Seeing spoken words

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I have a weird way of understand words. I don't hear them, but when people talk, I see them spelled out beside them and depending on their tone of voice these words will either be replaced by the other ones, or cascade to the floor, or in the case of my boyfriend, they make little intricate patterns as others are added.


strange thing is, if someone starts using a lot of slang or talks in a weird tone of voice, I can't see the words and I just hear random syllables like "sdkjfhsdf" and I can't say anything cause I can't understand them, AT ALL.

Sometimes, though, this interferes with my ability to talk to people because their words look obnoxious or weird. Cause I'll be setting there are they're talking and the whole time their words will be like, exploding and breaking or something obnoxious like that and I'll be like "AHHH. STFU." That's probably why I don't really like talking to a majority of the population.

Inevitably, though, the words do disappear, usually when the sentence is ended or the word is replaced by another.

Speeches and learning in class is pretty hard, though cause of all the students talking and the teacher going on and on about stuff I don't care about, eventually, the whole classroom is filled with words. It gets really distracting and I really wish that sometimes we learned by reading books and taking tests, not verbal lessons.

I was just kinda wondering, do other people do this?

Yes, I do. And if someone uses a word that I haven't heard before, or pronounces a word differently than the norm, then sometimes I spell it out in my head the way it was said, and I can't understand it at all. For some reason, I always think "enunciate" is hard to pronounce, even though I can say it easily. Every time I use it, I have to say it without thinking how to spell it... because when its spelled its confusing for me, I guess. Hope that makes sense.

Wonder if it could be synesthesia? link to article about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synethesia
It's quite common amongst people on the autism spectrum.
Am do not have it,but sister [who is on the spectrum] does have it.

I do this, but slightly differently. I see the words as a scrolling marquee in my head. The lettering doesn't really change in accordance with tone of voice or context, but it does become harder to "see" when I am bothered by something, like the buzzing of fluorescent lights. I also think in images quite often. If someone is describing something visual, I stop seeing the words and basically watch a movie in my head, narrated by their voice. Class becomes entertaining this way. It is also easier for me to remember conversations, because I am a visual learner and I am essentially reading the spoken words.

As for slang: I don't know enough people who use it on a routine basis. When someone does, I focus on that word. I get stuck thinking about the etymology and literal meaning of it, and I forget what is going on. It's kind of embarrassing.

MeganVegantoast: Do you ever imagine the words of annoying people attacking their speakers? If I saw words like you did and could control it, I know I would do it in a second.

Haha, yeah I'd love to do that. Unfortunately, annoying people have annoying words that do annoying things like explode or just lie in a small compacting pile on the ground. x_x;

That was my first thought as well - I know someone with Synethesia and while she doesn't see words written - sounds show up as colours for her. For her 's like a fractal that background tints the area affected by the sound. I envy her at concerts - it must be awesome to see blue waves rolling out from speakers with the bass line.

I don't see them visually (usually), but I always kinda 'feel' words or sounds, and I 'see' them in my head very clearly. Don't know if that's common or not, don't really care either!

I'd suggest perhaps synesthesia though, I know a couple of people with it and it sounds pretty much what they have... the senses crossing over, more or less.

Megan - yes but not to the fascinating extent that you do.

If I cannot see the words in my mind I cannot understand them, I have the same sort of scrolling marquee thing going on as singularitymadam. if you think about it - which I haven't before now - it must take a phenomenal amount of brain power and split second speed to process language like this. Or is this the way that everyone does it but we can actually see the process going on?

If I don;t know how to spell a word then I cannot say it properly in whatever language. I learnt to read at the age of 3 so I guess that made verbal communication easier.

I do the scrolling marquee thing, but I also have synaesthesia; so every letter has its own specific color.

i usually have a triptic visionary field where the person speaking (whether actually or when i just think about them) is usually to the bottom left, with their words just scrolling across the bottom... and then a picture film to the upper right. it's like watching a movie but i can look over and see how the narrator is interacting. i can also get into the movie itself... though that's where i go into a stupor, ive found.

