--Original published at Brittany's Thoughts

I chose the prompt on whether magic can help those with autism. According to the long video on magic done by NOVA, most people will focus on moving objects or on the magicians’ faces instead of on their hands during a magic act. This is what causes the magic to occur. The brain’s attention on other places will trick you into believing that the coin is disappearing in a coin trick or the ball is magically appearing under the cups. According to a study done by neuroscientists, people with autism may not see magic tricks that deal with social cues the same way those who don’t have autism would see it. People with autism may focus on places such as the magicians’ hands instead of their face, which would allow them to see the illusion take place and understand how it occurs. The article on a hypothesis about prediction in autism shows that the world overall may be very hard of people with autism to predict already with all the incoming stimuli that their brains cannot predict and process the same way those who do not have autism would process them. This describes the whole world as being stressfully magical to people with autism.

I am amazed at what our brains can do and how its attention works to make us see the trick as magical when it really is only our attention focusing somewhere else. To imagine that someone else can understand how the trick works because they do not focus the same way is also amazing. I’m surprised how one clip says that magic would be beneficial, whereas the other makes it sound like magic would not be beneficial because everything is “magic” to people with autism anyway. It feels inconclusive about the effects of magic for those with autism.

Personally, I feel that using magic with people with autism is worth a try. If they can detect how the trick is done, it may bring more of a feeling of concreteness to the world, especially if others that do not have autism cannot sense how the trick is being done. It can help create skills of perception by using other ones that already exist, but can also help improve understanding of social cues by helping them understand how others would not understand how the trick is done by they ways their attention focuses on the trick.

--Original published at Manda's College Blog

I chose to watch TEDs video by Daniel Tamment who is a autistic savant; I’ve never heard of someone who is autistic and is a self proclaimed philosopher so I found that very intriguing and almost honorable, being a role model to people with autism. Daniel also claims to have synesthesia. I’ll be honest and say that this made me scratch my head a little, a guy who has a social behavior disability, but is also very intelligent and has a unique ability to associate numbers with color? It’s definitely unique.

Daniel presented some examples to show what his synesthesia looks like. He can associate numbers with colors and math with pictures such as the chess board/graph that he showed us. And how some readings light up in color to him in his head. It was very interesting and to me, I just thought that it’s what a lot of mathematical geniuses solved problems like that. This can be a new way for students to be taught math, personally I’m terrible at math learning by repetition. I think by associating it with images and colors, problem solving would be relatable and easier to figure out.

He asked does “hnugginn” sound happy or sad to you, what is your sense of meaning to the word, most of the audience said happy, which is what I thought that as well as some sort of affection. It meant sad, he said sounds can be associated by personal experience and perception which I honestly didn’t see these as synesthesia. If you don’t know the language or word, you sound it out or you visually see if the word is familiar to you, also with how you are sounding it out, you generally use the sound of the word with feeling, how do you feel saying or sounding out the word? If it’s a foreign language and I’m hearing it from that person, I usually try to sense their emotion and how they sound. I may have misunderstood what Daniel was trying to point out to us, but I believe it’s just luck of the draw.

Synesthesia sounds like a gift to have and not some sort of handicap. Though I can imagine someone like Daniel especially because of his autism can get overwhelmed with the amount of colors and associations he could have going through his head all at once, it’s probably possible to get some sort of brain overload; sensory overload.

--Original published at Jessie's PSY105 Blog

For my first impression post this week, I chose Option 1 which was about synesthesia. This involved a TED talk given by Daniel Tammet who is a high functioning autistic savant. He talked about how, when he sees numbers, he also sees colors, sounds, and textures. He also mentioned how, when computing math problems in his head, he uses visual aids, such as grids, to help him complete the problem quickly and correctly without the help of a calculator or even paper. I found this incredibly interesting because synesthesia is something that I have heard of, but I know very little about. Hearing about how he associates numbers with abstract concepts was a way that I never though about synesthesia but the way that he explained is was easy to understand. I also liked how he started out the talk by telling about how, when most people meet him, they ask him to solve some math problem of tell them what day of the week they were born on based on their birthday. This gave the presentation a much more personal feel, as he proceeded to talk about the topic of synesthesia. I feel that this would greatly affect someone’s day to day life because they see things in ways that no one (or nearly no one) else does. Synesthesia seems like something that would enable someone to be far more creative. Seeing colors and textures when looking at numbers, for example, could open the door for much more creative ways to look at different things. Looking at things from all different angles is what, in my opinion, allows new ideas to form.  In day to day life, this would allow a person with synesthesia to bring new ideas to light.

--Original published at Site Title

For this weeks first impression post, I chose to watch the TED Talk that discussed synesthesia. When someone has Synesthesia, their perception of certain senses are linked to differing senses. For example, the man who spoke in the video shared his personal perception on the numbers one through twelve. With each number, he associates a different shape or symbol, and a color. He also shared some of his paintings that he associates with larger numbers and math problems.

When I was deciding which video to watch for this weeks post, I thought that this one would be the most interesting, and upon watching the video, I can say that my reaction to it was similar to what I had expected it to be. I was fascinated by what I was seeing and hearing. While I have heard of associating two differing senses with one another,  I did not know that someone could experience it to this extent.

As for how having the condition of synesthesia may affect someone’s day to day life, I cannot imagine. Though I obviously do not know what it is like to live with this condition, I would assume that it can be rather overwhelming at times. For example, in the video the man who lives with the condition used examples involving the elaborate images he has in his mind that he associates with larger math problems. Personally, I feel that I would be overwhelmed by all of the things I would have going through my head simultaneously, and I would likely just give up. I don’t think that I could concentrate on both the math problem, and the specific image all at once. The man in the video explained that this condition is very manageable when you are aware of it, but I believe that people who are unaware of their condition may struggle to complete tasks in their daily lives.

--Original published at Nadia's Blog

This week I watched the TED talk on “Different Ways of Knowing”, by Daniel Tammet. Daniel Tammet has Synesthesia, which is where he is able to see the world in a much richer and vaster way. He is able to see the world differently, and correlates words, numbers and sentences with colors, shapes and textures. He believed that different ways of perceiving, leads to different ways of knowing and understanding.

Tammet gave multiple examples of calculations, an Icelandic word,  and a poem, and showed the audience what he visualized when seeing this. I found it interesting that in my mind I saw a complex calculation, but in his mind he came up with a clever way to solve this by picturing a chess board. A majority of the audience guessed that the Icelandic word meant sad, which they happened to be correct. This raised an interesting point, Tammet discussed that sounds match the intuitive perception of the listener. The other example he showed of the poem stance was quite interesting, because each word was correlated to an image in his mind, and this allowed him to get a better understanding of the meaning behind the poem. Rather than visually recognizing the meaning from words, he was able to do this with a visual representation. He also showed other numbers such as the mathematical constant, pi. He showed how this number represented a landscape with many different colors. In his mind words can have personalities and colors.

I found this way of thinking and life, to be extremely interesting. I believe that this would heavily impact someone’s life because their way of thinking is completely different than a majority of people. Some people may not understand their point of view. I also think that being able to have this way of perception, would be a great advantage and tie meaning to learning which is semantic encoding, which is the most powerful and effective. I also think that this would make an individual pay attention to a lot more detail because they are relating it to a color or image in their minds. Overall, like Tammet had said, his way of life is much richer than other individuals because of his ability to see the world in so many colors, images and textures.