What are your thinking styles/inner worlds?

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also if you don't think - describe that. a while ago i was just doing stuff all day and no time to think or notice thoughts.

I find this really hard to analyse, because someone else's descriptions might or not apply to mine as it's hard to describe. I think very visually, in pictures and have a photographic memory. I imagine possible future events and remember past events in vivid detail. I do create a lot of scenarios in my head to work things out. My brain goes very fast, it's very hard for it to rest and I have a very long, detailed and pretty verbatim memory for conversations. However, I have no idea whether the pictures in my head are 2D, 3D, or 4D, I would guess 3D but as it's in my mind and not right in front of me I can't say. I sort of identify with Temple Grandin's explanation of the pictures in her head being like the internet with lots of web pages. Don't know if any of that is what you mean about style of thinking. My inner voice is like an invisible voice that's there but not (as in I don't believe I'm hearing an audible voice) but I guess that's what everyone's is like.

as for the 3d,2d,4d - we all see in 2d however the normal brain works out using parrallex whether an object is 3d or not - we see it's depth by comparing the two images we have of it (our left eyes image and our right eyes image) eg parrallex. so if you imagine a 2d square or have the memory of looking at your room both images itself are in 2d format. we live through a screen our vision is only ever a 2d screen and that's why we have 'up down left right' those words relate to 2d movements. if we look up we're not specifying a point to look to but a way to 'navigate' our 2d screen up is the towards the top edge, right towards the right edge etc (i thtink the screen is a rectangle..). if we lived in a 4dimensional reality (ie were four dimensional beings) then we'd be seeing 3d that would be our screen apparently. oh and classic autism they don't have the seeing the depth of objects so they see the world as it is like in 2d colours patterns and so they don't recognise objects each moment i suppose is like a picture for them and then they change where they're looking and the picture changes - but if they can't recognise 3d objects i guess they wouldn't look at objects just have a general gaze idk that's what i'm hoping to find out by people who can describe it. i've found if you really imagine you can mentally be in first person mode and that makes your mental visual feel 3d like you then get the sensation of feel as you touch the objects that are a certain distance away from you (your screen) ie try to make your mental imagination just like real life ie first person (yet of course the rest the world you're actually in can be completely whatever you imagine obviously).

yeah i think you have described thinking style. though the problem with this is that to really give an idea you probably have to give examples of what you're actually doing your problems and stuff or academic tasks to understand what you're actually using the thinking for. last few days i've just been learning about stuff on the mind and developing my own concept simplification system and atm that would be that there's the 2 categories one is perception the other is brain type. different perceptions are literally how you see the world one is 2d sensory (classic autism), 3d sensory (dyslexia - disorientation etc), objective - ie you look at things but as soon as you know what that thing you've looked at is you stop looking at it (subconcious all of this) because you know what it is eg imagine as a theoretical example imagine there's 3 different 3d shapes a cube a squiggly random thing and a another even more different looking shape - but they all have the letter A on them (ie they all have the same symbol what they are), 2d brain sees each object as a differnt 2d pattern literally, 3d sensory sees each object as a different 3d object, and the verbal brain just looks at each object and there eyes just see the letter A on each of the object and that is what they mainly pay attention what those objects are well they are called each A. but anyway my point is i kind of draw my own conclusions and simplify lots of learning into one simple system like a researcher like independent thought, scientific thinking. then i have simplifications for different brain types and that's like the verbal mind that is so logical and verbal (verbal meaning symbolic so either words or 2d diagrams) which makes their perception unable to read faces (aspie) ie vicariously experience. then there's classic autism that is so sensory they just don't get words for a long time as children theirs no such thing as meaning to them when people speak they just hear the sound of the voice. then there's the normal social brain which reads faces and understands words but because it's so balanced doesn't specialise in anything. then dyslexic mind which is pure visual sensory thinking but because their perception is 3d not 2d they identify objects and all that eg are just visual thinkers and therefore creative/feeling or maybe even just way cleverer everyone should think that way in actual real things and they're kind of the normal brain but advanced or something...

