So if AS people think in pictures, how do NT people think?

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Recently while watching Temple Grandin, I thought it was funny when they showed a picture of a guy standing next to a cow in front of a church when it was suggested to her that she could take animal husbandry in college. The movie of course isn't the first time I've heard it said that autism spectrum people think in pictures...

Before I get back to that, I've never been diagnosed, am an adult engineer and parent, my son is 5 now and diagnosed as PDNOS. I see a lot of myself in him.

So, I was thinking about this thinking in pictures thing. It seems to me that if I was to say that I think in pictures, the fact is that saying so would be simplification. I think in 3D might be closer to the truth, for those familiar with finite element analysis I can visualize stress contours, I can do complex assemblies to approximate clearance studies of parts being put together or needing access to tools, I can visualize mold tooling, cut sections, view a 3D solid from different angles, articulate mechanisms and so on. Not that I can do this and pull out computed numbers, like a stress at a particular point or make a precise determination of at what point a stress concentration results in fracture at a particular load or deflection...

I never really thought of any of this as exceptional... It's as Temple Grandin says when she mentions she thinks in pictures, doesn't everybody?

So I know how I think. If it IS different than how an NT person thinks, I just wonder how does an NT person explain how they think?

I'm not sure that all people with AS do think with pictures?

I 'think' in either Words or Images. I don't know what else I could think in.

If AS people think in pictures, NTs think in faded blurry scribbles with half of the paper missing, and the other half chewed up, leaving them only a faint desire for meaningless small talk as their one true guiding light.

But really, calling them pictures is just an NT way of understanding AS thoughts. In reality they are obviously a lot more complicated than images, and are multidimensional perceptions encompassing many more senses than simply vision.

"Pictures" is the only thing that an NT could call such things, so NT doctors use the term with their patients and the patients do see a visual element there, so they consider that "picture" must just be what those things are called.


But yeah, in comparison to multidimensional AS thought, NTs think in... Dog biscuits.

Last edited by Invader on 24 Sep 2010, 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think in images primarily. Sometimes I will use numbers, making simple mathematical calculations, which I see as if printed on a page. Words--never. I don't even know what that would be like, maybe talking to oneself. I do talk to myself, often muttering about decisions made through numbers or images that have been thwarted by what I will now think of as poxy word-thinkers.

The only evidence that I may think in words on some level is that I sometimes wake up from dreams remembering images that carry verbal labels "spoken from above." The labels "feel" portentious and insightful, but on analysis by the waking mind turn out to be gibberish.

I think in words, mostly. Like having a conversation with myself. I think visually only if I'm analyzing a visual topic, but even then it tends to be accompanied by a narrative.

The conversation in my head moves at lightening speed; nothing like the speed at which words can be typed or spoken.

With much less detail and logic and more emotions. At least that's what I've heard.

NT: Walking thru this forest feels gloomy. I feel alone and depressed.

Aspie: the tree canopy blocks sunlight from reaching the ground resulting in dakness and a lack of underbrush. The dark and mono-color appearence of the forest floor could be characterized as gloomy.

Aspies are more likely to think in pictures, but a lot NTs do so too. People who don't think in pictures just think in words. I have absolutely no idea what that's like.

I actually had that topic come up with my mom once. When the word "necklace" was mentioned, i actually saw a necklace I had seen in the past that stuck in my mind. My mother replied that she actually saw the word itself in her head.

This rings right. It's not a matter of one style of thinking over another. It's a matter of relating to the universe through an entirely different lens; feeling more than thought.

I asked my psychologist once how other people think, and she said that most people think in a combination of words and pictures, but some people think more in one way than the other. I think primarily in words. Aspies are more likely than NT to think in pictures, but NTs can think that way as well.

I've asked several NTs how they think, out of curiousity, and every single one of them said something like "I don't know, I don't think about thinking."

This is one of the dangers of reading about autistic people describing their own experiences--you start to think that all autistics have similar experiences. But we don't.

I don't think in pictures; pictures are too slow. Words are also too slow. I think in concepts, which connect to each other by associative links, and when one concept gets triggered, it will trigger the concepts around it. Triggering multiple concepts at once will result in a chain-reaction that goes on until one or more links between the concepts are found, at which point the non-linking concepts will fade and the linked ones will remain.

Words are easier for me than pictures or speech. Written words are my first language, but they're not the language I think in.

I think in words augmented by images. The constant narrative in my head does get annoying at times and at times makes it hard to fall asleep. The Buddhist term for it is "chattering monkey mind" and the treatment when it gets too annoying is meditation.

Oh so ironic of a question.....the dilemma is that I never considered how, or what, another being, especially a Neurotypical, might be thinking. I'm blaming my lack of Theory of Mind thingy. In fact, I do think in pictures/patterns/sequences - - maybe mathematically in concepts? I cannot really conceive of how another mind might, or might not, operate. Even worse, I'm not so much sure I am much aware of other beings, in a sense. I don't mean that in a bad way....just sayin'.

Interesting! Are you interacting with others based on patterns, then? Not having an estimate of others' mental state must get complicated. I got the hang of it around my tweens, but still lose it under stress.

I find it interesting that you all are more focused on how other aspies perceive the way NT's think than on considering the posts existing here from more or less NT's that describe how they actually think.

The assumption of NT thought, above, is inacurrate to me. It would be more like, "There isn't much light here, and it feels gloomy. I'd like some sun; can I find any breaking through? No, hmm, what else would make me feel more comfortable here. Oh, look, there is a squirrel. It's so cute! I'll watch the squirrel for a while."

Instantly, I had the concept of Hansel & Gretel in my head.

I am also a logic/conceptual thinker. For me, "to think" is distinct from "to feel" and very hard for me to understand these two are overlapping with NTs. I do not know how one could reconcile this......sigh.

About "how" we think - here's a journal article of pertinent interest: The Beautiful Otherness of the Autistic Mind (Happe and Frith, 2009):

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... /1345.full