Gestalt learners, rapid naming and Asperger's personality types as it relates to memory

General Memory Chat
1

Analytic Processing is where you take small bit of info (i.e. a, c, t), put them together and form something bigger: “cat”

Gestalt Processing is where you take one single, bigger whole thing, and then break it down, possibly by relating it to other things.

  • It’s a much longer process
  • there’s more errors along the way

So, you’ve got detail to simplicity, rather than simplicity to detail.

This type of memory is much more common in people with ASD or Asperger’s personality type. However, it also includes a lot of people in general. You don’t have to be a total nerd to use this type of learning. That said, I think that the overwhelming majority of people on this forum are primarily gestalt processors, who also use a bit of analytic.

OK, that’s the first definition. Now the next:

Rapid naming.

Rapid naming is the ability to access and label something with a name. You might say it’s the most basic language ability.
People who are gestalt processors are more likely to be slow at rapid naming.
This means that any memory technique involving language, such as the major system, is going to be a lot slower for them.
Specifically, the stage that going to be slow for them is going from say,
Seeing the number 45 and naming Andy Warhol. Conversely, for them, the Shaper System is going to be a lot quicker to get to grips with.
However, if you ARE a good rapid namer, the major is going to be a lot quicker to aquire.
You can get quicker by practice. You can get quicker at naming numbers, for example, but you can’t really get better at the underlying language processing speed AFAIK. Not unless you’re really young and managing to get the right fatty acids to your brain, past a digestive system that might not be able to digest them.

In my teaching, the most useful thing for me to do is to pigeonhole my students into Gestalt and Analytic, even though few people fall 100% into each box.

I suggest you think about this deeply and how it applies to the people around you.
Temple Grandin, says that this analytic vs gestalt thing is one of the biggest causes of misunderstandings out there. I think it’s true.

Now my final question:
What memory techniques work best for gestalt learners and slow rapid namers?

4 Likes
2

An interesting post. I did not really like when i trained 3 digit and thinking ok 6 is a j… this was a struggle for me and I find the people like Simon and Katie fascinating who can create things by syllables, whereas I want to react. See the number/card/words and see imagery instantly is what i want to do. This becomes problematic at times, fiction/fictional will create the same imagery. The noun occuring before an adjective is also quite problematic.

This might also explain why I can hit word speed drills under 20 seconds with reasonable accuracy but not quite as precise as other top tier words players at full time.

In International Names, this changes. The information is too complex for me to simply react. I usually break the syllables down and then hope I spell it right.

“Chaeseon” → Chase sun

The spelling is a big battle as this usually relies on focus. Which is why I think Int Names, it’s crucial for my mind to be in a healthy state. Scores will drop below my average by about 3-4 if I am a bit tired.

3

I’m not sure what you mean since there are many interpretations of this definition. You might think of naming letters, like how they sound. The reaction of Bigdonnyv …

I did not really like when i trained 3 digit and thinking ok 6 is a j… this was a struggle for me

… suggests that he seems to associate this definition with the naming of letters. However one might also struggle with the naming of objects and people. Some people that struggle with this may also struggle with the naming of letters and even though there might be some causal overlap, they are different things.

Another important distinction in my view is that between naming something and accessing information based on a name. I’m am for example terrible with remembering the names of people I work with in the way that I might think of a person but can’t remember their name, but when I hear a person’s name I do remember the person that belongs to that name. The same asymmetry occurs when I use 1 syllable translations of 2 digit numbers; usually I don’t even have to practice to translate them in to images, but when I try the other way around things are much more difficult.

Seeing the number 45 and naming Andy Warhol. Conversely, for them, the Shaper System is going to be a lot quicker to get to grips with.

So what part of the information process is supposed to be slow?

  • reading 45 as AW
  • accessing the name Andy Warhole based on AW
  • accessing the image of Andy Warhole
  • multiple parts of the whole process

the Shaper System is going to be a lot quicker to get to grips with.

I feel that is much to strong a statement for various reasons. Firstly, trying to think of an image for every 2 digit shape is not easy. In fact Erol who posted the Shaper system made it clear that he had spent a lot of time coming up with images for all numbers. In contrary, with a simple 1 syllable 2 digit translation system you might be able to create a list of images in just a couple of hours. And secondly, just because you are bad at something doesn’t automatically make you (relatively) good at something else.

1 Like
4

Sorry for not defining the term better. This is what I meant by rapid naming:

“just because you’re no good at one thing, doesn’t mean you’ll be better at the other”

Yes, of course. People don’t fit neatly into Analytic vs Gestalt.

But there’s a trend, and the useful trend is:

if you’re no good at one thing, you’re more likely to be good at the other thing.
That’s all.

