Auditory Memory with Having NLD
All right. Hello. Today's podcast episode will be about auditory memory. And the first article we are going to use is from the NVLD project and it is by Megan and she talks about her auditory gift in NVLD and embracing my sixth sense. Auditory memory.
“You've heard of the sixth sense, right? I'd like to think of my NVLD as giving me a similar sense, the gift of auditory memory. I'm not sure when I discovered my auditory gift, perhaps when I was sitting in my college lecture and listening to my professor recall all the important items that would be on the final exam. Or, when I went to write my exam, I just closed my eyes and I could hear my professor's voice recite the same lecture over again. It was as if a live podcast was being replayed. I ended up getting an A on an exam by... The way and quote, she is quote, a graduate of the child and youth worker program from the Caribbean college and is pursuing a degree in disability studies at Ryan University, along with a certificate in aboriginal pieces.”
So I can relate to Megan's feeling like her auditory memory is a sixth sense and so natural because whenever I listen to songs that I know by heart I can sing along to them effortlessly. The music I like to listen to is country music, mostly. I like artists like Low Cash, Maroon 5, Bright Yarn. One Direction, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, or Carrie Underwood. I think it's cool that the AirPod speaker we have at home knows I like country music because I can just say the title of a song and not who it's by and Siri will play the right one. Cool, right?
I would like to talk about the sounds that one may have in their memory in this episode. And I'm also going to talk about how the memory works for somebody who hasn't BLT in general. This may be different based on where you live, but for me, I know what a crying baby sounds like. A car siren, ambulance, firetruck siren, or police siren sounds like. I also know what sounds, what it sounds like when you drop something like glass, metal, or plastic on the ground. I will play some of the sounds in this episode so you can hear what the sound is like because I think that would be a cool thing to have as a reference.
You'll have those sounds at the end of the episode. Also some of my favorite songs that you may want to try listening to are Somebody by Low Cash, 123 Mississippi by Brett Young, and The Climb by Miley Cyrus. It may be hard to, sorry, it may be hard for us to describe what our sixth sense is like to neurotypicals because they may not have that ability, so they may not understand what it's like to have it.
My family is used to it because they have heard me and my brother go back and forth rehearsing lines from movies that we've seen a bunch of times. They've also are used to it because they've heard me sing along to my musics effortlessly. I can also recall the conversations that I've had on the phone at work really well.
And ever since I was diagnosed with NLD, they knew why I was good at doing those things. I think recalling conversations I've had on the phone is actually a good thing, whether it's at work or personal conversations. Because if you're trying to talk to somebody else about that conversation, then you don't really have to take that much detail of it down on paper or in your mind, because if you remember what is said to you and then you can rely on that to relay the story to them or the conversation. So I think that's pretty cool.
And here's an article titled memory problems and the nonverbal learning disability syndrome by Peter P. Everett Theory and Rudy de Hogue, I think I said that correctly. “In general, these children show a well-developed memory for auditory and or verbal contents. For example, they have an extended vocabulary. However, they may exhibit severe deficiencies in the recollection of tactical, visual, or visual spatial information. We will therefore have to cover these diverse modalities in the assessment. In other words, we will try to create a profile of the auditory, visual, and tactile memory. It's important to note that the profile is more important than the level of performance. For instance, a child with NLD could show an average or below average performance on a verbal memory test, while visual and tactile memory may be much below the expected norms.”
So this is a peer reviewed article, and I can relate to this quote because I do have better auditory and verbal memory than visual memory. That's also true for my kinesthetic memory. My tactile... Memory, which I believe has to do with the things you touch, is bad because I have problems remembering where I put important things. But if I ask someone in my family to help me find it by asking, but by having them ask me questions, then that does help me find it.
A recent example of that is I was trying to find my COVID vaccine card the other day Oh, just yesterday, actually, because I was going to get my next dose, and I couldn't remember where I put it. And I knew it was going to be important for me to have it with me. And I looked in my room, I looked in my wallet, and I looked in my computer bag, but I didn't look in one of the small zipper compartments in my computer bag. And my mom... Asked, did you look in your computer bag? I said, yeah, I did. It's not in there. And I was very certain it wasn't in there. I was wrong. It was in this small zipper compartment of the computer bag. So, if you have this issue, like I do, try not to be so certain that you looked everywhere you thought you could for something. And just try to look again, and you might surprise yourself and actually find what you're looking for. Like I did yesterday. I was very happy when I found that. Actually I found it on Wednesday, but it doesn't matter.
Anyways, I'm also good at remembering names, which I think is part of your auditory memory, because you hear someone's name when they tell it to you. I used to be able to remember about 200 to 300 names at a time when I would go to summer camps as a child growing up. I would look at the group photos at the end of the camp and be able to name everyone in it, even if they were new. A new attendee. Or they were new attendees, I should say. I didn't know why or how I was able to do that at the time, because I had never heard of NLD and didn't know I had it. So it fascinated me that I could do it. It still does. If you want to learn more about my memory, then please read my article on the NVLD project called Blessing in Disguise. I'll put the link for that to you in the podcast description, and I'll also put the links for the other articles in there, and the names of the songs I gave earlier in the episode.
And so whether it's trying to remember things in your auditory memory and describe what it's like to, to, to the neurotypical, I and other people with NLD still have issues with this today. As I wrap up, there are some things I would like to share with you. I do have a website for the podcast. It is called livingwithnld.com. I would love to have you go on that website and have me share with you your favorite auditory memory that you have. Please share to the level of comfortability that you have. If you're listening on Spotify, you can send me an email at livingwithnld at gmail. com. Or if you're listening to Apple Podcasts, please leave the answer in a review for me.
If you're listening on livingwithnld.com, comment on the episode on the podcast page, because they are created as blogs. And if you have NLD, I would suggest using tools like DragonDictate or a TalkText to help you with writing and making notes because that will help expand your auditory memory. This would be really helpful, especially if you are still in school. I used that when I was in, I used drag and dip tape when I was in school to take notes. And, sometimes I still use, uh, talk to speech, or text to speech, um, to write podcast scripts. Because sometimes when thoughts are flowing in my head, it's easier for me to use that rather than typing. So just a little suggestion for you there. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will talk to you next Friday. Bye.
Here's are the links for the articles: NVLD And Embracing My Sixth Sense: Auditory Memory, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VzxHtgC3mMwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA183&dq=auditory+memory+and+nld&ots=FSe8jp3j2Y&sig=Una5MnS90vP3v9odTp5xCzcaYD4#v=onepage&q=auditory%20memory%20and%20nld&f=false and https://nvld.org/blessing-disguise/.
Here's the link for the article: NVLD And Embracing My Sixth Sense: Auditory Memory.
