Somewhat Flawed Autism Study

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btbnnyr
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26 Jan 2012, 1:51 pm

nemorosa wrote:

That's interesting because I'm a verbal thinker but I find it hard to sequence words. When listening to others it starts out ok then starts to become a meaningless stream of izzle-fizzle-woozzit-wibbly-wobbly-ZZZZZzzzzzzzz.

That is an auditory/speech processing problem. It is like all the words break apart into constituent sounds and instead of the sounds being in sequence to form words and phrases, the sounds, each being a LEGO block, are shuffled around on the floor, out-of-order, randomly. This happens to me even in the absence of background noise, once I have heard too much speaking at a meeting or lecture, like 5 or 10 minutes. It helps if I do something repetitive and mindless while listening to someone speak. I find that playing a game called Bejeweled on my iPad helps a lot, except for the part with the reciprocity of looking like you are listening to the speaker that the speaker and the listeners all expect.

Matt62
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26 Jan 2012, 1:57 pm

I do the voice over thing, too. My thinking is mostly pictures with words added along.
In fact, if I'm lost in memory I may start saying the words that were spoken during whatever I am remembering was..

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26 Jan 2012, 3:56 pm

I also think of process as a machine, though it's cartooning, soundless, and sort of bubbly. It isn't very concrete at all. It's a Gregory shade of blue, and it's multiple parts in a line.

My monologe my stop sometimes while playing the piano, and then it's just the notes on the page, the keys, my fingers, my eyes, and my ears. I'm not sure as I can't think about how I'm thinking without thinking verbally. Maybe a lot of my time spent thinking is trying to convert nonverbal thoughts to verbal thoughts.

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The_Perfect_Storm
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26 Jan 2012, 5:44 pm

:O I thought everyone was like me.

Chronos
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26 Jan 2012, 8:32 pm

The_Perfect_Storm wrote:

Chronos wrote:

The_Perfect_Storm wrote:

Chronos wrote:

Apparently, NTs have an inner voice

Don't you?

Not in the sense of an auditory hallucination, but yes. It's usually playing some annoying song that has been stuck in my head all day, or repeating irrelevant yet phonetically fascinating sound bits from movies, commercials, and TV shows. Despite this it doesn't seem to impede on my actual daily thought process.

That's not to say I never utilize it for practical purposes but in most instances I could easily complete a task while repeating a day of the week. The downside of this is I can very well read something and not pay attention to what I'm reading. My brain simply processes the words into their respective sounds while I dwell on entirely different things.

It's not really an auditory hallucination. Can't you form sentences in your head, or basically talk to yourself? Such as maybe tripping over and then thinking the words "f**k that hurt you're such a stupid a**hole chronos?"

What is your actual thought process then?

I could, but if I do anything of the sort it is usually only in the course of writing or reading, and so in the course of a multi-step process I'm only likely to engage such a method if I'm writing down the instructions.

I'm generally not using internal phonetic promps when I'm carrying out non verbal tasks. In fact when I'm thinking of non verbal tasks or processing non verbal information I generally find it very difficult to speak because it's speculated I have "right brain weakness" so I'm probably directing a lot of blood flow away from my language centers to perform use weaker portions of my brain.

When learning non-verbal concepts I have trouble parsing the verbal information into meaning. When I was learning physics I would frequently have to work the examples before class and write the methods down step by step. At that point, I might re-read what I wrote in an attempt to map the verbal facts to non-verbal actions but when actually working through the problems after I understand what I need to do, most of my thinking is non verbal.

It tends to be a visual-motor hybrid.

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26 Jan 2012, 10:19 pm

I have constant chattering in my mind, pretty much every waking minute of the day. I wish I could turn it off. I am constantly thinking over something and talking through it in my head. A lot of the time I am thinking dialogue, as if I would be talking to another person, if someone else was there. At times I also narrate whatever is going on, as if I would be writing it in a diary or a novel.

I also have songs playing in my head all the time. It's like I have a jukebox in my mind that will play back any song that has even a slight connection to what is happening or what I'm thinking about. If I hear someone say a phrase that I've heard before in a song, that song will instantly start playing in my mind.

I wish I could get a little peace and quiet inside my mind. It's really noisy in here.

