To me, stupidity implies an innate unchangeability, while learning disability merely implies that while you may never be the best person in the world at the task, you can learn it through non-traditional means tailored to the disability. Obviously if somebody has a LOT of learning disabilities, or an incredibly severe all-around disability (downs syndrome and whatnot) may make it extremely difficult to actually find a way “around it.” Though I’ll grant that it may in some ways just be a euphemism.
Like I said, I find entity theory toxic, (though in some ways I suffer from a small unconscious belief in it myself) but this isn’t the thread to discuss it.
ETA: Though I think that the truth lies somewhere between entity and incremental theory. I’ve found that people who go too far in the “you can learn anything” direction that they end up very hateful and judgmental people.
If you have face blindness, can you tell if a person’s face is attractive or not? Like, do their features not register with you at all, or can you just not remember seeing them before?
Yes, and they made the little sliding credit card imprinters, check printers, certificate printers. Spiffy machines.
I really like fiddly little antique machines. mrAru does also =) He had the most fun at a local museum explaining to the docent how to use the bearing casting kit [for recasting bearings in place on jacquard looms]
People who are singing in a choir or chorus, surrounded by others who are supposedly singing the same part . . . and they can’t tell that they’re singing in a different octave as everyone else. How can they not hear their own voices, and the voices around them?
Or people who can’t understand time signatures, no matter how many times it’s been explained to them. It’s not rocket surgery.
I can perceive faces fine. In fact, whenever I’ve done tests on perceiving emotions through facial expressions, I’ve done above average. In my case, it’s pretty much a memory thing. From my understanding, we stash memories of faces in a different way than memories of, say, trees, and that process is where the disconnect is.
It comes in various degrees. There are people out there who literally cannot recognize their parents. In my case, it’s nowhere near that bad. But if I see someone I know well in a completely unexpected context (say, running in to a coworker at the grocery store), I probably won’t recognize them. And often faces of people I only see occasionally don’t “stick.”
I’d guess it’s more common than most people think. I tend to tell people I’m “bad with names,” as that is something people understand (and I am bad with names, mostly because I know I have basically zero chance of matching the name to the face in the future.) Unfortunately, it can come off as rude or standoffish, and a lot of the coping techniques (like, say, not diving into a conversation until someone gives you a clue as to who the other people are) can make you seem shy and unfriendly. But for the most part, the workarounds work well enough to get through daily life with only the occasional blunder (I one introduced myself to someone I had worked closely with for two years…ooops!)
A lot of people think it’s something that I can “work on,” just like people who are bad with names can. Unfortunately, I’ve tried and tried and it just doesn’t work out like that. There really is a gap in my brain that isn’t working as it does with most people.
And, well, you should have seen me teaching in China. I taught 300 young women from the same area of China aged 19-21, most of whom dressed in similar fashions. It took me most of a year just to recognize a handful of students!
I score at the low normal end of face recognition. I don’t know how it affects other people, but I just can’t put all the features of a face together to register a hit in my brain for some particular face. I compensate by memorizing all the individual features of a person I can. But when someone changes their appearance it’s very difficult to tell who they are. It’s very difficult with women who will change their hair style and color and sometimes wear a lot of makeup. It’s also very difficult to distinquish two people who have a similar appearance, even though others seem to tell them apart with no difficulty. I don’t have much trouble recognizing my family in person, but it can be difficult to pick them out in a picture with other people in it. This condition must be much worse for some people.
For me anyway, many years now a choir singer but I started in my thirties with zero musical training, being able to notice the difference/sameness between what you are singing and what others are singing was a consciously learned skill. It is easier for me to hear myself sing off key (it ‘hurts’) than to hear myself sing an octave off, actually. Not that I do this much since I’m a first soprano.
As for time signatures, I struggle with them (discalculia, y’know). I understand the concept, which I agree is very simple, but I ‘forget’ it while singing because anything to do with numbers won’t stay in my head. Practicing at home I probably spend more time counting than I do singing. Pitch is so easy compared to counting.
I have some degree of face blindness too I guess (I wasn’t sure if it would count because there are people I do easily recognize by face). It’s part of why I hate watching movies. Unless all of the important characters look drastically different in features like coloring and hair styles and body types, I can’t tell them apart so it’s hard to follow along. And at work if a customer comes back the same day I can recognize them because they have on the same clothes. If they come the next day, no clue unless they have particularly distinctive features. And I really don’t see very many customers.
And I know what you mean about running into people in contexts you don’t normally see them in. I used to go to a restaurant all the time and got friendly with a waitress there. One day she saw me in a parking lot and said hi and she could tell I didn’t have a clue who she was. I felt so bad!
Actually, when I was a kid, one day my dad showed up at the door unexpectedly (he lived out of state) AND he had shaved the mustache that he always had. I wasn’t sure if it was him! I thought it probably was, but I didn’t want to be all “Daddy!!!” and have it be someone else.