Mine seems so much more - basic - than everyone elses.

Mostly i feel fuzzy inside. When i think of things, i can visual the object, and i can rotate it in 3d and usualy get the correct colors on it. Generally i dont see anything unless i make myself see it.

Music - i can hear it if i make myself think about it - but i cant remember the words.

I have a pretty intense imagination - dont know about blaming the zoneouts or shutdowns or what-not - but generally its completely 3d, live and interactive, sound and everything. It becomes harder to distinguish which one is real if im tired, so tend to slip in and out and keep up with what im doing in either. I used to dream alot when i was younger and when i woke up it would carry over into my day when i shutdown. As an adult i dont remember my dreams at all unless they are nightmares - which i get occasionaly.

When in a dreamlike state, everything feels so much better - the volume isnt too loud, the colors are darker and i feel number. Is this what NT's feel like? Who knows.
Maybe one day my head will burst like a grape and a little man will fall out and ill become normal, and he will have to live in the dark because hes so sensitive.

Mine varies from fantasy with dragons and such to anime to a world where people dont exist with a bunch of dinosaurs walking around.

this is pretty much my thinking style i think - and yeah lately i've been making myself see what i'm thinking about simply because it's more enjoyable and after a long time of creating mental senses ie mental sensation but memory i get in a excited, blissfull mode (i feel fine when not in that mode though just like normal and if anything 'emotionally fatigued' i call it others might call it 'happy' 'normal') . i think all this comes down to there's two ways of knowing/understanding there's words and symbols and logic and then there's what it actually is so instead of saying it in words you just mentally see it not from memory but you take that 'meaning energy' that thought you have and then actually create something of it that must be it. but then again with really abstract, logical thinking about thinking that's hard to do. like how do you visual the word 'thought'/'thinking' it has to refer to something in relaity so there has to be some feeling, sense to it...

i'm not at your level of blurring reality yet hehe but after reading this story and doing the first person visuals a bit i think and just generally picturing it as well as i could making sure after i read the sentence like wait what did i just read what must it look like and actually see it seeing as it's a story. (it was a really descriptive in the present story also) and i was reading for ages and just after waking up in the night or something but basically after a while later i had the memory of what i'd done earlier in the day it felt like i'd practically had the experience of going to that place just like going any other place and remembering it recalling it. but it was strange that same day i'd had a weird sleeping pattern and i'd fallen asleep and then woken up at 2am and stuff after four hours sleep and my sleep was real f*****g strange my dream was getting out of bed in my room and it was just like i hadn't falen asleep i was still awake and i turned on the tv music worried about the people in teh corridor hearing it being loud ate some food on the fridge in my uni room then thought right now i'm gona go to sleep because it's so late and then when i got back in my bed was when i woke up from the dream and in teh dream world i thought it was like 4am in the morning but then when i woke up i still thought this but was subtely unsure then i checked my watch and saw no it's 11 oclock and then i was like wait i haven't just gone to bed i just had a really realistic dream which i've woken up from it was weird. and it wasn't lucid dreaming it was a dream so relevant to what was going on around me as i went to sleep eg in my room other people in the corridor etc.

if you want to remember your dreams just make sure to be mentally visualising each day and get into the excited state - i'd have the thought your interactive intense imagination would let you remember your dreams idk maybe you have to generally 'think' in pictures... because there's a difference between how you generally think and choosing as a hobby to start imagining/reading a book.


the other day when i imagined an interactive thign as i was reading some a story and actually putting myself as the character in first person i got the first person imagination so real just for a split second that it was like bam when my attention went away from it i was like wow i was just in experiencing somewhere else like virtual reality because it was such a first person view (coz that's what real living is - first person visual along with other senses at times. completely and i was in a real excited state and then i didn't imagine anymore i was just content with the real world visuals playing my video game enjoying it more because i took more of the visuals in - i was thoughtless.