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26 Jan 2012, 11:35 pm

nemorosa wrote:

But haven't you then imaged a machine and not "process"? When you read the word "machine" do you get confused with "process"? Sorry for so many questions, but does "process" as in "process your application" conjure up the same image as "process waste products"?

Well, a machine isn't necessarily doing anything, whereas a machine that's processing is doing a specific thing.

And no, they don't.

fraac wrote:

Wow. So you think like Temple Grandin? I wouldn't have guessed you couldn't internal monologue from your writing.

If I could think like Temple Grandin, that'd be pretty amazing. The way I think is not entirely dissimilar, but I feel like there are differences.

One thing that is interesting to me is that a bit over a year ago another autistic person told me that she could tell I don't think in language from my writing.

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27 Jan 2012, 12:00 am

Chronos wrote:

When learning non-verbal concepts I have trouble parsing the verbal information into meaning. When I was learning physics I would frequently have to work the examples before class and write the methods down step by step. At that point, I might re-read what I wrote in an attempt to map the verbal facts to non-verbal actions but when actually working through the problems after I understand what I need to do, most of my thinking is non verbal.

It tends to be a visual-motor hybrid.

I can relate to this, especially when applying it to physics. I didn't just have to learn the operation I had to see it happening. I got a lot of strange visuals from doing physics exercises. I like how physicists give analogies to help you understand what they are describing.
One thing I had to do was understand everything completely before moving on.

I'm a hands-on kinesthetic learner too.

I was actually thinking about this today about people who didn't hear everything they thought. Hearing my thoughts helps me write and read and just come up with ideas. If it one day didn't happen I'd feel weird, not only that but wouldn't know what to do.

Oh and here is my reply/rant to a person on FB who posted this article (it was on The Daily Mail.co.uk though):

CaptainAwesomePants wrote:

"You shouldn't discourage autistic kids from being less visual thinkers. ASD or NT, all people have different thinking styles. Temple Grandin is a highly visual thinker. Imagine what discouraging that would have done to her? I'm a strong visual-auditory thinker and I spent the ages of 5-14 having nothing but inner speech. During this time I became a damn good artist. In fact, people think I'm some type of prodigy. I don't think I'm that good. This study sounds sloppy and incomplete. The lack of planning I can tell you from an ADHD perspective is that we have difficultly seeing the future. Oh and I have a lot of inner speech and I still stim and need my routines. Stimming is like drinking hot chocolate on a freezing winter night, it calms us down in otherwise stressful situations. Most of that has to do with executive dysfunction and sensory processing issues. I've been reading up on SPD all day, found some real neat stuff. You can try to encourage autistic kids to use inner speech but don't take the paper and crayons off them yet. You know what I'm doing with my visual thinking style? Writing a 5 part sci-fi series of novels. And believe me I'm not successful, I still have many symptoms that get in the way of me becoming independent."

Rascal77s wrote:

I don't think this is as black and white an issue as people are making it here. There have been larger studies done on this and the results were that the majority of HFA/AS people employ both verbal and visual processing. The fact that you can think verbally does not mean that you will use it to complete tasks.

On the inner voice thing- When you are reading this do you hear the words in your head as you read? Yes YOU.

Yes I can and I can't turn it off. It's happening now. Oh, stop that!
Ok, I am going to write something without hearing the voice in my - oh sod it. It's not going to work.

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fraac
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27 Jan 2012, 6:20 am

Verdandi wrote:

One thing that is interesting to me is that a bit over a year ago another autistic person told me that she could tell I don't think in language from my writing.

Who is this person? I have to eat her brain. (Sorry if that provokes imagery of me eating a brain.)

Actually I think I get it. Big atomic chunks.

Okay I have to think about this.

Last edited by fraac on 27 Jan 2012, 6:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Verdandi
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27 Jan 2012, 6:26 am

fraac wrote:

Verdandi wrote:

One thing that is interesting to me is that a bit over a year ago another autistic person told me that she could tell I don't think in language from my writing.

Who is this person? I have to eat her brain.