The technical definition of a learning disability is that your ability to learn in a particular area lags behind your other skills by 30 IQ points. So if you are a super-genius at everything but math, but average at math, you have a learning disability (and qualify for special services). However, if your IQ is 85 and you test at 85 across the board, you are just really slow and don’t qualify for anything. If your IQ is below a certain point (I think 70), you qualify as “Intellectually disabled” or something and get services.
Interesting. But now I’m curious what “counts” as “a particular area.” (I’ve never heard of anyone having a learning disability in Medieval French History, for example.)
I think a lot of time, people get caught up in the specialized jargon. My friend tried to teach me calculus in junior high and I just wasn’t getting the difference between dx/dy and regular variables. Then I took calculus class and realized, oh, that’s just the slope. Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?
Other times they don’t have a good idea of how something is relatable to real life.
Taxes. Not income tax, just regular plain old sales tax. And Ontario has gone to a pretty darned simple HST, ‘13% on everything’ covers 99.99% of the cases at my employer.
Salespeople still come into my office asking ‘What’s tax do I quote on this [completely standard contract]?’ or ‘The client can’t pay more than $x, what’s that before tax?’. Seriously, how does someone not know how to do this calculation by adulthood? Or remember how to do it after being shown? The ‘cheat sheet’ fits on a miniature post-it!
I’ve never understood time signatures. What’s the difference between 2:4 and 4:4? (Or… I mean the kind where there are four quarter-notes in a bar.) Are there little micro-pauses or micro-rests at the end of each bar? Is there hidden syncopation that defines the bars? It’s perfectly easy to re-write a piece written in 4:4 to 3:4. You have to bridge some notes, but, really, as far as notation goes, it’s the same. What is the deal?
(I’ve written a handful of hornpipes. My favorite medieval and renaissance dance type. I could die happy if I ever write anything as glorious as Aston’s Hornpipe.)
(P.S. If anyone does listen to that YouTube video…can you tell me what the time signature of the piece is? Thanks!)
I did that to my sister once. I’d grown a beard and moustache on vacation, and, when she saw me walk up to the front door, she wondered, “Who is that guy, and why is he wearing my brother’s shirt?” She recognized the shirt…but not me!
Are you familiar with downbeats, where the first beat of a measure has a slightly stronger emphasis than the remaining beats? Change the time signature, and you change the downbeat.
Or, perhaps this will help: try waltzing to a four-count. If you get confused, it’s because waltzes are a three-count dance, aka 3/4 time signature. The first step of the three-step pattern is always on the first beat of the measure. If you’re trying to do it to a 4/4 measure, your first step in the pattern would drift around: first on the fourth beat, then on the third, then the second, etc. You’d either end up getting confused as to where your feet are supposed to go on any given beat, or you’d end up doing it on the three-count in spite of yourself.
Non-dance music conforms to the same standard – the beats/rhythms are arranged in repeating patterns, and these patterns are the time signature. ONE two three ONE two three has a different rhythm than ONE two three four ONE two three four. You can probably hear it most easily in music with percussion – there will be a stronger/louder drumbeat on ONE (the downbeat) than on any other beat.
3/4. It’s a waltz. Listen to the bass notes. He hits the bass chord hardest on the downbeat.
Nope! I’d never heard of that. I mostly listen to Baroque music, and the downbeat in, say, Vivaldi, seems subtle. More, I mostly work with music-processing programs, where it doesn’t seem to happen at all.
Thank’ee! I guess I’ve just got a tin ear, because I don’t hear what you’re describing.
(I wonder if this may be similar to those who don’t recognize faces; maybe I am actually not hearing something, for psychological or physiological reasons.)
There is a “P.D.Q. Bach” piece, a “Birthday Ode to Johann Sebastian Bach,” where music with a whole bunch of different time signatures gets overlaid in a big goofy pseudo-fugue. It’s hilarious, and I think it would be educational…if I could hear it properly!
If you want time signature hell try Panic Attack by Dream Theater. As far as I can tell it’s in a mixed meter – some number of 6/8’s followed by a 2/4. With some parts in what seems to be 4/4 (maybe?). And then it does something else in the chorus that throws me off and I gave up trying to figure out the time signature in every part after a while. It’s fun to try, though.
Well, we have an advantage here in that you can watch what his hands are doing, too. So try this: watch his left hand. You’ll see him hit the chords in a pattern that roughly corresponds to DUNNH-duh DUNNH-duh… etc.
DUNNH is the downbeat. He also holds it through the second beat. duh is the third beat, right before the next DUNNH, which is the first beat/downbeat of the next measure. DUNNH is louder than duh, equating to stronger emphasis of that beat. Watching his hands, he attacks DUNNH with a heavier touch than duh, which is a light tap of the keys.
Listen to the bass notes. He hits the bass chord hardest on the downbeat.