2 Likes
5

What’s the baseline here? Will you be better at something you are good at compared to something you’re not good at? Sure. But shouldn’t that be compared to the average population? And you not being good at one thing is an independent event, how does that make you more likely to be good at something else?

Much like there is no reason that the next coin flip will be heads only because the previous one was tail. Not being good at drawing doesn’t mean you’ll be better at languages.

1 Like
6

I still have lots of questions.

This type of memory is much more common in people with ASD or Asperger’s personality type. However, it also includes a lot of people in general.

You appear to be jumping from data processing to memory like they are one and the same. What is the justification for this (jumping)?

That said, I think that the overwhelming majority of people on this forum are primarily gestalt processors, who also use a bit of analytic.

Why do you think this? Does this also imply that you think that the majority of the people on this forum are slow readers? It seems to me that at least the really fast memorisers, some of whom are forum members, also have to be fast readers by default, just like high level martial artists must have high reaction speed.

In my teaching, the most useful thing for me to do is to pigeonhole my students into Gestalt and Analytic, even though few people fall 100% into each box.

I have a hard time imagining this in practice. Like do you test the students before teaching them and do you teach on a 1 on 1 basis? How did you come to the conclusion that one approach works really well for one group and a 2nd one for the other?

Variations in rapid automatized naming time in children provide a strong predictor of their later ability to read, and is independent from other predictors such as phonological awareness, verbal IQ, and existing reading skills.

How is it possible for RAN to be independent of existing reading skills but a strong predictor of future reading skills? Could you give an theoretical example that make sense to this statement?

1 Like
7

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02405.x

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that rapid automatized naming (RAN) is a correlate of early reading skills; however, the interpretation of this finding remains controversial. We present the results from a 3-year longitudinal study. RAN, measured with nonalphabetic stimuli before reading instruction has begun, is a predictor of later growth in reading fluency. After reading instruction has started, RAN continues to exert an influence on the development of reading fluency over the next 2 years. However, there is no evidence of a reciprocal influence of reading fluency on the growth of RAN skill. We suggest that RAN taps the integrity of left-hemisphere object-recognition and naming circuits that are recruited to function as a critical component of the child’s developing visual word-recognition system.

This is the research you’ll find if you follow the footnote of this, as always, ill-formed sentence on Wikipedia. @StopUserNameReuse you should really follow the sources rather than just blindly quoting Wikipedia.

2 Likes
8

image

1 Like
9

Correlation is not causation.
It’s just a correlation.

That’s how the statement in that paper doesn’t necessarily clash with what I was saying.

But yes, I think I just have said phonological skills are than RAN? I thought RAN included a language element? Now I’m confused.

There isn’t a testing procedure for gestalt vs analytic AFAIK.
This is still a work in progress for me.

What I do is keep a keen eye out for when a student has 2 clear gestalt concepts, and cannot combine them into a new concept. This is easy to see in younger students because there’s less knowledge there in general.

The clearest time I saw this was when I noticed when a student understood the word “Go”, understood the word “Up”, but really, really could not combine to form the phrase “Go up”, despite masses of motivation. This is something I’ve observed in 3 learners, so it’s helped me identify the extreme gestalt processors. But there’s been others who aren’t that extreme, which is probably why there doesn’t seem to be tests for this out there. Of course this only my anecdote, it’s just that to illustrate the concept.

re: Processing speed. Again, just a correlation. In this case, the common factor can be magnocellular cells and/or the cerebellar.

Comparing magnocellular cells to parvocellular cells can help simplify this a bit:

According to the error prone ChatGPT:
“The magnocellular and parvocellular pathways are part of the visual system in the brain. The magnocellular pathway is responsible for processing rapidly changing visual information. It is used for perception of motion, color, and high spatial frequencies. The parvocellular pathway is involved in the perception of fine detail, texture, and color. These pathways process visual information differently, allowing for faster and more detailed perception.”

However, I know chatgpt is oversimplfying by saying “visual”:

Magnocellular are for other senses, aren’t they? “Yes, the magnocellular pathway is also involved in processing information from other senses, such as auditory and somatosensory information.”

Some starting points for the Magnocellular and processing speed stuff:

Lawton, T., n.d. Improving Magnocellular Function in the Dorsal Stream Remediates Reading Deficits, 42 (3).

Stein, J., 2019. The current status of the magnocellular theory of developmental dyslexia. Neuropsychologia, 130, 66–77.

hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t (discriminate?) forum members are an example. But yes, if my theory is correct, I suspect that the reason a lot of people get into memorising is because we’re not very good at memorising some things.

