thinking in pictures

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[quote="anbuend"

Even more, my failure to describe something does not mean I haven’t observed it. A friend once told me that she envisioned my brain as having these enormous clumps of detailed information, but without a way to access most of it. Most of what I know, I can’t say. What I do say is just an approximation of a sliver of what is in here. Notice how much trouble I had describing part of the history of autism. Even when not sick almost all my attempts have looked similar. Does this mean I lack awareness of what has happened? Does this mean I view autism as a concrete reality, as a type of neurology, as all these other ideas words bring in? No. Not even if I use the word “neurotype”. I know this can be hard to understand but it’s true. No matter what I say will leave out 99% of the information and distort the rest. Don’t be fooled by words.
[/quote]

I believe my nephew, who I suspect is on the spectrum, is like this. He is learning to talk by immitating cartoon characters (he is 2). He can't say 'yes' so he says this very affected, soft, and feminine sounding 'uh-HUH'. I found out yesterday that this is Curious George's 'uh-huh'. His speech therapist told my SIL his comprehension is excellent even though he is clearly lagging behind verbally. He should be putting sentences together now (3 words, subject/verb), etc. He's a brilliant little kid, intense and absolutely obsessed with his Thomas the tank engine trains. Multiple meltdowns a day over things that go wrong with the trains. Hopefully he will catch up with his speech soon and that will help with the meltdowns.

I believe my nephew, who I suspect is on the spectrum, is like this. He is learning to talk by immitating cartoon characters (he is 2). He can't say 'yes' so he says this very affected, soft, and feminine sounding 'uh-HUH'. I found out yesterday that this is Curious George's 'uh-huh'. His speech therapist told my SIL his comprehension is excellent even though he is clearly lagging behind verbally. He should be putting sentences together now (3 words, subject/verb), etc. He's a brilliant little kid, intense and absolutely obsessed with his Thomas the tank engine trains. Multiple meltdowns a day over things that go wrong with the trains. Hopefully he will catch up with his speech soon and that will help with the meltdowns.

Last edited by alana on 11 Mar 2010, 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

1) Rim of the World
---Its not a rim nor is it the whole world, and it's not the physical city of Rim of the World, California which I have visited. It's a pure concept.

A great circle is a rim on a sphere, or the surface of the sphere, though if you get into hyperspheres they have rim and spokelike structures as well, and things which I like to describe as facets.

2) Infinity
--- The largest possible number, but it's not a quantity, its purely a concept

An unending sea of grey light, stretching in every possible direction around the Universe, an infinite number of directions, with structure and detail at any level I turn to focus on, and always the same amount of expanse beyond it. Like a loop that intersects at every point, and none at all.

A fine smattering of dust along a number line, the hierarchies Cantor described, all illuminated against that background of logical possibility, the set of all sets, unbounded from any direction, the source of what we discover and call mathematics.

3) Time stand still
--- a figure of speech, that should not be interpreted literally. How do you understand this phrase
Time is direction that space moves through, so to have time stand still you consider all of the possible states which that body of space will undertake, in the case of the Universe it is something like a hypercone from the big bang to the heat death at the far end of time, akin to the point and plane for a 2 D cone.

Time does not move, so the problem with that statement is that it needs to encompass that our awareness is panning across the direction of time, and considering a single slice of that expanse would be a still, a snapshot, a 3 dimensional photograph.

4) an infinitesimal point in space
--- mathematically, one of the most important concepts in order to fully understand mathematics beyond arithmetic

The dust on the number line, though the structure of the spacetime of our universe does not allow infinitesimals to be interacted with meaningfully other than as theoretical concepts.

A dimensionless point onto which you could stack an infinite number of similar points and never distinguish a change.

5) sweet as pie
--- Can you read that phrase without seeing a pie or tasting sweet, but still understand it's figurative meaning?

A desired outcome for an event, one that is so satisfying it is mentally tasty.

