# What mental abilities did you not know it was possible to lack? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 15, 2012, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290 "2012-07-15T10:46:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Amblydoper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@Amblydoper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amblydoper)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/21 "2012-07-16T02:52:14Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > People’s visual fields do not vary very much (unless they have glaucoma or some other fairly serious eye disease, that restricts it), and no-one can see significant amounts of detail or color in peripheral vision (although we are quite good at detecting movement there). There are just not enough receptor cells out in the periphery of the retina. We all have to move our eyes to see things clearly. Obligitory [xkcd](http://xkcd.com/1080/) link ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/22 "2012-07-16T03:09:27Z")
I tutored intro computer programming classes for two years. I was constantly amazed that people couldn’t put their thoughts into a structured format. \*\*write a routine to calculate average test scores. \*\*Obviously you have to get the scores from somewhere (usually reading a file), sum them up, and divide by the total possible number of scores. Step 1, is to decide what variables you need and the data type 2. setup a loop read the file (if you’re processing multiple students 3. sum up, divide and report the average score. Continue to the next student. No More Students? Close file. Done. The teacher always included at least one student with a missing grade. You’d be amazed at how many people counted the scores (say 6 tests) and used 6 instead of 7. Simple enough. A fairly basic program for FORTRAN, COBOL, PL1 or even C. I always insisted the student at least tried to write the code before our tutoring session. Language or Compiler errors aren’t a big deal. But, I was just shocked at the twisted logic they tried to use. ---
**Author:** ![Battle\_Pope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/23 "2012-07-16T03:45:48Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > OK, [here](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&th&emc=th) is a New York Times article that mentions it, it’s called Guugu Yimithirr: My dad is a retired geologist who spent a lot of time in central Australia working with the Indigenous peoples. Years ago he told me some of his experiences working with guides from the local Aboriginal groups. Apparently a printed topographic map was near useless when trying to show the majority of their guides where they wanted to go but an airphoto or satellite image was quite OK. ---
**Author:** ![Craz3d117](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@Craz3d117](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Craz3d117)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/24 "2012-07-16T07:40:22Z")
It seems to me people are talking about “skills” more so than what I’d call true “mental abilities.” For instance I have a friend who is very introverted and he was saying how just recently he thought about thinking about things from other people’s perspectives (i.e he lacked the mental ability of empathy). This was of course extremely shocking to me, especially considering apart of being kind of weird, he’s basically a completely normal person. Although I would agree with the OP that not being able to mentally visualize something is rather odd to me. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/25 "2012-07-16T07:44:10Z")
> [@Victory\_Candescence](#): > > On the other hand, she posses true multitasking ability, which I did not realize existed. I had always assumed people who claimed to multitask we’re just switching between tasks every few seconds, but she can honest-to-God do two things (like watch TV and browse te web) at the exact same time and pay attention to both. If she really can do that then there are probably various researchers around the world who would be very interested to hear about it and study her. Your assumption about multi-tasking is correct as far as I am aware. > **[Human multitasking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking)** > > Human multitasking is the concept that one can split their attention on more than one task or activity at the same time, such as speaking on the phone while driving a car. > Multitasking can result in time wasted due to human context switching (e.g., determining which step is next in the task just switched to) and becoming prone to errors due to insufficient attention. Some people may be proficient at the tasks in question and also be able to rapidly shift attention between the tasks, and there... ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/26 "2012-07-16T07:49:10Z")
One of the hardest things for many people to envision seems to be that the bosses often take this or that decision based on limited information: “why are they closing that factory? [List of reasons why it doesn’t make sense to close it]” Well, often the Big Bosses never knew those reasons in the first place; if someone gives them the missing information in time, the plans change. One of the hardest things for me to realize was that many times, when people prepare plans, the reason they don’t add certain “if… thens…” is not because they have considered them irrelevant: it’s because that If never occurs to them. This leads to an inability writing complete manuals or appropriate testing protocols, for example: you can’t explain or test for a case which you never thought of in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/27 "2012-07-16T08:12:04Z")
I was really shocked to find out that a buddy of mine couldn’t figure out how to calculate a 15% tip. I’ve always been pretty good at math and was thinking, Christ what a bymmer way to have to go through life. ---
