Verbalized vs. unverbalized thought.

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Our thinking processes are many and diversified. Many of them occur simultaneously. This is further proof, if necessary, that our thinking is run by different places in our brain (they are called “modules”) working simultaneoulsy and and sometimes cooperatively, sometimes conflictually, sometimes without interfering one with the other. A woman who 1) talks 2) knits 3) looks at the TV at the same time is a case in point. She can also scratch a thigh, move on the armchair and so on. One who drives, may also talk on the cellphone (alas), smoke, move the steering wheel, the gas pedal, and… think not verbally and verbally.
After this (I apologize), I would like to know this: sometimes you think verbalizing what you think, you elaborate mentally some speech you want to make to someone else, abstract or specific person. Now (at this moment) I don’t think to a specific person, but my thought (if thought is) is verbalized, as I write it down here on my laptop. At the same time I think other things unverbalized. Unverbalized thought is like lightnings, you can’t even catch it. It’s a constant tumultouos flux. It’s not without consequences because you store it somewhere in your brain.
For people, like many of us, who have difficult relationships with other people you find yourself (I find myself), constantly “preparing” speeches (which I will never make in most cases). So I think verbally much of the time, while I do other things. This also disturbs me, because this simultaneity business does’t work always so well. If I read a book (which is also by the way verbalized thought) I go on interrupting myself with other verbalized thinking. So I am slowed down in my reading, distracted, interrupted in my attempt to focus on the material I read.

How much this happens to you?

Well, I remember as a teenager figuring I could do about 7 things at once. I could sing a song(lyrics and music), walk, perform a task with my hands or whatever, chew gum, do a numeric problem, etc... at the same time. As long as they didn't cover similar areas of thought, I was fine. Like anything else, managing multiple tasks might slow me down, but certain tasks could be somewhat automated. Driving, walking, etc... are somewhat automated. It is like I am not really doing it. BTW I typically don't do more than 4 groups of things at a time. On a good day, with a bad problem, for example, I may take a shower, go over what happened yesterday, rehearse what I should do today in response, and debug/write a program(mentally).

Steve

Comes to my mind that Lyndon Johnson, to disparage Gerald Ford, whom he despised, used to say that Ford was incapable to walk and chew a gum at the same time.

I doubt ford was an aspie though. Records seem to indicate he had little interest in cars. Some credit him with making the car, but the car was apparantly made by karl benz(Who started mercedes benz). In the US, ford was a "johnny come lately"(American slang for he came after everyone else, and implies that he didn't really add anything.) The ONLY thing he did was MASS MANUFACTURE it. He basically put nearly everyone else out of business. Anyway, he supposedly later went on trial for being incompetent, but said he knew who COULD get the jobs done. Typical NT type response.

Steve

The Ford despised by Johnson was the future vicepresident with Richard Nixon and future president after Nixon's demise.

In fact I'm a visual person, but I suffer these uncontrolled flow of words in my head quite often,
I stop it deliberately, I say to myself:" silence now, I don't want to hear anything anymore." I did a lot of practise on that, it's not easy, but it works and it's much better.

These flows are coming whenever i encounter something, especially new things or people, and my head starts giving lists of different things, events, projects, etc that could happen. It is useful but not in the shape of an uncontrollable flow. I'll have it whenever I'm in the city for exemple, or when a lot of people talked to me (which happens too often imo)

If it really won't stop I'll try erotically tinted thoughts, it sounds a little weird perhaps but it always works

Multitasking is not my strength. I prefer to do one thing at a time, and do it well.

9CatMom": Multitasking is not my strength.

I think we are all multitasking.Some activity requires a focused attention, some not. You probably are capable to walk, chew a gum, and scratch you head.

"For people, like many of us, who have difficult relationships with other people you find yourself (I find myself), constantly “preparing” speeches (which I will never make in most cases"

I often have long drawn out conversations in my head involving people/things over and over again as well. if some bastard is unfortunate enough to trigger one of these conversations they have a full blown rant to deal with.

Paolo asked in the leading post in this thread, "How much this happens to you?"

My answer: All of it. My processes may differ from Paolo's in that most of my thinking is non-verbal; but when I'm engaged in a verbally oriented activity such as reading, yes, I get interrupted constantly by verbal thinking having nothing to do with what I'm reading. Exception: If I'm reading something truly absorbing this rarely happens. But it has to be really top-notch.

I have found in conversations that a lot of people seem not even to believe in non-verbal thinking. I suppose they just are not introspective enough to realize what goes on in their own heads.

Einstein said somewhere that most of his thinking was non-verbal. I'm sorry not to be able to point to the source.

Since I was a child I was obsessed by a thought about the recursivity of my thought. That is: now I am thinking that I am thinking and so on and so on. Each time(it happens to me even now) I think it’s the same thought that’s always happened to me. But no: I reflect that each time is a new novel thing because there is a further stratification, like (a(a(a) – infinite). Luckily then I shed the whole business. Bur recursivity is something that I don’t know how to solve. For example: each living cell has some information/order to duplicate. But where the new cell takes the information/order to duplicate? I think people like Turing and von Neumann or perhaps Wittgenstein were on this problems. Informaticians, mathematicians perhaps know.

i practice my never-meant-to-be speeches all the time too.

reading i don't have an integration issue with... in fact, i've always been pretty aware of underlying humor and hidden agendas and such in books... though most people would say i'm gullible.. naive... and i see all the time how i misinterpret jokes and such coming from ppl.

go figure

That sounds sort of like my self hypnosis rituals. If I get racing thoughts, or If I find myself drifting into areas I've covered before, and I can't rationalize in my mind not thinking about it again without thinking about it again (old relationships, missed opportunities, etc) the only thing I can do is just detach entirely for a few moments at least, and kind of let the feeling of dissatisfaction (or whatever it is) dissipate. Over the past year or so I've gotten better at refining my ability to do this, so much that alot of the time I'm able to hypnotize myself on the spot in like a classroom, or outdoors; if I assign my brain to listening to air currents and the sound of traffic, things sort of take care of themselves. Also, since erotic thoughts are probably the easiest, most basic thoughts our brain can recognize, I think they can also help you detach from an anxiety.



Paolo, you have an amazing ability to sum up concepts like this, which for all their acknowledgment in the world today might as well not exist. I think that because as aspies our natural approach to participating in the world hasn't been accepted, we're constantly adding layers of consciousness into every decision we make, while the majority of people go around making decisions at a less than conscious level. Because of this, every so often my opinion of something will sort of "flip" to the reverse pole without spending any time in the middle, and every time it does this the poles are a little further apart. What I'm saying is that I agree that every time it seems like a new level of consciousness is achieved it isn't just a constant oscillation but something that's gaining momentum.

So yeah, pretty often I have a hard time reading because I feel like the information is being processed in a bunch of different streams in my head, at different levels of consciousness maybe, and they end up getting jumbled up and collapsing on each other as I go. Kind of like four people of different intelligence with the same brain reading at once. If I do my little self hypnosis thing it usually helps alot though. If I were to visualize my thinking processes, it would be as a gigantic mass of unverbalized thought than I can only peel strips and chunks of verbalized thought off of, sometimes more efficiently than at other times, but on the whole I think my brain is incredibly inefficient.