How do you think?
It's seems random to other people but I think emotionally, the emotions connected by subjects of interest and
bits of information that I have in my mind.
I can visualize a map of the Cold War era Europe in my head, and then count them accurately from my mental picture.
I stumble a little with modern Europe, and all of those new countries made from the fragments of the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. But I can come pretty close.
Same with Africa, and states of the US.
The picture comes first, and the counting second, and done from the mental picture. So that would be an example of visual thinking.
So my version of naturalplastic's How many nations does Europe have? would be completely different. My visual
map is blurry but using the different emotions that different peoples inspire at different times and some theatrical
props to give me a little bit of visual as a backdrop to my emotions It would go like this.
France-Bonaparte-Corsica-St Helena-Where is Elba? back to France-horses hooves-the Iberian peninsular-
Andorra-Spain, Wellington-Guerrillas,Portuguese-The horses, the German Hussars-north to Belgium.
I'll stop before I bore everyone to tears but you see I would be following the connections but this does lead me off
into tangents eg I'm going to look up Elba and St Helena to see exactly where they are.
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I am an extremely visual thinker, but I can also sense touch and smells on certain things that I am thinking about. For example, when I think of butyric acid (a four carbon strait-chain carboxylic acid), I not only see a floating image of it in my head but can also smell a trace of it (scent of rotten butter). In x-ray mode, the molecule can be mapped to view the flow of electron density around the molecule that can be used to determine chemical reactivity under certain conditions. I can also "see" the individual particles that make up the atoms within the molecule and the movement of each particle in slowed down motion or at near full speed. I can sense the magnetic field vectors for each one during this process, almost like the touch of a finger. I can also do this when thinking about multiple molecules (for bulk properties) at the same time (either same or different ones) and watch the interactions between them.
It was not until I was in college that I learned that not everyone had this ability. I just assumed that everyone mentally "saw" and "felt" what I did.
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I also sometimes think in black & white with no grey area. Things are rite or wrong, good or bad.
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Hard for me to answer, because I'm not really sure what is meant by conjuring up a scent or a sound in my mind. It was quite a long time after I first read about aphantasia before I could really accept that when people spoke of "seeing images in their minds" they literally meant it. (Since I had no conception of what it meant, and I just assumed that people were wildly exaggerating when they said they could see images!)
So similarly, I'm not sure what it means to conjure up a sound, or a scent, in one's mind. Obviously (at least to me it is obvious!), I don't actually hear a sound, or smell a smell. I can imagine a piano concerto that I am familiar with, and I "know" how it sounds. But a certainly don't "hear" anything as I run through it in my mind. So I don't know whether that would count as conjuring it up in my mind, in the sense you mean.
This is exactly the same as me! There's no doubt in my mind that I can't "picture things" in my mind. I also can't make myself "hear" something as if for real, or "smell" something as if for real, but both hearing and smelling a way, way closer to being "real" than seeing.
It's really impossible to describe - there's a "knowing" that comes with the hearing or smelling that isn't there with the seeing. And yet, if you ask me to close my eyes and describe to you how something looks, I could still do it, even though I'm not seeing it.
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It was not until I was in college that I learned that not everyone had this ability. I just assumed that everyone mentally "saw" and "felt" what I did.
Yes! Isn't it weird to learn for the first time that people don't? I think in a very similar manner to you, I think. I also have emotions, sensations, and sounds in there as well.
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Almost entirely words with some images thrown in. I think in numbers a lot too. Oh and song lol. My brain has background music
My dreams and daydreams however are of such perfect clarity I sometimes have a hard time not realizing the events in them didnt happen in real life.
I definitely cant think in emotions or senses. Like I might remember something smells terrible, but I cant remember what it actually smells like till I smell it again.
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The "knowing" is really hard for me to characterise, in my case. For smells, I have absolutely no mental inner awareness of what they are like, but as soon as I actually smell something in real life that I am familiar with, I will instantly recognise it. So in that sense, only, I "know" the smell. For sounds, I can run through the sound or the music in my head, but not hearing anything at all, just a knowledge of how it goes. For images of people or things, I "know" what they look like but I see no mental imagery at all. I could draw a familiar object from memory, if it is geometrical. For faces, I could manage little more than a childish scribble of an oval with two eyes, two ears and a nose and mouth; even for people I know well. Same if I was asked to describe someone I know well; two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth.
Last edited by strings on 02 Dec 2018, 8:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Suspected; PTSD (Treated, as my counselor did notice), possible PCOS, PMDD, Learning disabilities (Sure of it, unknown what they are), possibly something wrong with immune system (Sick about as much as I'm not) Possible EDS- hyper mobility type (Will be getting tested, suggested by doctor) dysautonomia
I think mostly in words.
I do not need the 'imaginary situation where I'm having a conversation with someone else' like starcats described but sometimes I'll have them too.
I think that's because I also daydream a lot and for me it is somewhere in between daydreaming and thinking about the topic the imaginary conversation is about.
Daydreams are visual and auditory but sound feels less real than the images. They're like a movie, but unlike what some others have described, I actually see it like a movie and not from my perspective. The same is true for actual dreams. I see myself as if it was a movie.
If I'm immersed in a daydream there can be emotions and other feelings too. Only smell and taste do not occur. Characters in a daydream can like or dislike a taste or react to a smell but I don't have a mental representation for it. There's also usually no music in my head.
I can think in pictures (also when it's not a daydream) if the information I'm trying to access is primarily visual. For example when I'm trying to follow a map I had a look at previously I'll visualize it and place a small person on it to see where left and right is. In the example someone else mentioned about counting the countries of a continent I'd also try to visualize it (but my knowledge of geography isn't particularly good, therefore there'd be too many areas I couldn't resolve). I also need mental images for drawing or for memorizing and recalling things that can't easily be described in words (JiuJitsu techniques for example - but of course to actually do them they need to be kind of automatic).
I think in words and emotions.
I recall in words, emotions, images and videos, and that is also how I dream
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In real-time, I think in words like a running dialogue in my mind but my memories are based on colours and non-literal representations of colours, sounds, smells, textures etc (synaesthesia). Every letter, word, name, place and thought has a colour and when they overlap I can see swirls. My memories are 3D and I kind of lose where I am in reality when I go to them. Last week I walked through a 'time warp' for a moment and I swear I relived a memory from when I was about nine. I was transported momentarily with all of my senses.
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I generally think in a combo of images and sound. Like I can visualize maps for instance. And I also remember what something sounds like too. Oh and you know how if you mouse over a Youtube video and it shows a bit of it? That's me with songs in a playlist or something. After I've listened to one a few times, when I look at the song title, the opening bit plays in my head and then I can identify it better.
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Rdos: Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 133 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 79 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)
