I stumbled upon your forum looking for some help for my daughter. She is 15 years old and has been blind since birth. She has no vision, just some light perception (can tell if it’s day or night), and she is mildly on the autism spectrum; she is very bright but hindered by these challenges. Her memory has always been impressive; this isn’t uncommon for blind people, but even within her community, her memory stands out as exceptional.
Her issue is she says she gets overwhelmed, we have been having trouble in school as she says ‘she has too much information in her head’, and as a result, she has a tendency to shut down and disengage, which obviously, in a classroom, is problematic. We are lucky that she attends an excellent school for the blind, and they are incredibly understanding and knowledgeable with regards to vision, and even with regards to neurodivergence; however, this is a little out of their expertise, and frankly, my memories ■■■■, so I’m no help at all haha!
So I know it’s a bit of an out there question but I am hoping there may be some advice, techniques or exercises she may be able to do to quiet the noise, some kind of index card of filing system to organise and sort the thoughts in her brain.
She can write braille and use a computer but she’s not enthusiastic about either, so writing stuff down is probably not a solution, but she has find a dictaphone that I brought her helpful. When trying to answer a homework question, she will ‘mind dump’ her ideas into the dictaphone, which empties her brain a little and gives her the headspace to be able to organise the thoughts and write up the answer, while relistening to the recording. This has been the most effective method so far, but it would be really good to have other ideas to try if anyone can help!
It feels like it could be an amazing superpower if she can learn to harness and control it a little better.
Zettelkasten is a fantstic indexing system, but if you can find a way to do it on a dictaphone, I would absolutely love to know how!
Other than that, the mental indexing system of the memory palace should be accessible to the blind, if they can adapt it to how they perceive space and access their place memory.
Your problem requires a MEDICAL intervention sir. NO ONE gets OVERWHELMEND by too much information if that is preserved by the techniques like Memory Palace used in this forum.
Another finding of mine based on your commentary is that DO NOT believe firsthand that the child’s idea of she being OVERWHELMEND by too much information. That level of self awareness is UNLIKELY for child.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to make diagnosis as such just from a single conversation. I have not seen ANYONE in this forum with that level of expertise. Just go with the clinical Psychologist and they will make more likely diagnosis.
>NO ONE gets OVERWHELMEND by too much information if that is preserved by the techniques like Memory Palace used in this forum.
Nowhere did he state his daughter was using mnemonic techniques - simply that she feels overwhelmed .
Arguments from universals like “everyone” and “no one” only need a single counterexample to invalidate: books have been written about information overload - so counterexamples are easy. Many feel overwhelmed by too much information .
I have a son and a daughter younger than this and I find such a self awareness completely plausible and not uncommon.
If you want to see information overload in action: find a random disinterested person as test subject and start sharing something fascinating and complex to yourself in detail and watch them get uncomfortable at some point.
at this moment it is not clear what this “she is overwhelmed” mean.
It could be that she hear something and think about it in circles.
Or that she think ahead of time what would happen when this situation escalates?
Or that she the information process need to be slowed down or need to speed up.
I would also recommed to speak with someone like a psychologist or some person that knows more about it in person.
Such diagnoses should not be done on an internet forum without knowing the person.
We can help in finding the right memory technique.
But for that we need to understand what is needed.
It would be unprofessional to give advices without a proper medical diagnosis.
Not only that it could be the worst thing if we say one thing and it is the opposite of what she need.
I apologise for being unkind.
I don’t disagree with your advice that Liz consider a psychologist.
I think it’s even worth considering a psychiatrist or a neurologist.
(The fact that she is stated to be “on the autistic spectrum” does hint at a psychiatric diagnosis)
BUT I felt your tone unhelpful and responded in kind:
When you PROCLAIM your strong opinions.
With the certain conviction that you are RIGHT and everyone had better WATCH OUT!
And start making CONFIDENT CLAIMS about matters you seem to have LITTLE experience in.
(I may be WRONG)
(forgive my parody here)
then you seem adversarial and combative and I believe a concerned parent deserves a kinder response.
About your challenge :
Help him then. Share results after your suggestions.
Never forget you are taking RESPONSIBILITY here nothing like giving tips in forum.
Note that I pointedly didn’t offer any advice yet.
I’ll consider posting some thoughts later,
but I think from Liz’s query he or she is clearly asking for advice and not a diagnosis or a prescription.
I think asking a bunch of mnemonic enthusiasts about approaches to handling information overload is a very reasonable thing to do - and I’m sure that any such advice will be taken with a suitable degree of salt.
