?egnahc secnaraeppa nehw tcaer uoy od woH

reflectively.


Yadot NO uoy era tahw?

.ereh ffuts ym evas ot dediced I reverof dnuora eb ton thgim zzubA ecnis dna snoitcaretni zzubA ym elcycer dluohs i dias uoy lleW

Actually, mine is more verbal - and I am better at conjuring up smells, for instance, than clear images.

Re smells, 'tis said that men's sene of smell is generally much less sharp than women's.

I would love to get inside the consciousness of an animal and find out how they sense the world!

Our visual primacy is illustrated by how hard it was not to say "see" then.

Especially so while the woman is menstruating.

really?



!!!!!!!Aedi enif denmad! Sdaerht taerg erew yeht.

Actually, I am reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins speaking of the same thing in verbal, or writing, terms - he spoke of the need to "fracture language into meaning" - hence his stunning use of such "fracture" in his poems - which has a most magical and arresting effect - with constant little ahas and epiphanies.

Hey, innerestin'.

I think it's just a primal thing, a hunter/ hunted thing, that we need to take visual stock of our surroundings. For example, when we see a stick in the woods, our first immediate reaction is to think that it is a snake. It's safer for us to think it's a snake and have it be a stick than think that it's a stick and find out that it is a snake.

I think we are hardwired for this ability to make sense out of the barest minimum of data, and that means that we "take things in at a glance".

I am hugely, incredibly, dependent on sight. I have noticed that my peripheral vision actually got better when I became deaf, although my actual sight (20/20 et al) did not. I also am constantly constantly constantly visually gathering clues so as to function. I was at a party once with my back to the kitchen and the hostess dropped a plate of food she was bringing. Someone started to explain to me, and I said, "oh, I know." Everyone was surprised by that, and I explained that a) I'd noticed the layout in the kitchen, including food to be brought, before we sat down, b) I'd noticed the hostess look around at everyone's plate, notice where they were in the meal, and get up, and c) I noticed everyone start when the plate was dropped. I didn't HEAR anything at all, and didn't SEE it happen, but I knew exactly what it was most likely to be.

I am constantly doing that. Works, though.

Your example is hugely relevant. We would be different if our sensual perceptions were. Were we to have evolved (weird structure, funky! ok back to the post) better olfactory sense we would rely on it more.

BTW, deb is a freak of nature, who ever heard of someone recalling smell more vividly than imagery.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Communication with the environment differs broadly; a hound will frequently bump into objects in its path as it follows a trail of scent.

We all have communication "defaults" that we depend on; standards, and categories into which we dump incoming sensory data, which assist us in quickly assessing the world around us and produce a suitable reaction to it.

But sometimes the system fails, and we bump into our personal "tree"!

Sozobe -- Your experience at the party makes complete sense to me (no pun intended). You were using all your senses, including common sense!

I often have occassions where I predict what is likely to happen very soon. For example, as I was watching a mother, daughter and son laying on a picnic blanket beside a river, it occurred to me the the daughter would stand up, gingerly step into the river, then steel herself and dive headfirst in, then turn around with arms around her shoulders and exclaim to her mom how cold the water is. Meanwhile, the son would stand up, and wander a bit across the rocky beach, then squat and examine some of the round rocks, but stand up with a rock in his hand when he heard a splash, and watch his sister complain. The mom would simply lay there, comment back to them, and smile in the sunshine.

That's exactly what happened in the next two minutes, just like that. There is no mystical ESP at work here ... just observation, judging people's moods and surroundings, and using common sense.

Everything about the family's postures on the picnic blanket, who was warm, who was lazy, what they were wearing, the temperature and the possibilities, the inviting water and the layout of the beach, added up to a flow of events that was very natural and predictable.

It's the same when you reach over to catch something before someone knocks it over ... because you "just know" it's bound to happen.

If one doesn't think too much, the mind can tell us quite a bit by letting it assemble all the pieces in the background. That's the point. Anything that shakes up the constant foreground preoccupation with analysis helps. It gets the brain out of our own way, to "know" things deeply and fully, with our entire mind. It's a different but more natural way of being.

That's just my hunch, anyways.

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Well, a custom to read in certain direction also plays a role. I was introduced to the right-to-left direction of writing when I was 27. I have no problems with understanding Hebrew, but reading in the direction opposite to the one I am accustomed to since childhood makes me tired after several minutes. Thanks God, I deal mainly with import documentation at my job, so majority of documents I deal with are in English.

Deb has a point though. It is true that women have a better sense of smell than men...something to do with a natural-born instinct to recognize their babies by scent. To most men, babies just smell in general....

CodeBorg, yep, you've got it. I've learned how to purposely put myself in that mode -- step back and let everything wash over me and trust my brain to make sense of it all.

That is how I lipread. It is so annoying (and counterproductive) when people feel compelled to stop every few words to make sure I understand. I often don't understand a thing for several sentences, and then I'll get some crucial piece of information that illuminates everything that came before it, and I understand all that has been said.

There was a really interesting article in the New Yorker a while back about people who read faces -- cops, for example, who know when a person is really about to shoot or when the person is bluffing. I think that's a big part of the information I gather, too. If someone is reciting words from memory, for example, rather than forming thoughts in that moment, lipreading is much more difficult. Impulsive, no-filter types are much easier to understand than analytical, precise types.

Does anyone know those clueless folks who speak louder upon discovering someone is blind?

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Is this a Morse Code?

Yup