I had a long discussion with my woman about this, and learned that she sees things in concepts, in emotional coloring, in words and phrases, or audio from people in question.

I see crisp vivid images, then strive to translate them into words for others, she sees words and emotions and is naturally able to turn them into a reflection of another persons emotional state for them, quite impressive, and I regularly point out how artistic it is the way she sees people, and how she draws reflects it.

She can draw faces, eyes, yet struggles with the anatomy of bodies.

I can reproduce an exact image of a human skeleton, musculature, multi-angle shading, etc, but always draw bland featureless faces, and am horrible at expressing emotion through art.


Math though... that's a different story, I can see objects like tesseracts clearly in multiple dimensions, intuit the distribution of numbers on a coiled number line, and model complex aspects of physics on the fly in my head with ease.

She was quite honored when she told me how amazing my ability with math and physics is, and I informed her that her grasp of the inner lives of people is beyond my ability, and quite amazing to me.

Apparently most people do their thinking in the form of an "inner voice" in their heads. I have noticed that in a lot of stuff I've read on Buddhist meditation this "self talk" is taken for granted, and it is a common belief among many people that language and consciousness/self-awareness go together. It is a popular notion that "language determines our reality" (a notion that is the basis of Orwell's "Newspeak" in 1984).

I do not relate to any of this. I can think in words, but only if there is at least some actual sub-vocal "talking to myself", "feeling" out the words in my mouth. Otherwise I think in pictures and remembered speech.

1) Rim of the World
I get a mental image of the edge of the flat worlds of ancient mythologies.

2) Infinity
I see the vanishing point in a perspective drawing.

3) Time stand still
Everything literally frozen in time.

4) an infinitesimal point in space
A 3-D grid with a tiny glowing light at one point.

5) sweet as pie
I definitely see and taste a pie.

How do I think? I'm guessing that I make strange associations between things and draw on memory to connect with new experiences. Visual? Maybe. Auditory? Well, I am one of those who has a nearly constant soundtrack of music in the background of my mind. I like written instructions, for whatever that's worth, neatly numbered like Mapquest. Before Mapquest I would use landmarks like Burger King.

EDIT: Inner voice? Yeah, methinks I could add that to the mix.

Okay, on to the fun questions:

1) Rim of the World
888 ... Another Discworlder here!

2) Infinity
Outer space.

3) Time stand still
A song by the Canadian rock band Rush.

4) an infinitesimal point in space
A phrase that sounds poetical and feels good in your mouth to roll around and say. BTW, what's it mean, though? I got distracted by the beauty of the words. * lol *

5) sweet as pie
--- Can you read that phrase without seeing a pie or tasting sweet, but still understand it's figurative meaning?
Yep.

How come I missed this thread?
I think in pictures and sometime I can't explain my feelings other than in pictures. And sometimes I see pictures when thinking of words, like for example a name - Maria is a red rose sprinkled with water in my thoughts.
I'd like to buy Temple Gardin's book on thinking in pictures

I perceive thinking in words as inferior to thinking in pictures because it slows the process of thinking down. Imagine reading a book and silently repeating the words and whole sentences in your mind - it causes you read the book not as fast as you could if you didn't do it. Supposedly at fast reading courses they cause you to break off from doing this, I heard though I never attended one.

This is the post of mine on the same issue from before 3 years, anyway: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt37650.html

Of course you are a person who thinks in pictures trying to consceptualize what it is like to think in word, through a mind that thinks in pictures. I think in pictures too, but when I read, I go through steps where the print becomes sound, and then the sound becomes image, and yes it's slower. My reading speed is very slow, except when I go into what folks call hyperfocus. Then I don't even see the words, except when they call attention to themselves, like when their is a grammatical, or spelling error in the text. Otherwise all I see is the image and sounds and perceptions projected upon the walls of my imagination.

Me too.
I find that picturing simulated versions of what I'm about to do helps me prepare for it a lot better than building a mental checklist.