Hmm lots of weird stuff in here.

Ok, my thinking stuff... my default is definitely non-verbal and non-visual. You could ask what it is then. I dunno, I just interact with the world and I "think" on my feet, I react to happenings, build up responses to adapt to things or create things. If I discuss a sophisticated topic that requires more "profound" thinking then I still prefer to think on the move, while talking to another person or people. I'm usually one with my environment, I look outside most of the time and so my thinking is intertwined with that.

If I'm actually inside my head, then it's still neither verbal nor visual most of the time. Something abstract, hard to describe. Maybe this ties into that if I read a book, I just see the letters and I know their meaning and I can follow the story very well and excitedly even though I don't visualize any of it in my head. I'm not hyperlexic but almost, I guess.

Btw if I do happen to think verbally at times then I will see the written words in my head, in some generic font so I don't focus on the visual presentation of the letters much. If I visualize inside my head, well that's pretty rare, but I usually do it with abstract logical structures that I build up about something. It's pretty abstract visualization of logical connections, shapes, forms, lines, colours.

I also have some synesthesia, some weird form of it also with multiple aspects, visual in terms of colours, visuo-spatial, auditory and abstract "feelings", all that's connected to numbers, letters, somewhat arbitrary sequences of characters and other arbitrary symbols.

I have some visual imagination as well when I think up stories for fun at times; I see those as motion pictures, like a film. It's only a static image if I imagine an overview of something on how it works, but this imagining happens very rarely. Tbh the "films" and the pictures are pretty subdued, not very vivid in terms of how visual it is. The world around me is also slightly "subdued" in a direct sensory way (though it's of course more vivid than the internal movie pictures), I'm just very used to the things of the world, I don't experience sensory overload, I'm rather the opposite, I have high stimulation threshold.

I'll mention, my access to the world in terms of visual sensing is probably not the same as many people's, I'm very spatial and I very heavily lean on the "WHERE" visual pathway instead of "WHAT" pathway (these are neurological pathways in the brain), that is, I know where things are, but I do not spend as much mental energy on identifying them. Also, my picture of what I see of the world is kind of abstract impressionist, that is, I'm not detail oriented on a conscious visual sensory level, instead I perceive everything at once in a holistic way where the details are all processed in one. This works very efficiently though. (I can zoom in and process details one by one if I want to, of course but I usually don't care to.) And this holistic visual attention of mine is very broad and shallow as well, I don't look at one thing for long unless it's very special. So with me being so spatial and abstract impressonist and broad and just not being a verbal person much, one side effect of that is that I can have a hard time identifying and naming objects. I see the object well, I just don't know what it is lol. Everyday objects are not a problem of course, just the more special ones. I have a weird thing going on for handling/manipulating objects too, I either only see the object very well in a static way but can't analyse it to be able to use it; or I can choose to just start using it while avoiding looking at it but that trick does work for some strange reason. I mean, if I tried to look at the object too much I'd start f*****g up some analysis of it and then that blocks my ability to manipulate/use the object. I also have an issue copying new movements in one go, it has to be broken down into static steps, I'll connect those and will be able to imitate the motion then. Not until then. Not sure if these are asperger related or what, I may not even actually have asperger syndrome.

Anyway, to go back to "inner world" stuff, I don't have much of that as I said, but I'll try to list things in the order of usage frequency of thinking forms: 1) formless/intertwined with the world 2) abstract formless 3) verbal 4) visuo-spatial 5) plain visual (this is most rare for me as internal thinking form). Overall I suspect I'm not someone who's meant to think that much inside the head. I'm more "built" for interaction with the actual world.

My Brain ("Cliff Notes" version):

I'm a primarily "verbal" thinker with limited visualization capability.

Luckily, I have a nearly photographic memory for printed text, which is a boon in school.

Other than that, I'm a highly "associative thinker." My brain bounces around from concept to concept, and I suck at just about anything involving "linear thought."

I also have a lousy "working memory." My working memory score was the absolute lowest score on my WAIS-IV.