I would like to re-assure people that seeing words in your head is nothing to worry about. It is your long-term visual memory working. Everybody has visual imagery, some of which is spontaneous and involuntary. Considering how much of our lives we spend looking at words, it stands to reason that these images will sometimes be words. It is just the brain telling us we know what something looks like. This has absolutely nothing to do with synaesthesia - you know that it is part of your thinking process and is not related to any sensory organs - and the simple way to check is to ask yourself if it happens regardless of whether your eyes are open or shut and regardless of whether you are hearing words or just thinking them to yourself. What colour/s your words are is entirely irrelevant. Also, visual imagery, because it is memory, only occurs in the absence of the "real thing"; the brain does not tell you what something looks like from memory when it has no need to, when you are actually looking at the thing.
Therefore, please, everyone, do not get confused with synaesthesia, and, above all, do not do any tests on the internet. Some of my visual imagery takes the form of coloured words and because I could not understand why anyone would think this is "cross-sensory" I did a synaesthesia test to see if it would help me see what they were talking about. This test makes you slow down the thinking process in order to see what colour the individual letters are (which normally rush at speaking-speed); it brings to the forefront of the mind images that normally stay unobtrusive; it causes eye-strain because you have to keep looking away to see how you "see" letters, and then back to the screen over and over again - and in the end it proves nothing. What it does do, though, is affect the nervous system, as visual memory uses the nervous system to send messages from the brain. With me, the affect was traumatic, it affected my whole body and it took about three months to recover. I am deadly serious. I am middle-aged, do not have autism or asperger's or anything else like it, and this was the most frightening experience of my life. I hope people will agree that these pointless so-called tests are dangerous, an abuse of the internet and should be banned.

Actually, I consulted an expert on this, because I only see words "written" on a page, which changes colors with conversations.Everything I hear is like I am reading it. He said this was a type of audio>visual synesthesia, also called ticker-tape synesthesia.

While I disagree with internet tests, I consulted a professor at a prestigious university whose specialty is synesthesia. I tend to believe someone who has written, studied, and tested extensively on the subject.
He is:
Dr. Jamie Ward, Sussex University.

I thought this as soon as I saw the topic title, seems very likely to me, especially since others have similar ways of seeingn words to you.

Of course, it doesn't really matter, since its not going to cause you massive problems :p

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations might be a good read regarding this.

