Narrative Reasoning and Dyslexia
Natalie Brooks
A business helping you successfully manage dyslexia at work | Dyslexia in adults now reaches over 100k dyslexcis?? | Founder of Dyslexia in Adults #dyslexia #dyslexiaatwork #adultdyslexia #dyslexic #dyslexiaawareness
What is it, how does it affect you, and how to activate it?
What is Narrative Reasoning?
According to The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, "Narrative reasoning is an inductive cognitive strategy of telling and interpreting stories to inform."
In non-science terms, Narrative reasoning is the ability to create mental scenes/pictures to hold essential ideas, concepts, and information. It is remembering things using examples, stories, and experiences.
Why does it affect dyslexics?
Dyslexics are prone to strong narrative reasoning because of how our brains are built. We can quickly understand patterns and lots of details because of how fast we process the information, but our working memory gets tired fast. When working memory gets tired is where our narrative reasoning kicks in.
Narrative Reasoning in Action
Once I took an Anatomy and Physiology class at university where we had to memorize all the bones in the body! As a dyslexic, I knew there was no way I could shove all that information into my working memory and then pass a test. So I created a cute saying to remember the bones in the arm. "Mr. Phalanges met at the Carpus (metacarpus); at the Carpus, Ulna hit Radius on the Weens, and it was Humerus." 10 years later can remember the bones of the arm because of this silly little saying I made up. Don't ask me about the leg bones; I never made up a song for those, so I have no clue what they are!
Have you ever been asked by someone where their keys are, and while you can't give them directions like "on the right side of the dresser," you can tell them every precise detail about their location? Like "they are underneath last month's phone bill, next to your wallet, in front of the lamp on the dresser." That would be your narrative reasoning kicking in. You can think in clear specific pictures and images! This kind of visual thinking is a very dyslexic trait and a considerable strength.
Can you remember when teachers told you, you were not good enough because of your dyslexia? Can you remember where you were and the exact words they used? Can you see it in your mind like watching a movie? Narrative reasoning allows you to see experiences you have had and relive them. Seeing these movies is not how "normal" brains work and is a rare trait employers are looking for. It is also a double edge sword. Reliving exact situations is excellent for memory recall but can also hurt if you replay your mistakes repeatedly.
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How to Activate your Narrative reasoning
While every dyslexic is different most of us should be able to use our narrative reasoning. Here are some tips to help you jump-start the process.
Trying to recall the location of something.
Trying to memorize something.
Trying to recall a memory of something.
Drop a comment with your silly sayings or unique ways or remembering things! We are always keen to lean more tricks.
Sr. Design Director Fabric Care EU & IMEA, part of PWD community and dislexic advocate.
1 年Makes sense and resonates with me, but this is true for non dyslexics too. For names what I try to do some times is to find correlated sounds words that can be either in my mother tong lenguaje (Spanish) or English, that helps me a lot and is usually pretty fun, like for example: Camilla = Camel, of course, it takes some time to pull the word “camel” and then connecting it with the name, but is better than nothing!… the bad thing happebds when to bring the correlated word takes longer than expected and the anxiety goes up faster, but is still efficient, as the name of the person will come without me asking for it to other person, ????????, eventually the name will fix in my mind without the need to use the correlated word.