**Author:** ![allotrope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/edb3f5/32.png) [@allotrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/allotrope)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/28 "2012-07-16T08:56:00Z")
> [@Victory\_Candescence](#): > > I was floored to learn that my wife, who is a thoughtful, intelligent, academically successful person, has no ability to visualize images in her head. When she closes her eyes, she always sees black and that’s it. Same here, even in dreams. However I do ‘see’ concepts and manipulate them in ways I imagine most people would images. ---
**Author:** ![Spectralist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Spectralist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectralist)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/29 "2012-07-16T09:01:41Z")
There are two abilities I didn’t know it was possible to have that I discovered on this very board. One is to read without mentally hearing the sounds of the words. I was floored when I learned that was possible. The other is to actually picture what you read as you read it. I can force myself to picture things, read or otherwise, but I can’t quickly picture what I’m reading when I read novels or the like; I just hear the words and understand them conceptually without ever picturing anything. I had always assumed in the past that it was like that for everyone and when people described reading as being like watching a movie in their mind they weren’t being literal. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/30 "2012-07-16T09:02:34Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The teacher always included at least one student with a missing grade. You’d be amazed at how many people counted the scores (say 6 tests) and used 6 instead of 7. Er, maybe the actual assignment was more clear, but this seems like an ill-formed spec more than a student reasoning error. For purposes of an average, treating a missing score as a score of “0” and discounting a missing score as not belonging to a set are both equally valid, depending on the needs of the person getting the output. Of course, in commercial software you’d probably provide an option (or two different functions) that act in both of those ways, but unless it’s mentioned explicitly in the spec, I’d say it’s ambiguous and valid to interpretation either way. Granted, in the case of an ambiguous spec you should ask the professor/TA, but I don’t think them using the “discount the score” method is that bizarre. Though I agree in general. The inability of some people to grasp a for loop is phenomenal. I’m not even talking about the syntax, I mean the PREMISE. Look, guys, it does things on the inside a certain number of times. It means “Do this 5 times:” I’m not talking about enhanced for loops, or weird C hax, I mean very basic “i = 0; i \< 5; i++” stuff. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/31 "2012-07-16T09:02:57Z")
How about not being able to differentiate left and right? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/32 "2012-07-16T09:31:44Z")
Or the much more common being able to differentiate them, but having only a 50% chance of saying the one you mean (while actually gesturing correctly)… ---
**Author:** ![raskolnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e47c2d/32.png) [@raskolnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raskolnik)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/33 "2012-07-16T11:15:53Z")
-I’m faceblind. When my ex-girlfriend got her hair dyed, I thought she was a stranger the first few times I met her. I mean I’d look through the peephole of the door and think “who is that?” -My mother got a haircut and I couldn’t look at her for a few days. I have trouble knowing old pictures of me are in fact me. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/34 "2012-07-16T13:45:29Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > How about not being able to differentiate left and right? I couldn’t do it until I had an operation on my left wrist that left a scar. I come from a family that is totally lack the direction gene. Nobody in my family has any sense of direction. I can still get lost in my own neighborhood. Once my younger sister finds her way from point A to point B, even if she goes around points C,D,E,F & G to do it, she will use that route the rest of her life. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/35 "2012-07-16T14:04:29Z")
> [@Victory\_Candescence](#): > > Examples: > > I was floored to learn that my wife, who is a thoughtful, intelligent, academically successful person, has no ability to visualize images in her head. When she closes her eyes, she always sees black and that’s it. Ok, dumb question coming up. Is that really…unusual? Because I can “visualise” things, as far as I know - at least, I can do those puzzles where you rotate things around in your mind and say who can see the side of the cube with the red dot on and all that sort of stuff. But it’s got nothing to do with what’s in front of my eyes - it’s happening off in some other part of my mind. If I was doing some visualisation with my eyes closed, it would be at the same time as being fully aware that what is actually in front of my eyes is just black (well, black with random patterns in it usually - anyway, nothing to do with what I’m actually visualising and concentrating on) ---