The trouble is that people are confusing two entirely different things here. I have heard of Jamie Ward; if you read carefully you will see he refers to experiencing some kind of colour phenomenon when actually VIEWING written or printed words - this is related to physical eyesight, and they call it synaesthesia. But what some of us are talking about here is ordinary visual imagery, which happens entirely in the brain, is not related to eyesight or any of the senses at all, and is merely us picturing whatever we happen to be thinking about. People do it even after they have gone blind, and even people who are born blind have a sort of visual-spatial imagery. Since in our literate society, a lot of the information we store in our brains has come to us in the form of the written word, the visual imagery will sometimes be of these - think about this: if we had no way of retreiving written information, how much of our memory would we lose? A heck of a lot! This is a fundamental brain function. some of those sites you've been looking at have confused me as well as thousands of others, because it seems to me that they are deliberately confusing the two things and making a lot of people think they are "different" from the norm when they are not. Of course we all know what is just "inside our heads" and what is going on outside, for real, and comes to us through the senses, and we must not let ourselves get into some schizophrenic mentality of not knowing which is which, which is what these cranky websites seem to be encouraging us to do. It's all very nasty, intrusive and spiteful. If you like, check out "Visual imagery and consciousness" by Nigel Thomas, psychologist, who points out that visual imagery occurs in the ABSENCE of the stimulus in normal people. In other words, we "see" words, or any other pictures for that matter, in our heads when we are NOT looking at them for real, because it's a memory thing, and of course we don't need to remember what something looks like when we are actually looking at it! Other useful sites are: MedicalXpress article on "visual dictionary" - which we folk would think of as our spelling-memory, and note that the words "visual representation" occur twice. Also sites on dyslexia confirm the importance of visual imagery of words and other symbols; sites on visual processing disorder refer to visual-spatial working memory using a "kind of visual sketch-pad of the brain ... it allows you to envisage something, to keep it in your mind's eye ... students use this skill to do maths and to remember patterns, images and sequences." Then there is the English Spelling Society (bulletins/b80/spring article by Alun Bye which says the "main reasons for spelling disability seem to be poor visual memory for words, poor visual imagery for words ..." I hope all of this convinces people that visual imagery is a normal part of being human, and we'd all be stuck without it - that not being able to visualise a simple thing like a bunch of everyday symbols would be a disability - and do not take any notice of a very small handful of daft websites that make you think the world has gone bonkers by saying that visual memory of words in any shape or form, be it passages from books, lists, road-signs, shop-signs or words in the abstract, is some kind of "condition", because for every one of those silly sites there are hundreds of proper sites on how the brain works that will re-assure you that you are perfectly normal when you visualise with your BRAIN only ! ! ! Remember the human brain is largely a visual mechanism, and most of what we learn goes through the visual channel - you can check everything I say here, as I have studied this. When I first found that rubbish that calls everything under the sun "syn" I got into a flap, thinking, how on earth do other people function, then, if they don't use their mind's eye to read information in their heads - and because it made me so ill when I was out one day, I turned to the person who happened to be next to me, whom I hardly know, and told him about this, and he immediately said, "Oh yes, when I see words in my head they have different coloured letters, but not numbers,"- if it was unusual, what would be the chances of that? And then I asked my best friend, who said, "It would be pretty weird if people couldn't see words in their heads, wouldn't it?" Exactly ! ! ! So anybody who tries to convince you there's something unusual about it, just tell them they are tallking out of their ***** ! ! Like I said before, if it's just a thinking-process you're noticing and nothing to do with what you are sensing from the outside world, it's NOT synaesthesia, it's just bog-standard visual memory. But if it IS only when you look at letters, and it's like some sort of aura or something, that is an entirely different matter. Hope this clears things up!

Just a few more points: the discussion started with "seeing spoken words" but I dare say some of the people here are describing what they notice when just thinking words, which of course isn't related to hearing at all, and therefore nothing to do with the senses. It would be interesting if those who talk about "seeing spoken words" also notice the same thing happen when thinking silently, in which case it's normal visual imagery.
Another thing: everyone gets involuntary visual perceptions; I think it depends how much of a visual thinker you are, how many involuntary ones you notice. It could be that some people only notice things in their mind's eye when deliberately visualising, and some notice things all the time, and some of us notice them involuntarily occasionally, as I do, and it's not a case of having a "condition" but rather a matter of degree, variations on the theme of being normal, if you like.
Finally, people talking about synaesthesia harp on about colour, whereas some of the folk here don't even mention it. When I talk of thinking visually in words, there is no consistency: sometimes it reverts to however I must have learnt the alphabet, and if you look up "teaching the alphabet" you'll see how common it is to use differently coloured letter-cards, so that is how the letters enter our long-term memories. It's a teaching method, not a "condition"! Sometimes things just look spidery to me, like a sort of colourless semi-conscious spelling-awareness; sometimes they're all pink, sometimes all black, all kinds of variations, so certainly no consistent subconscious "association" for me; and there are probably as many different ways of seeing words as there are literate people! Everyone can visualise words when they want to, I'm sure; while some of us do even when we don't need to. So let's not stick labels on it. It's no different from "seeing" anything else in your head - all on the "this is what it looks like" visual recognition circuit of the brain. It's been really good reading you folk discussing it - thanks. I've been writing a book on this - seems as if half of it is already here!