purple and the words would be green. I would think that in some form or another, this must help her in remembering the lyrics.

One other interesting thing Meredith told me was that she can listen to music in her mind.  Not imagining the music, but actually hearing it.  Here is a story that explains this a little bit...

Meredith and one of her good friends like to send videos to each other. Meredith told me that this morning, she was singing a song (into a hairbrush microphone) and recorded it for her friend. When she played it back to herself, she was surprised because she didn't hear the music playing in the background along with her singing.  She then realized that the music she thought was playing out loud was actually just in her head!

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.  

Processing the Litter from the Day

I met someone recently who told me she sees colors when she closes her eyes to go to sleep at night. I hadn't heard this before and it sounded like some sort of synesthesia, so I decided to ask Meredith if she experienced the same thing. She told me that she doesn't see colors, but she does do something else when she goes to bed that amazes me and highlights beautifully how she processes information visually.

Meredith said that when she goes to sleep at night, she will review her day from beginning to end and then backwards again, sometimes three or four times in a row. When she is doing that, she files away things that she didn't get a chance to file away earlier in the day. She explained that if things don't get filed away, it is very unnerving and gives her a lot of anxiety. In fact, she explained that her little mental assistant, Merebith, goes around Brainsburg (the city in which she lives) like a janitor picking up all the litter from the day. The "litter" is the bits and pieces of information that she needs to file. Once Merebith collects all the litter, she files it away in the Treasure of Files.

After hearing this, I asked another very visual thinker I know whether she did the same thing at night. She said that she reviews her day starting from the beginning and, like Meredith, files information away that she didn't get to earlier. She agreed that unless everything is filed away, she gets very anxious. For her, she calls this process "clearing the mechanism."

The Trees Have Outgrown Their Season

I recently joined a few Facebook groups where people discuss synesthesia. Shortly after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, someone in one of these groups asked whether anyone else was feeling badly for the trees that had fallen down during the storm. Many people agreed that they did. (Sorry for posting the photo for any sympathetic synesthetes out there!) People who personify objects like this may have Object Personification, a subtype of synesthesia.

Seeing that post prompted me to ask Meredith whether she felt bad for trees when they were chopped down. She said definitely yes. Since the trees are now losing their leaves here in the South, it got me to thinking about how that made her feel. When I asked, she said that no, that doesn't make her feel bad. The trees have just "outgrown their season," she explained. How poetic. I love that!

Elaborating on what she meant, she explained that the trees were excited to be moving on to a new set of leaves. Those leaves were like, SO 2012, anyway! I finally understood that she saw leaves as the tree's clothing and really as a fashion statement. She explained that the trees with bright, bold leaves in the Fall were the true "fashionistas." Then there are the scraggly oak trees with a few leaves holding on. She explained that these were like old ladies trying desperately to hold to the last bit of their clothing, afraid of being naked. They are waving their dry and crooked branches around like canes yelling at people in old, crackling voices, "Don't you take away my leaves there, young man!"

As we approached our house in the car later that day, I asked her what she thought about our great big Ash tree in the front yard. At that time, it was at it's peak color--a very bright yellow. For some reason, there have been a whole bunch of butterflies fluttering around this tree lately. Because of the tree's bright leaves and all the butterflies, she said that she sees our tree as a gay man. We had a good laugh at that.

While finding photographs for this post, I ran across this photo and thought that Meredith and other synesthetes like her would probably get a big kick out of it. I wonder if these sweaters are also like, SO last year?

House of Cards

Ever since I worked with Dr. Cheri Florance, I knew that Meredith's auditory skills were weak, but I mostly thought of it in terms of an overall language processing issue...that pictures were Meredith's first language and words were her second language and as a result, "listening" to people talking would always be difficult for her.

This summer, however, Meredith was officially diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), scoring in the Lower Extreme range of the test.  This wasn't a surprise to me given my perspective on Meredith's weak language skills.   However, it did cause me to shift my focus slightly and start exploring things from an APD viewpoint.  One great resource I have come to find is specialty groups on Facebook, including a few APD groups.  These groups are so helpful because you can hear individual stories and get advice from many people dealing with the same issue.  It is great to be able to communicate so quickly with people as well.

Through one of these APD Facebook groups, I stumbled across a blog from a teen with APD that was so helpful in understanding things from the point of view of an adolescent with APD.  In one post, she presents an insightful "Guide" for parents on how to help their child with APD.  She explains that it is very difficult if she is talking to one person and another person (like a pesky brother!) talks over them or if the person she is talking with stops the conversation for a moment to talk to someone else.  She said that if her conversation is interrupted, she loses all the auditory information that she was processing.

Immediately, I could relate to what she wrote and understood why Meredith would always get so mad at her younger brother for interrupting a conversation.  If she is interrupted, she is more than irritated.  She is downright mad at him and will snap at him very quickly.  I always thought she overreacts and was selfish that way.  But now I understand.  I understand that she loses the conversation that she was trying to hold on to so desperately.

Asking Meredith about whether or not this was how she experiences things, she wholeheartedly agreed and explained that a conversation for her is like a "house of cards."  It is very delicate and interruptions can cause it to come crashing down.  What a great explanation.  As a result, we now talk specifically about this in our family and her younger brother is understanding better that his big sister is not just a big ol' meanie or a selfish person.  And once again, I have a new layer of understanding that is enhancing our relationship and our family dynamic.

Taken to Heart

Our family was watching TV and a person was talking about how he needed a heart transplant.  Meredith asked me if you are still the same person if you get an organ transplant.  I put two and two together and asked her, "Do you think you would lose all your feelings if you got a new heart?"  "Yes," she said, quite seriously.  There is that literal, pictorial mind again.  Sweet and sad at the same time that she wondered about that.  I was wondering how she pictured love residing in her heart.  Did she see literal pictures of feelings sitting in her heart like she sees Merebith in her brain?  I got the chance to ask her that yesterday and she thought about it for a minute and responded, "Mom, Merebith is only in my brain--she hasn't left Brainsburg [that's where Merebith lives and works] and gone other places in my body."

We had a lot of fun thinking about how Merebith could take some travels around Meredith's body.  Maybe she could jump in a gondola and travel around on the blood, visiting different organs.  But then Meredith said that every time she moved, Merebith would be tossed around against her body.  I guess this doesn't happen when Meredith is in her brain, because she isn't in Meredith's literal brain...she's really just in her mind.