**Author:** ![Kiyoshi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e19adc/32.png) [@Kiyoshi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiyoshi)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/36 "2012-07-16T14:06:08Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Lack of knowledge of direction, as in north, south, etc. > > **Mrs. FtG** is completely clueless in this regard. And I’m not talking about just driving in a strange area. At home, she has no idea what direction east is. She doesn’t even know what side of the house gets the morning sun. And we’ve lived here decades. > > Once I get her to understand which way is east, she still doesn’t know which way is north. And then she’ll forget it all completely and won’t remember it the next time it comes up. > > When I give her driving directions, I can’t say “turn north”, I have to say “turn right”, of course. But she can’t even understand how someone (like me) automatically knows where north is and prefers directions using the cardinal points. I’m confused by this. If I were to dump you in the middle of nowhere, you would just “know” which way is north?! How? And for you, “turn north” is **easier** to understand than a simple “turn right”? 😕 If your wife is like me, then she probably has a problem with “turning” a compass inside her head. Because we’re so used to making the association that “north” means up, “west” means left, “south” means down, and “east” means right. If I’m facing north, and you tell me to face west, that’s easy. “West” means left. But if I’m facing, say, south-east, and you tell me to face west, that’s a lot of mental gymnastics to translate it into terms of “left and right”. [I’ve just tried that now, and I couldn’t do it in my head. I had to draw a compass, and turn the drawing round until “SE” was pointing up.] As for the sun, she probably just isn’t aware where the sun rises. I’m in my bedroom at the moment, and I couldn’t possibly point in the direction the sun rises. I’m just not consciously aware that the sun moves across the sky. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/37 "2012-07-16T14:27:20Z")
> [@Kiyoshi](#): > > I’m confused by this. If I were to dump you in the middle of nowhere, you would just “know” which way is north?! How? And for you, “turn north” is **easier** to understand than a simple “turn right”? 😕 I rarely get dumped in the middle of nowhere. I have frequently traveled to the middle of nowhere though. (Ever seen one of those satellite mosaics of the US at night? See that big dark area near the upper right? I’ve spent a lot of time there.) So I just keep track of things as I go along. I do get lost, absolute direction-wise, once in a while. On tree lined city streets that have a lot of zig-zags and random near 180 bends. And no Sun to help me out. Yeah, I plan my own trips around turning north/south/etc. I have clear mental map of the route and the map has north/south so I follow the map in my mind. **aceplace57** is surprised by people who can’t solve problems by breaking them down into logical steps. I was a Computer Science profs for years, I know that this is the default condition for most people. Every tried to teach programming to someone who couldn’t understand why the computer should execute the first instruction before the second one? People like me are in a small minority. I don’t expect very many others to get this sort of stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/38 "2012-07-16T14:42:49Z")
> [@Darryl\_Lict](#): > > I was really shocked to find out that a buddy of mine couldn’t figure out how to calculate a 15% tip. I’ve always been pretty good at math and was thinking, Christ what a bymmer way to have to go through life. Yeah…you don’t even have to be brilliant at math! This one always gets me. A 10% tip is super easy to figure out, right? Well, a 20% tip is double! and then you just need to be somewhere approximately in the middle and Bob’s your uncle. Same thing with any percent, actually. Once you can figure out 10%, you can figure anything else out. I cannot do the directions at all. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t know which way is east at my house…I know the river is east, in Albany. I always think I would HATE to live in a city that didn’t have a river. Half the time when I am not sure where I am that’s how I figure it out. “Well, that says South Pearl Street, so that means the river’s that way, and so I have to make a left to get back to my house.” ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/39 "2012-07-16T16:13:50Z")
I was surprised to learn that my wife and son can remember a 10 digit number and recite it back, either forward or backward, with no mistakes. Because I remember numbers by visualizing a picture of that number I can only hold 3 or 4 digits at a time. I have other ways of dealing with bigger numbers but the bottom line is, if I don’t write it down immediately some of the digits are probably going to end up wrong. Tell my wife or son your phone number and they will call you back, tell me and I’ll run for pencil and paper. I don’t know what mental process they use to remember numbers but it isn’t the way I do it and I don’t understand it. ---
**Author:** ![LegsAkimbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f1d935/32.png) [@LegsAkimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LegsAkimbo)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2012, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290/40 "2012-07-16T16:26:41Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Lack of knowledge of direction, as in north, south, etc. Wow, kind of glad to find out others have this problem. When I was in high school eons ago, we had hallways known as north, south, etc. I complained to my older brother that these made no sense to me. He said “You’ll get it after a while.” Well, many decades later, I still don’t get it. If I am traveling on a road that I \*know \*goes north and south and someone says to turn west on some street off of that road, of course I can figure that out. But if I am driving through a city with one-way streets and so on, I need to know if I am turning left or right. The other day I was talking with a friend who lives many miles away about dark clouds in the sky. She asked if they were coming from the west. I had NO idea. It’s completely baffling to me how anyone can just know that. Always has been. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-mental-abilities-did-you-not-know-it-was-possible-to-lack/628290.md?page=3)