Oh, I'm afraid I can't break confidentiality if there's going to be actual neurocannibalism going on. :twisted:

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30 Jan 2012, 10:37 pm

dianthus wrote:

This is as close of a description to what I experience as I've ever read. The music thing can be quite annoying. All it takes is a word or a phrase heard on the TV to switch to a song with those words in the lyrics. Even though I've had NTs tell me that they experience this "busy brain" phenomenon, they never complain about it the way that autistics do. It must not be constant as it for me. Once a couple of years, one night when I went to bed, my brain was totally quiet. It was a unique experience, one I wish I could repeat, but it hasn't happened since.

I use pictures and words in my thought process and often have to convert back and forth. Words like "process" do produce a picture, actually a short video which is often context dependent. When I first read the question about "process," I saw a blank wall with a nondescript object working its way from one side to the other. A slightly different thought about "process" produced a video of people shuffling through a series of documents.

I find that I can't get a good understanding of a new word or grasp a new idea until I can generate an appropriate picture or video for it. A word or an idea with only a written definition doesn't seem to take hold.

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31 Jan 2012, 4:54 am

Chronos wrote:

I'm not proposing that no efforts be made to improve the lifes of those with HFA through means they don't come by naturally, however I caution those who attempt to implement such a thing with an individual with HFA as they must be sensitive to the limitations of the individual and know when to allow the person to do things their own way.

I used to have an internal monologue but at a certain point it went away. If I try to force it, now, it feels exhausting and clumsy. So, maybe my brain dropped it because it functions more efficiently without it. If such a thing were taught to me as a kid I would hope it would be with the understanding that my own ways, while possibly odd, might work better for me. I'm also reminded of how I had to learn to 'translate' standard math teaching & texts into a form that I could understand.

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31 Jan 2012, 5:34 am

Ganondox wrote:

I've got that internal monologue. It doesn't shut up, or at least I think it doesn't. I can think both verbally and nonverbally.

Me too. And I can say to myself (in my head) things like "now you have to do this and this". I guess this is a thing that some aspies have and some don't

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31 Jan 2012, 5:50 am

Wikipedia says:

Quote:

Much of what people consciously report "thinking about" may be thought of as an internal monologue, a conversation with oneself. Some of this can be considered as speech rehearsal.

Perhaps this is why whenever someone asks me "what are you thinking?" I have no answer.

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31 Jan 2012, 6:07 am

btbnnyr wrote:

Verbal thinking is one-at-a-time, while visual thinking is all-at-once, so for a visual thinker, it is hard to sequence the all-at-once bits and pieces into the one-at-a-time bits and pieces, so for a visual thinker, it is hardest of all to speak one's thoughts and participate in back and forth and give and take at a fast pace in real-time. Everytime someone says something, I convert the sequence of words into an image, and everytime I am expected to respond, I have to convert the image that I am thinking of into words through sequencing. Often, it is difficult to know where to start, and the more detail that there is in the image, the harder it is to know where to start and stop and the harder it is to generalize, because there is just so much to generalize. Add a few other senses occurring at the same time as envisioning the image, and you get a full sensory experience, more like being inside a movie than watching a movie, and the difficulty of sequencing your thoughts into language gets even more difficult than if the words only brought up a still image. It is very hard for me to communicate even the smallest bit of my sensory thoughts in language, so I am extremely slow at speaking and speak incoherently and the whole thing is unfun for all involved. I do better in writing, because I have more time for sequencing. I often freeze when someone asks me a question, because it is so hard to sequence my thoughts to generate a quick response like the person is expecting.

Question: do you know if visual thinkers process information all at once too? It seems whenever I am without medication that I see the whole world (in my visual window) at once and I have to focus on just one part to ward off sensory overload, though it will eventually take me.

Speaking is very hard for me because of what I thought was forgetting what I was going to say next, or forgetting what the first part of my sentence was. Writing descriptions was also very difficult for me. I had to study the novels I was reading and mimic the style. Fortunately I can mimic an author's style without making it too obvious, apart from after I read Dickens. It's still a challenge to write stories though. When I read everything looks as one but when I write I have to separate everything, like descriptions of objects or people etc and then the next part is the dialogue. Even the descriptions of speech and all the facial expressions are separate. Perhaps 'sequenced' is the better way of putting it. No wonder I was exhausted after writing 5 pages today. When I write I have the voice in my head and writing it down is just like echoing it then I've got to turn the picture I see into words so that my readers will be able to see what I see. So exhausting.

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31 Jan 2012, 4:13 pm

Chronos wrote:

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