Difference between the way NTs and Apies think

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I want to know what you all think of this.
The essential difference between the way Aspies and NTs think is that:

Aspies must think by translating words into images / patterns and back into words. Words alone are not enough.
Whereas NTs can think by using words alone. Images / patterns are not required.

I'm just trying to see if this rings true or not for both Aspies and NTs out there.

I've never actually tried to think of an explanation for the way I think before, but yes, that is actually exactly the way I must translate things. I couldn't have said it better than that. Wow, I am amazed at that. If people who don't have a brain like mine don't do that, then I must seem like a pretty slow thinker to them, because sometimes I am, which is why I hate competition.

Interesting analysis. I do tend to make images out of words when reading something quite often, so I guess that fits me. Particularly when reading, or better yet writing a novel.

Um for this NT, not exactly. Often I speak before I think, and then analyze what I said. Sometimes I am like "why did I say that" and then think there must be a reason and then I find a reason for why I would say something like that and then I understand my feelings.

As for images...the images in my mind are pretty much unrelated to my thinking/work/ideas. I imagine food in order to change my mood or recall people I like as that puts me in a positive mood too. If I am talking to someone, I can only imagine food and that quickly makes me recall the texture and that quickly turns to a positive emotion. Anything else is too distracting.

I have to speak with people I don't like alot. TOM doesn't help me so much in that case. Using images to elicit a positive emotion works though. Basically if my emotion is positive, I will speak positive things and the interaction will go ok.

So, when you use a word you're not thinking of any image or some pattern of what that word refers to?

It took me many, many years to figure out that not everyone thinks like me.

Now I don't think all aspies or NTs think in the same way. I think there are people who are primarily visual thinkers, but others who are spatial thinkers or kinesthetic thinkers or verbal thinkers. Thought styles are complex and heterogenous.

I am a very visual person, but I think my ideas run in some sort of symbolic code that can be translated into words or pictures but is intrinsically neither. I can turn on verbal or visual thinking for imaginative, creative or experimental purposes, but I think the natural language of my consciousness is something else.

I really have no idea how other people think unless they tell me. Then I wonder how accurate the reporting is.

I think in funny dashes / lines / ratios / shapes that are sort of black and white, and which flit in my head and with which I use to connect other little dashes / lines etc -- to form very complex ideas. Like that of the Holy Trinity, or of Christ, or of General Relativity. So, in a way, I can contain an entire system of thought in a single "image." This always meant that when I was taking tests I had to translate it all into English. I've become a good writer with a great ear and sense of timing and poetry, but English is not my "inner" language.

That "word"?? Like one individual word? Generally no but sometimes yes.

Example:

[background]
I like the nutritionist at work who sits across from me. Sometime we are the only people in the office and I talk to her then. Maybe she is slightly annoyed when busy but ... I try to keep the topic to something that might be vaguely relevant to her (here is what I basically said - I am translating this back into English but was speaking a different language)



So in this case, I didn't know how to say semi-prepared meals in the foreign language and I could picture the package in my head and I just described what was inside. I wasn't thinking of vegetable and meat and sauce when I said those words, but I was picturing the package they come in and thinking "aaaargh I don't know the word for that what can I say...".

Here is another example - same nutritionist.

To which she reponded -- "yeah do them in a frying pan not boilling, not cool" I kinda know the word for boiling but I don't use it much and I wasn't sure what she meant and she could tell and she said it again and I pictured it in my mind and said "ok not too hot and not too cold".

So yeah I do see images sometimes but they are distracting a little and I know that so I quickly try to find the words to express the meaning I need.

So yeah I guess in my second language when I don't have the words I do. In my first language, I just have an easy sense of what words can express whatever meaning I intend. You know... maybe I do see one image ... for example if I talk about "why Obamacare is awesome" I can picture a family getting off the bus to go to a gov. clinic years and years ago and she was talking to her friends and happy to have a place to take her kids to get checked out. It's just one image though and I could talk for an hour based on it I think.

Last edited by realityIs on 25 Oct 2013, 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually, no, because you are using examples which required translation from English into another language. What I'm getting at is .... What is the inner language, the thought-stuff in your head that you use to think with? I don't think in English. Even the word "the" goes through a really fast translation process in my mind because I think according to the way that I wrote in an above post. How does an NT like you think on a normal day to day basis?

Does that mean that when you read "NT," you actually think it as saying "en-tee" instead of it evoking "neurotypical" since you put "an" in front of it instead an "a?"

Yes I do

neurotypical to me is sort of an unfriendly concept and I'd rather avoid it. Also, I am an "en-tee" at work (native teacher) so I get called that alot.

oh i don't

I have an idea or concept I want to express. Let's say fairness. My co-worker is Canadian and we talk the differences in health care systems. Basically I want to agree with the Canadian system (perhaps it has implementation flaws or other problems). I just think American society is too unfair. So that is the basic concept I want to discuss and give my opinion on it.

So then I will just start talking will the following in mind:

1) I should be grammatical
2) I should be interesting (I try to use examples I think the person may not have heard or are a little emotional)
3) it should be related (hey we are teachers, why are we discussing health care -- so I throw in a "yeah so Canada is a good place. I will have to remember that" because we do teach about countries and therefor the topic is someone related to our work even though we would never really teach about healthcare.
4) it need to fit in the allowable time.
5) I need to leave the person agreeing with me or be very justified in saying something that is surely true (even though they may disagree)

So basically I just choose words to show I am an intelligent reasonable person and express values I think other people will share. [Ok this is how I talk but I have a tendency to think-out-loud or if it's too myself I still am thinking about what I might say to someone else]

I mean I just have a sense of what words can be used to express some concept or value.

How do you use images? Can you give me an example? I've heard the concept (thinking in pictures) but how do you do that when speaking?

Last edited by realityIs on 25 Oct 2013, 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thinking primarily in pictures instead of words makes it difficult to communicate while speaking.

simple answer: I think by sound and the meaning associated with it

It's funny though if my pronunciation in my second language is a little off, people have real difficulty understanding me because they think in pictures (Japanese characters) so where I can understand a misspoken word by finding one close to it, the slight change in sound makes them imagine a very different character with a completely different meaning and are completely confused.

Wow, I'd love to be able to think in such a streamlined way.

Here's an example. In our discussion, when I think of the concept "word" I have a flitting image of an empty space with a line connecting to an empty space where something else should be. When I think of "justice" I think of two lines in symmetry. When I think of "God" I imagine a circle which radiates from a point outward. When I use the word "the" I imagine the next word of the sentence being darker.

The advantage to this kind of thinking is that I can represent an entire philosophic system in my mind according to patterns of flitting shapes and dashes in which are subsumed other shapes and flitting lines, so that the whole thing is just one image. (Which is easy for philosophy since the consistency of a philosophical system basically means that the same patterns in my head can be used again and again anywhere in the system.)

Pretty cool, huh? I like Aspergers.