--fini--

that was me i think at school when i was 15 and with the eudcational psychologist test. the working memory test was just remembering numbers in a sequence pretty low function stuff compared to like actual thinking verbal nonverbal reasoning. i remember doing that just printing the image of text book exactly as i'm looking at the first person image. maybe you meant linear thought more in the derogatory terms for like stupid, obvious stuff... my terminology is verbal thinking = linear thought as all sentences are linear, that's why you read it left to right each word at a time.

after reading yours and i guess other people's quotes i think i'm pretty deficient in visual. because surely it takes some real seeing to really know what you're reading about. words fool one into thinking they know what it is ... but all words are communication codes for actual things. it seems you're definately in that sensory mode a lot of the time and i'm pretty sure it feels good to be in that mode like a genearl higher excitement level. when you said where rather than what that's exactly what i mean by simply the visula information that you're seeing in relation to you ie your sense rather than thinking about the object ie doesn't matter specifically how it looks or how you're sensing it just what is it. that could possibly be the basis of thought vs feeling which basicaly means symbol vs senses.

yeah if you thinking you're literally not sensing that's why you won't use the object as well because you're not sensing it if you're thinking about it - (it's a revelation only recently i realised the difference between thought and attention ie meaning and information) . using objects is meant to be thoughtless and done by the subconscious (brain that processes visual/senses) anyway like with driving a car once you're used to it. i'd say you don't have aspergers as to put sense to all this thinking stuff to acutall be 'thinking' in teh first place you actually have to have some interest topic to think about but if you're just living your life fine no problems then you wouldn't go into problem solving mode which is thinking on your own.

yeah the inner world thing that's for anyone whose really classic autistic because i watched a video where an older autistic person was saying that those hand flapping 'crazy' type of kids people it's because they're living in a virtual reality literally that the real senses interfere with it. or maybe it' sjust hypo/hypersensitivity and they don't have any inner world. but i've read that autistic people the reaosn why they're so on their own and so phsyically dysfunctional in this real world is because they'd much rather be in this pure imagination place which they've cleverly developed and it's a place without words only senses and feelings ie reality.

i am from time to time maddened by my awareness as it relates to my observations. i cannot rely on instinct to understand people or the world around me so i used my knowledge base and go from there.

ive been told that i 'intellectualize' as a defense mechanism. thats rubbish. in many situations i wish a had emotion and gut to use for guidance. i do use my method as a strength most of the time and this maddens me quite a bit less. when i get to functioning better, i kind of like it, which is the first time ive said that. pros and cons blah blah blah

quantum psychology talks about the observer based reality, so i am not sure if this is what you mean by 4d. in quantum psychology, 4d would happen when you notice your own noticing or when you observe your own observations. in fact, they talk about the possibility of infinite dimensions each in which you observe the dimension contained within it, but that gets me feeling crazy to think about. so most days, this is how it works for me on successive levels:

zero: the eternal self
animal: basal desires and fears (you can see people in this dimension in addiction)
primary lens: when people respond to themselves, others and the world due to primary socialization (parents)
secondary lens: when people respond to themselves, others and the world due to secondary socialization (that would be school ad friend groups for most people)
tertiary lens: when people respond to themselves, others and the world due to societies expectations (age group, the politic, professional cohort)
observer: when people are aware that their responses to themselves, others and the world are framed by the animal, primary, secondary and tertiary lenses.

in my struggles, i do wish sometimes that i operated using my lenses more often, but a lot of it is modeling and the looking glass self, which requires social intelligence or awareness that a lot of us i am sure do not excel at.

that said, i spend much of my day in observer mode. for me, the observer tries to help soothe me, which he does do but in the end he has to get out of the way and allow me to be my zero self. i dont need him when i am in the woods and sitting by the river watching an autumn leaf roll in the tide against the bank.