Hey you changed your Avatar when I wasn't looking.

I think of myself as thinking in images, and I describe image as having three forms, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic image. All words exist in my mind as sounds, and when I think in words I am hearing the sounds of the words, and often also speaking them, or whispering them out loud to myself. My thinking is also inner dialogue, as if between two parts of my brain, one that thinks in visual and kinesthetic image, and another that thinks in words and sounds. The image side is also global and intuitive, and the word side is logical and sequential. One side will ask a question in words and the other responds with an image or inner knowing, that answers the question, or else the visual will ask with an image, and the auditory will reply with sounds that are words, backing up up it's opinion with logical argument. So far I have found no one claiming to be NT who claims to experience their thinking this way.

I am mostly a visual thinker, I do sometimes have talking in my head like an internal monologue but it's always paired with an image. And like the OP I never knew there was another way to think other than in pictures or in my case moving images like a film. Surely it makes sense to picture things? How can you read a book without picturing the scenery or characters? I mean whatever the characters are doing must have an image to go with it!
Usually when I read I imagine things I've seen before so in some books the main character's house is almost always my old house and it looks just like my old house because of the way it is decorated. And the garden tends to be my current garden. I am quite good at drawing people and visual thinkers tend to be good drawers. I prefer to be shown how to do something than just be told, or atleast see diagrams on paper.

I bought the book "thinking in pictures" by Temple Grandin yesterday, and I agree with a lot of what she says about being a visual thinker, I'm not as visual as she is because I can't exactly imagine up my own inventions or anything and I do think a bit verbally but the general way she thinks is quite similar to mine. Especially when she mentions assiociation and all that. Oh and the thing about categorising stuff, I've got loads of things in categories and one of them is the social ladder but like it's the sea, at the bottom (where I am) is plankon, then tiddlers, marine fish, dog fish then at the top it's sharks, there are also the deep sea fish with the light bulb on them and they are the bullies or hard nuts then there's the bllue whale which is someone who everyone knows and likes but isn't a "plastic" (shark). I did see it as a ladder at first but I changed it. When I was in the first half of highschool I always pictured myself in a cardboard box around my table because I am always daydreaming and in the realm of the fairies while everyone else was concentrating on the lessons.

Also another thing about picturing things. You know about when we laugh at inappropriate times? Well I do it because something serious reminds me of something funny and I have a mental picture of it.
Today for example, in religious studies we watched the opening sequence to saving private Ryan because we are starting a unit on war and peace, and on one part there were a group of men running around set on fire, and when I saw it I instantly had an image of the human torch from fantastic four and I had to try my best not to laugh. The scene in the film was very violent and serious but I was thinking about the fantastic four character when he's on fire and I found it too comical.

Sometime I think in pictures, sometime in words and sometime with idea and concepts that my mind try to put into words.

My thinking in word is rather like that too. No problem for thinking in pictures though.

Good to know I'm not the only one who goes through this. What you are talking about, I call associative memory, where something related is brought to mind, and the associated item is funny, and when everyone else is dead serious you are biting your tongue to keep from laughing out loud. I go through something like this with idioms. The other day a guy was telling me that trying to learn anything from a particular professor was like trying to get a cup of water out of a fire hydrant, and I get this mental image of Mickey Mouse strolling up to a fire hydrant, tin cup in hand, and getting blown totally out of the scene by the water pressure from the fire hydrant. The guy must have been frustrated with my response. He was really upset, but the mental image of his comparison, made it really difficult for me to keep a straight face.

as for seeing your thoughts or any thing when you think for me it is normal thing, the only thing is the way i see is more like actualy being there, like if some one is explaining about an object of course i can see what they are explaining about as if i have seen it my self, if i reed or do any thing that would involve any kind of thought on the subject it is not just a thought but an experiance in total, it is an extrodanary gift can be helpfull i found.

thinking another way i have myself never been able to comprehend some times i feel every one must think that way how else would one think, hard to tell though.