Putting pictures into words

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I know a lot of autistic people think in pictures. I find I have trouble putting pictures and symbols into words. Like if Im doing math or chem, I can understand it perfectly in my head yet when I try to explain it to someone else, it sounds like I really dont know the stuff. Anyone else have that problem?

Yep. I struggle to describe the simplest thing.

Yeah I have a hard time describing anything. My words I mean to say also are not the words I want to say. Which bothers me because I usually cannot tell I messed up unless someone points it out.

I get confused like crazy and end up putting out some mixed stuff and the person I am describing the picture in my head to never understands anything. confused as in with what words to use to describe best the picture in my head. Lack of cohesion.

I do have trouble translating from pictures to speech. It works much better if I can translate from pictures to text to speech, for some reason.

I have entire concepts in my head I don't have words to express. It's really frustrating. Occasionally I come across language that opens the floodgate and I can go on for months or years about it, but that rarely happens.

Really? This is actually rather easy for me. Because I just see the picture in my head and, I'm not sure how, but words just come up instinctively. For example, let's use this picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewevans/6043633815/in/photostream
So the first thing I do when I visualize a picture (using this picture), I just see spots of focus, like the tree and the deer, the foreground, and the background. Then with each spot of focus, I just immediately see all the different details and apply words to them, kind of like terms that go with different parts of an anatomy. For example, the tree is obviously green, but I also think about specific things. Like not only is it green, but it could also be willowy, frail, balanced, prominent, isolated but accompanied by the deer at the same time. The ends of its tenuous branches extend outwards, as if reaching into open space, *sheltering* the deer.
It's a bit like drawing--describing a picture--except you're using words instead of lines and colors and the details must come to life through definitions.

Well, it's like I do not think primarily in words, and it is necessary to translate thoughts into speech. In real time this is delayed, whereas with writing, the delay is often not noticeable. I can still have delays in text, as I've found in chat and such.

I can visualize a picture (not just look at one), even one in 3d with motion and describe it in detail, but the literal description may not describe the concept it might represent, either.

Yeah for me words have pictures, colors, and feelings to them. And it all gets clogged in translation. It's not fun when you're trying to describe something, but in your head it's just colors.

My very first visualization of something is usually a color.

I get trains of thought that associate out faster than I can follow them. In fact a train of thought is linear, and my chains of ideas tend not to be. They look like semi-abstract collages.

It's a real challenge to get the substance down into a sequence of sentences. Most of the time I don't even try because what ends up on the page is such a pathetic scrap compared to what I experienced in my mind. Like whistling the tune of a symphony.

That's not what they are talking about in this thread. They are talking about visual thinkers - people who process information visually. They take in more information thru their visual system than anything else. Thoughts, concepts, associations, emotions, experiences, etc are processed and stored as pictures and/or shapes and/or colors in the brain. For example: I experience anxiety as a white point of light bouncing off my forehead. I call it pinging. For years I had bad anxiety but I didn't know how to tell anyone because experiencing an emotion as a shape/color is hard to translate into verbal language because it doesn't make sense (for lack of a better explanation). Describing a picture in your head is easy, it's describing the meaning of a picture where it gets tricky because your (my) brain is processing the information "improperly" (I know it's not really improper, but again, for lack of a better term).

Then again, you may already understand all that I may have misread your post

I think mostly in pictures, and I definitely have this problem.

For some reason, I'm quite articulate in text but I can't verbalize very well. I'm as talkative as they come when I'm in my element, but I still can't explain my thoughts in a way that others can understand. I'm horrible with arguments or debates, because the other party never seems to understand that I mean!

My boyfriend and I will always get into fights where each of us is basically rephrasing what the other just said, but I still can't convince him that I'm on his side because what I'm saying doesn't make sense to him.

I understand complex systems and ideas very well, but I simply can't explain what I "see" in my head. I would make a horrible teacher, that's for sure.

I just gave someone on the street a set of horrible driving directions.

I find it hard to use words to describe a picture. No word is specific enough. Not even a thousand descriptive words is enough.

Every time I try to do it, I always go back to thinking about getting a sheet of paper and trying to draw it.

I can have trouble describing things I can see clearly in my mind.
I'll think I'm doing a fair job of it sometimes and will only get a strange look in return. So I'd have to say YES, I have trouble with it at times....

Verdandi

I am not perfectly sure what I think in but I'd say I can go from thought to text to speech better too. When I was 19 I thought about something, that I find important, but it wasn't until about 3 years later that I found the argument/idea on the internet and could say it in words. Although, before that I am not sure I thought of telling others. (I don't feel like saying it).

I can write better than I talk but my writing a post can take a very long time sometimes. Even the idea I mentioned above, I will can become very frustrated, and I have to make do with the words I can find and work with or find quotes. Or to be able to say an argument that I am 'know' in my head I have to go back over some things I read to be able to figure out how to say it in my own words.

Sometimes I think I may be having difficulty putting things in sequence as well and have to think about it and cut paste by paragraphs.

I actually don't talk too much about my ideas and can find it exceedingly difficult sometimes and I've had some meltdowns,

i do this too. mine are bad because i dont actually tell people how to get there i describe the colours and sounds that are predominant in the environment or any interesting trees or rocks they might find on the way. a sensory description of their surrounds. then after theyve left i realise they might have wanted a go left, turn right at that street approach. oops.

thinking in pictures and concepts is great. ive a massively vivid imagination(never understood why people think we dont) and it makes the way i mentally articulate things amusing. generally the only time i think in words is when i subtitle speech or practice conversation. makes comunicating with others a little more frustrating and im pretty sure people think im an idiot because of it but oh well...