yeah i don't even know what intellectualise as a defense mechanism refers too/means... there's probably some socially sinister meaning behind it 'defense' mechanism i used to just think that meant like comfort but after reading about s**t it probably literally is to do with like social status and not being put down by some animal who wants to make himself seem stronger in the group.

i just had a quantum observation whilst reading your post/responding i noticed that i actually enjoy/need learning as my goal is to put myself in that sensory state and i know the best way to do it is like read a story or just plain start imagining or something but i find myself prefering to continuing learning about what to do rather than actually doing it to see if it works... idk but about that here's the physics video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDaKzQNlMFw - i just had the association with it and autistic people who literally see the world in 2d and can't recognise 3d objects due to their visual processing but then the surreal and hard to get your head around (so to speak) fact that we all see the world in 2d - our first person mental screen is always a flat screen thefore 2d - it contains 3d like objects but they are just drawings on the screen essentially just like watching tv you are like the camera. it's obviously 3d what you're watching but you can't put your hand through the screen and the screen is flat hence the actual image itsellf is 2d. it's off topic kind of too psychology but it really is crazy but what i'm doing right now just look at any point in the room it could be an object but just any point and keep your looking in that one direction that one tiny point till comfortable then notice that that screen of your vision itself is not moving - that's your picture frame. now without changing your gaze just try to be aware of the stuff in the edges of your screen and then you notice that each thing you can observe has a kind of 2d coordinate on your screen ie how high up or left/right it is.

i definately haven't gotten to the tertiary lens life yet - it doesn't sound good...

yeah that's what i mean when i'm in excited mode that i guess would be your zero mode. but i'd called it sensory/thoughtless or excited mode because well i feel excited during it and have no verbal thoughts and am simply taking in all the information as it happens. if my eyes were recorded with teh tracking device they'd be looking at all the righ tplaces on people's faces and body movement (and female curves hehe in this mode libido goes up stuff looks softer and more feminine) and just actual visual things in general my eyes would be on the object way more and not looking away to think or something. and i think that apart from just being able to speak and think is all you need for socialising - to me it's certainly all you need to enjoy it and enjoy tv, books any faces more. probably even animal faces (havne' tlooked at them in the mode yet)

It's hard to tell what my thinking style is. I feel like I just kind of stumble through the world attempting to process things but getting overwhelmed, like a slow computer that lags or stops responding when you open up too many tabs or windows. Although I am very articulate and coherent when I write, speech is another matter entirely. I struggle to find the right words to say in real life interactions, so when I actually get the words out I repeat them or pause or go "um, like, uh..." over and over until I can formulate my next words. It's very frustrating.

My inner world is best described as a TV screen. I most commonly imagine things in an anime style, since anime was my biggest obsession growing up and still has an influence on my artwork. The second most common style I imagine is CGI, either as a movie or video game. This style is rapidly becoming the norm for me as my interests are shifting away from anime to movies like Brave, Tangled and How to Train Your Dragon. I can't imagine things (or especially people) as they appear in the real world, which is why in my mind everything appears as a cartoon.My dad thinks that an imaginary video game would be boring because, in his words, "you win every time". But for me, it's not about winning but about exploring my imaginary world and interacting with the characters who inhabit it, even though I do sometimes imagine battles just for fun. I guess that's why actual video games have become less enjoyable and more difficult for me in recent years - you have to actually solve challenges instead of allowing yourself to wander around and savor the fantasy world around you. I think that's why I remember the Donkey Kong Country trilogy for the SNES so fondly - it was less about challenging gameplay than about the music and atmosphere of the levels.

oh, i see now what was meant by 4d. it would not surprise me if those with AS could have this ability. when my zero me and my observer me are working in harmony, it is quite easy to see a tree (for example) as my minds representation of a tree. what i mean by that is, the brain has a way of organizing information regarding space/time/matter that makes survival easier. i cant say whether we all see the same tree, but i think i definitely am aware of my perception of it being related to functionality of my processes.

