picturing things in your mind

In a follow up to the post on the fact that I can't recognize faces very well... I've been surveying people and apparently most of you out there can do math in your head because you can "see" the numbers.  Like 26+32, or something like that.  I can't "see" the numbers in my head.  They won't stay there. I would have to say, "ok, 26 - so 6 is the 2nd number, and then, 32 so 2 is the other 2nd number. so that would be 6 and 2 is 8.  And then would have to try and remember what the two original numbers are again 26 and 32 in order to figure out what the next two numbers that I needed to add were.  And on top of that I would have to remember that 8 was the other number that I just added up.  But I would have to remember that in some place in my mind because I can't actually "see" this stuff, even in my head. So invariably I would get confused and forget something after I added the 1st two numbers. I would probably have to double check to make sure I had the two main numbers correct, the ones I was trying to add together.

I basically can't picture anything in my head. I can recognize if something matches what I think it should look like, but that's not because I'm comparing it to a mental picture. I think my mind sees things more like a grid. It's like a yes/no thing where it matches up certain points and says, this is in the same place and that's in the same place, so this must be the same thing. I know I'm very spatially aware of things. I have some sort of picture in my mind of where things are and I will notice if they've been moved. Just like how I noticed that the "cap" thing they put on the door of my Lotus wasn't the one that was on it before, even though I'd never really paid attention to it. And I notice if things have moved and are not in the same spot as last time I saw them. So there must be some sort of picture that my mind is comparing what it's seeing now to what it was seeing before. But it's not like a picture you'd see on a camera. I think it's more like a grid with dots on it. Not that I "see" a grid. I don't "see" anything. I just have recognition that's like, "alert: object at x,y is not what it was last time we saw this." I don't know what was there before necessarily, but I know it wasn't what it is now.

I'm not sure how my facial or people recognition system works. Melissa kept telling me that I never noticed when her hair changed, which I think was or is often. I couldn't actually tell you if she changes it much right now because I don't remember.  I know from talking to her that she changed it a lot in the past. 

I was thinking about this several months, about recognizing people and how I couldn't picture things and I realized that I didn't even know if her hair was straight or not. I think it's because I've seen it both ways. Maybe it's because she changes her hair so much that I don't remember it. Because it's not one of those constant things that I can use to identify her.  I think some people's hair I do remember, but it's only if they keep the same style. My mom has had the same hair forever, so I know what hers is like. 

Maybe I just pick things out that don't change and use those as identifying features. If you wear the same clothes then I might recognize you from that. I might even recognize you from the shape of your whole silhouette. I think I can recognize someone I know from a picture of just one part of their face, like a close up.  

But new people, that's harder. I think it takes longer for me to assign a profile to a certain person. Melissa kept trying to point out Jake to me last month and I got him and this other guy that started at the gym near the same time confused, for like two weeks. They kind of looked the same to me. I would see one walking across the mat and I'd see the other one a few minutes later and I wouldn't know which is which. I can tell now, but the first couple weeks I couldn't.

Hmmm, interesting.