Somewhat Flawed Autism Study
btbnnyr
Veteran

Joined: 18 May 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 7,359
Location: Lost Angleles Carmen Santiago
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.
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.
_________________
Cinnamon and sugary
Softly Spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through other people's eyes
Autism FAQs http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt186115.html
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.
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.
Verdandi
Veteran

Joined: 7 Dec 2010
Age: 55
Gender: Female
Posts: 12,275
Location: University of California Sunnydale (fictional location - Real location Olympia, WA)
Well, a machine isn't necessarily doing anything, whereas a machine that's processing is doing a specific thing.
And no, they don't.
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.

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):
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.
_________________
My band photography blog - http://lostthroughthelens.wordpress.com/
My personal blog - http://helptheywantmetosocialise.wordpress.com/

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
Veteran

Joined: 7 Dec 2010
Age: 55
Gender: Female
Posts: 12,275
Location: University of California Sunnydale (fictional location - Real location Olympia, WA)

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.

Lepidoptera
Pileated woodpecker
Joined: 9 May 2008
Age: 71
Gender: Male
Posts: 191
Location: Northern California
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.
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.
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.
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
Verdandi
Veteran

Joined: 7 Dec 2010
Age: 55
Gender: Female
Posts: 12,275
Location: University of California Sunnydale (fictional location - Real location Olympia, WA)
Wikipedia says:
Perhaps this is why whenever someone asks me "what are you thinking?" I have no answer.
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.
_________________
My band photography blog - http://lostthroughthelens.wordpress.com/
My personal blog - http://helptheywantmetosocialise.wordpress.com/
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.
Similar Topics | |
---|---|
Major study on autism uncovers four distinct subtypes |
09 Jul 2025, 7:05 pm |
Study: ChatGPT is Bad for Your Brain |
18 Jul 2025, 7:04 am |
Another study finds no vaccine link |
26 Jun 2025, 9:21 pm |
Study Reveals Wide Gap in Awareness of AAC Devices |
20 May 2025, 6:01 pm |