'I feel like I just kind of stumble through the world attempting to process things but getting overwhelmed, like a slow computer that lags or stops responding when you open up too many tabs or windows' that sentence reveals your visual experiential thinking ie analogy if that analogy came to you very easily and immediatley then you're likely a visual experiential right brain thinker and the bit before in teh sentence was also quite experiential ie describing the attempt and the aftermath. you do your own art too and takes a while for you to find word you want (different to me who i can retrieve words in no time but it feels lazy like i haven't thought about it whatever it is that much - it's not completely my fault i think small talk actually f***s up an aspie's brain as it pays attention to the actual meaning of words etc in small talk and then i regurgitate that type of speaking in my own general speaking urgh words are pretty s**t in general they are just codes for actual things)

recently when i was tyring to enter a virtual reality ie first person imagination i imagined myself with teh abiliteis of maori from arcana heart 3 in the dark souls world with a knight in front of me ).

also perhaps this is thinking too much about it but 'I guess that's why actual video games have become less enjoyable and more difficult for me in recent years' the way you wrote that sentence also shows a visual mind... i''ll explain: if one writes i enjoy video games then how do you actually visualise that; well you visualise playing the video game and then essentially it's describing an enjoyable video game so it's writing like objectively about subjective things ie 'the enjoyable video game'. that was a bad example to use 'enjoying' but i'd come across this before when thinking about how i actually understand meaning in sentences. it's like what causes them enjoyment the video game to them the video game is enjoyable and thus 'enjoyable video game' is the ultimate meaning regardless whether they wrote 'i enjoy video games' or 'enjoyable video games' - it sounds like over thinking but that's to do with the crucial difference with how dyslexics naturally would read - that is basically all words are like nouns or actions anything visualised and then they combine em (see ron davis book)... oh god... anyway your writing reads well to me.

'you have to actually solve challenges instead of allowing yourself to wander around and savor the fantasy world around you' - cognitive vs experiential right there - left brain vs right brain - meaning vs sensory.

ones thinking is definately correlated to ones activity and life - do you have to create art for things?. i'm like a researcher i guess i enjoy or find myself doing anyway lots of learning and understanding about something and then pretty much coming up a new link between things that simplifies it - so i'll be logical and think in words because i'm reading so many articles and videos that are more word based than pictures like most lectures. and the more you do it the more you mind plasticises to become that way so i found myself reading a story and not getting visuals from it and then i consciously made sure to see imagine it. but i now think that if you have a verbal thought even one sudden understanding you came up with yourself or what someone's said to you or you've read to really comprehend it you have to see it. all thoughts must be related to something that goes under the format of a or several senses literally taste, touch, visual etc. you can understand the unseeable/unknown with words and concept ie vaguness but if you then really have meaning the meanign should be able to make you imagine it based on it. also my thinking's going to change because before it was on just various itnerests magic the gathering, economics - stuff i'd obsess about and try completing and then my latest completion hobby has been my social nervousness which i now have researched enough (because they only just about have the right cure mindfullness now it's not a big thing) and i only made it my hobby after thinking about the purpose of life in terms what people actually do in general - but now i have a better sense of 'that' and that is something i couldn't have even conceived before which is simply life is the different information of the senses, a visceral expereince. in the present. and my goal has been to get rid of social nerves, and the sub goal ie method became to get myself into the sensory state (for some reason it takes away my nerves and replaces it with vicariously experiencing the other person greatly) so i guess that in itself is going to change my thinking style. but then i don't want to be doing this like mindfullness exercised for the rest of my life or until, if it does change my brain so i don't have to exercise into that mode but then after a while of not exercising reverts back... (which if anyone wants to know for me comes about simply with created (non remembered) mental sensation (possibly that first person mode is even more exciting generating than just third person images).

when you explore the imaginary world, firstly it's like an easy thing for you to do right? you get so excited to it it's no like you're trying to imagine for some alterior reason but you just want to do it? also in teh world is it in first person how does it work? do you have to think about creating it a lot or is your mind just so excited it's coming up with all of it rapidly?