OK, there seems to have been some miscommunication here, I have no interest in my daughter being diagnosed here and this specific problem isn’t a medical one. This is information I didn’t think would be necessary to share but she has seen many medical professionals in her life, I mean, she’s blind and autistic; we have a revolving door of experts! She also works regularly at her school with music therapists, psychologists, neurodivergent experts, SENCOS, my mother is a therapist, my dad is a GP, so yes, she has been taught to be very self-aware for her age. It is incredibly important to her and us that she can independently advocate for her needs as that’s an essential life skill for her, and she can only do that if she is self-aware of what those needs are. So no, she’s not your average 15-year-old!
Right, that bit out of the way, all I was asking for was help with memory storage/retrieval techniques she could try that don’t involve visual feedback opr notetaking. During several discussions around her issues in class she has mentioned feeling ‘overwhelmed by information’ as why she appears to disengage. From my understanding, if say she is asked a question about Queen Elizabeth I, she will become overwhelmed because lots and lots of facts about her (not just those relevant to the question) come to mind, she struggles to sort them to find what is most appropriate to the question at hand and sort them in any logical way. I imagine, from her descriptions, it’s like someone tearing the pages out of a Queen Elizabeth textbook and throwing all the pages at her at once. She ‘disengages’ because it feels overwhelming and she drifts off into an easier daydreaming state (this isn’t uncommon with neurodivergents). She knows the information; this has been tested a lot of times, if I ask her to speak about Queen Elizabeth I with no real order, she can talk about her at great length and is clearly very knowledgeable on the subject. Hence why I was asking for ideas of some kind of filing system, we have discussed memory palace in the past and thank you to @Ylva for your helpful suggestion, I looked at Zettlkasten last night, and am trying to work out if there is a way she can store the information in her head in a less linear (order it was taught) way, that will connect them in more of a mindmap.
I appreciate that this may not be the best place to ask but I am a loss where else to ask tbh, so figured I’d try. If we can adapt Zettelkasten it could be promising though, so thank you again for that!
Memory techniques base on visual images build by your mind.
Blind people might use sound and time or other kind of replacement of visual images.
That said, this is not the subject here:
The real subject is that she does not have problems with storing things, she has a problem to sort out what things should be stored and which are irrelevant or redundant.
Why that is need to be looked at.
No memory technique can help in deciding that.
Because the goal for these are to store information in an repeated easy retrieval way.
She could use information processing like note taking.
If that helps good, if not : it could be related to a medical issue that need to be diagnosed and after that she can look for special techniques or adapt others to her needs.
Your parody is not cool. I am not laughing. Or am i??
Logic has failed me many times. My arguments have failed me. My experiences have failed me. So has these psychological studies when I generalized them for situations. These studies are generally done on very specific group of people with results and conclusion on open end. I know fair bit of it because of my own research for my degree. And wikepedia is NOT the accepted reference even for academic journal. For scientific it is double NO.
You might have been too quick for your answer when you saw these absolute claim without reading “… by too much information if that is preserved by the techniques like Memory Palace.” Have I researched for my claim? NO. I stand by it by my practice with the technique.
No salt, I have blood pressure issues.
My exam prep is going very smoothly. Happy that you remembered.
@Lizj you could train with her to filter out the not needed facts.
Give her an object and let her describe it in every detail.
Repeat that with the same object as many as wished but every iteration she is only allowed to describe it in easier/clearer words.
If the object is round she could say it is round.
If the object is out of metal and she say that the object is too cold, advice her to say that it is cold.
Slowly you train her to be more precise about the words and facts she use to describe the world.
Be carefull even for one that see this training might take some time.
You my friend have very eloquent way of expressing truth. I also thought of her having issue with relevance. But I left these special cases to the professionals. No one can be sure if these note taking ideas or memory palace ideas that people have given for her has helped her or worsened it further.
I feel more resonated with you but it does not mean we are right. We might have f’ed up as well by continuing these conversations.
So we have a common ground then. Does your story have “thought to be extrovert by people but internally introvert. Expecting people to understand what you said but people seeming to not care at all…” narrated that way??
She feels like she needs all the information on Queen Elizabeth, as she doesn’t know which question will be asked. She has exams soon and she is revising which is why this is has come up now, there is certainly some anxiety which isn’t helping but I’m pretty good at helping with that area! She is currently trying to store everything that might come up in her brain with no technique to retrieve it, bless her!
Your second post is helpful thank you, not sure how we do that with Queen Elizabeth, but I will work with her to see if the idea helps, maybe using something like mental keywords or tags might work? Not sure, all strings to the bow though so thank you!
