Object blindness, tinted lenses and very expensive mulch.
I often write of object blindness, context blindness and face blindness as part of delayed visual processing. This is not a problem with the eyes but with the part of the brain which processes what the eyes see. And I have tinted lenses which cut out certain light frequencies, reducing incoming visual information to allow my brain more time to process what I see. Or perhaps I should say, I DID have tinted lenses.
I was operating a mulching machine, a lovely but noisy job involving posting garden refuse into a slot so it can be muched up and come out of a spout as mulch… all rather magical and very hypnotic. I wear ear protection for it and also a respirator so I’m not inhaling all the dust it kicks up, and somehow my glasses got lost. I called Chris to help me find them. Then the dread struck me. I could see a piece of shinier garden refuse than all the rest. This piece was hinged with curves. Yes, it was the remains of my glasses, now mulched, only 2 inches of metal remaining. The irony was that once they’d come off, I probably saw them but didn’t recognise what they were and enthusiastically piled them into the mulcher. One of those days I’m afraid. Tomorrow morning its off to the optician to get a new pair. Very expensive mulch.
… Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
Yeek.
I’m fortunate in that the color of my tinted lenses is easy to come by on an online site. I wasn’t sure it’d work. I had Irlen lenses before. But I went to Zenni Optical (not sure if they deliver to Australia or not) and found a tint that was very close to my earliest pair of Irlen lenses. Then I ordered a pair of those, and they actually work pretty well, and are very cheap. It wouldn’t work for all tints but fortunately my shade of green was covered.
Hello to Amanda
In what way do you tinted lenses help you?
Hello to Donna,
What do you man by face blindness. What happens when you look at someone. Cant recognize who they are?
I wrote a whole book on this – Like Colour To The Blind (Jessica Kingsley Publishers)
I also wrote extensively about it in The Jumbled Jigsaw
and wrote some on it in Autism; An Inside Out Approach.
there are articles throughout this blog which mention visual perceptual challenges and others on my website http://www.donnawilliams.net
in a nutshell, I see pattern, theme, feel, not meaning
I process the part and lose the whole
process the object, lose the context
see the face but lose its significance
I navigate my world by placement, movement, touch, acoustics, texture, smell, more than vision.
But lenses, omega 3s, glutamine, low salicylate have all helped improve visual perception.
🙂 Donna *)
do a search on face blindness on this blog
there are articles here already.
face blindness , or, prospognosia
they see all the face, and all the meaning, but don’t recognize who.
you don’t perceive meaning? what’s meaning?
Face blindness WITH context blindness means one doesn’t see the face as a whole.
Context blindness can underpin face blindness or co-occur with it
I have MORE visual cohesion now, but didn’t get it till adulthood so the neurological connections are undeveloped even though the perception is now more intact.
meaning is INTERPRETATION
for more info see Autism and Sensing; The Unlost Instinct.
to understand what visual perception is without interpretation
imagine that all things are art.
the glass, the table, the window, the hair, the boots…. all art.
pattern, theme, feel minus semantics/pragmatics
semantic-pragmatic language disorder is more than processing the verbal
but most don’t understand how it can apply across the visual channel.
for more info on that read The Jumbled Jigsaw
I have a strange relationship with my tinted lenses.
Most of the time, I wear them, in order to cut down certain kinds of visual overload and resulting pain, and to allow myself to, like Donna, process for standard ‘meaning’.
But sometimes that ends up being like a bombardment with ‘meaning’ and I take them off in order to deal with the world in a way that is less visually-oriented, which sometimes cuts down a kind of [i]mind[/i]-overload enough for me to function in a less thinking-y way.
It seems like wearing them turns my brain in one direction and not wearing them turns it in another and both are valuable in different situations.
Do you find that sometimes you need your tinted glasses and other times you don’t? I wear mine religiously at work and especially if I’m outside, but I find that in my rather cavelike house I don’t have a big problem if I don’t wear them . . . but then there is almost no light in my house (by design – I like the cavelikeness) . . .
I need a darker pair in some situations than others. I still have a pair of standard Irlen lenses, very dark, that are good outside or under bright fluorescents, and my cheapie green ones are good inside. But I don’t have situations where I just see ‘normally’ without them.
But there are many situations where I either don’t want to wear them or don’t want to wear [i]any[/i] glasses (I’m very nearsighted), and both of those have to do with the kind of mind-overload I’m talking about. Some situations it’s better not to see things.
Hi,
Late December 1999, I went for Irlen Lense screening and purchased purpless lenses that work the best for me with a combination of two tint overlays. I wanted to see if it would make a difference in my reading by making it more efficient. I am a slow reader due to my human information processing that is not very efficient. I also see shimmering dots throughout space in my visual field.
My glasses had not improve my reading speed and it only very slightly reduced the shimmering dots. This dots do not bother me and I still see clearly without corrective lenses.
But, my glasses did help greatly in reducing eyestrain from the computer. I have mild scotopic sensivity syndrome and I am prone to eye strain with teary and burning eyes with a runny nose without the protection within an hour. Things also look nicer. I basically only need to wear them whenever I am on the computer or watching TV but not as much.
I am also slow in visual processing, such as in reading, large buffet tables, and finding and noticing things in new environments. But, I am still very visual and I view all of natural beauty as art.
Debbie