I’m a fast reader these days, but if I hadn’t become a teacher, I never would have even noticed just how difficult I found it to learn to read. The same could be true here. When I speak to the parents of the dyslexic children, they usually tell me something similar, where they vaguely remember having trouble, but it was a long time ago. Once you’ve learnt to read, the phonological route to reading is used a lot less. Then things are more automatic; as a simplification, more of a visual pathway; more on the right hand side of the reading pathway in the Dual Cascade Model of reading, for example.

So yes, slower to learn to read, but able to. Isn’t that a bit similar to the major system?
How quick are you at going from 01 → ST → sat? I can do it, but maybe I’m a lot slower than some people. Going in the other direction might not be the same.

All I know is that speaking is always harder than listening in language, sure, but for some people it’s a lot, lot harder, with a much longer lag time between listening skills and speech. Again, coordinating those brain signals to arrive at the same time (magnocellular ∴ processing speed) and (OR???) combining 2 gestalt ideas.
So for those people, they’re going to need a different way of memorising to the analytic processors if they want to compete and win.

I remember hearing one time about a memoriser, definitely gestalt sounding, who used something like geometric objects direct to loci and no phonological processing at all? Does that sound familiar?

2 Likes
10

Please forgive me, I can’t help myself: There are two types of people in the world : Those who divide the people in the world into two types , and those who don’t. Put in another way: if you only have a hammer in your toolkit everything becomes a nail.

I suspect that the reason a lot of people get into memorising is because we’re not very good at memorising some things.

I agree that some forum members may have this motivation; I see this in some of the “let me introduce myself” posts. However saying things like I have a bad memory is often used as virtue signalling that you are honest/modest. But I don’t see much evidence or logic that this is generally the case. I would expect that as with other (mind)sports people tend to do what they are naturally good at.

I’m a fast reader these days, but if I hadn’t become a teacher, I never would have even noticed just how difficult I found it to learn to read.

I can remember struggling with reading the first year of elementary school and being embarrassed that some of my classmates were much faster. Strangely I can now read at a speed that I imagine is much faster than average, like I can read your post at about a second and a half per horizontal line. I feel that this contradicts the idea that rapid naming is not improvable.

So yes, slower to learn to read , but able to. Isn’t that a bit similar to the major system?
How quick are you at going from 01 → ST → sat?

You have just shown why the major system isn’t all that, something that I have argued for on this forum multiple times. Like in my system everything is both very intuitive and predetermined.

0 = d (as a 1st number)
1 = 1 (as a 2nd number)
01 = di as in die and that is dutch for that

To give a better idea of my system, take the following number sequence:
14, 34, 26, 46, 47, 67, 59, 89, 65, 75
lek, mek, na, ka, kat, bat, sy, fy (sounds like sci fi), bas, tas

2 Likes
11

Hello, I want Ban Pridmore technology to save binary numbers

12

It’s described on this page: https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Ben_System/

13

That’s a neat little system you’ve got there Erik.
Has anyone adapted it for English?

14

Not that I am aware of. The pronounciation rules of this system provide a lot of sounds that are almost identical to many Dutch words and some English and German words. Making a system like this that would be useful to primarily English speaking people would almost certainly require different pronounciation rules.

Perhaps it is usefull to expain the origin of this system. I started with a system wherby all numbers are consonants, like 0 = d, 1 = l, 2 = n, 3 = m, and son on. If you insert the same letter between all 2 digit letters you get something like 23 = nam, 46 = kab, 77 = tat, 82 = fan. As you can probably imagine this requires almost no effort to learn as far as the reading is converned.

After this stage I came to the conclusion that a consonant and vowel reading of 2 digit numbers was probably faster in the long run (not easier per se) since the above numbers would now be 23 = nee, 46 = ka, 77 = tow, 82 = fu. However some vowel sounds were not that easy to pronounce and hear, so I kept the strong vowels and replaced the weak ones with a consonant (the same as the first digit) and a consonant in front of the consonant. For the sake of variation I no longer used the a as the only vowel.

I have not used the reading system for a while as the memory system (PAO variation) that It was a part of didn’t seem to work out as I hoped. Because of this I can now read the original 2 consonants + a (in the middle) system faster then any other system I have come up with, because it is the most simple of all possible systems and I have used that system in my daily life for a long time for relatively short number sequences.

I am now trying to learn a very simple 100 object list without the use of any logic, so for example 34 = helikopter for no special reason. I realise that using a number to letter conversion system is much easier to learn, but by removing a layer and thus directly linking an object to a number may possibly be faster in the long run. Erol made a very popular post about his shaper system and he has made it clear that he had spent a lot of time trying to find appropriate shape based translations of all 2 digit numbers. This raises the question, just like with my and others number reading systems, how fast he would have been if had just made a random list of objects as 2 digit number translations and instead of spending time creating his shaper system only practiced this simple system.

1 Like