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dreamingofhome
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11 Dec 2013, 5:05 pm

I know some are able to think purely in pattern? What's that like?



Sharkbait
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11 Dec 2013, 8:32 pm

Do you mean visual thinking; thinking in images/pictures? I'm not even sure if thinking only in patterns is possible. While speech calls on patterns, it's not pattern-based, so must use a separate area of the brain. If you only think in patterns you wouldn't be able to read the question, let alone get signed up for a forum account to reply.

Are you wondering what heightened pattern-recognition is like maybe?



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11 Dec 2013, 9:19 pm

I consider myself to be a cross between a visual thinker and a pattern thinker. I think I was a pure visual thinker as a young child (and tested as having an eidetic memory at age 4...I also had what I called "lucid hallucinations" which faded with the eidetic memory. I'm glad to be rid of them both). As I got older, my thoughts got increasingly abstract. I thought abstractly young, as well. My kindergarten teacher, who had been teaching over 40 years, told my mother that I was the most abstract thinker she had ever had.

(This knowledge that I think abstractly led me to question my Aspergers diagnosis in the beginning.)


Anyway, I distill most things into its movement and picture it as wave functions. This takes up minimal processing power for me to record and allows me to search for connections between things (actual photographic images take up more processing power/energy, patterns are efficient). Unfortunately, this also means that I don't co-store other information that many people do. I have extremely poor episodic memory (people have reminded me of times I have injured myself enough to need a cast or crutches and I simply cannot recall the event. My husband frequently is hurt because I never remember if he was present when--even important--events happen.) In my mind, I store information and memories in categories according to these distilled wave functions and how similar they are with one another. I am able to make connections between events easier than other people and I believe this is why.



dreamingofhome
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11 Dec 2013, 9:44 pm

Sharkbait wrote:
Do you mean visual thinking; thinking in images/pictures? I'm not even sure if thinking only in patterns is possible. While speech calls on patterns, it's not pattern-based, so must use a separate area of the brain. If you only think in patterns you wouldn't be able to read the question, let alone get signed up for a forum account to reply.

Are you wondering what heightened pattern-recognition is like maybe?


This is what I was thinking. But I've read about people on the spectrum thinking in patterns, music, numbers... there's a lot of limitations on all of those things. I'm sure language is necessary at some point, but I just don't understand it at all. It would be cool if someone could explain their experiences.



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11 Dec 2013, 9:47 pm

screen_name wrote:
I consider myself to be a cross between a visual thinker and a pattern thinker. I think I was a pure visual thinker as a young child (and tested as having an eidetic memory at age 4...I also had what I called "lucid hallucinations" which faded with the eidetic memory. I'm glad to be rid of them both). As I got older, my thoughts got increasingly abstract. I thought abstractly young, as well. My kindergarten teacher, who had been teaching over 40 years, told my mother that I was the most abstract thinker she had ever had.

(This knowledge that I think abstractly led me to question my Aspergers diagnosis in the beginning.)


Anyway, I distill most things into its movement and picture it as wave functions. This takes up minimal processing power for me to record and allows me to search for connections between things (actual photographic images take up more processing power/energy, patterns are efficient). Unfortunately, this also means that I don't co-store other information that many people do. I have extremely poor episodic memory (people have reminded me of times I have injured myself enough to need a cast or crutches and I simply cannot recall the event. My husband frequently is hurt because I never remember if he was present when--even important--events happen.) In my mind, I store information and memories in categories according to these distilled wave functions and how similar they are with one another. I am able to make connections between events easier than other people and I believe this is why.


I thought maybe it was something like that. Very interesting.



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11 Dec 2013, 10:44 pm

I'm a strong pattern thinker, and have been for as long as I can remember. The patterns are there whether I'm working a math problem, listening to music, watching a film or TV show, or talking to someone.

I experience this as one part of my brain integrating the new sensory input with existing memories and knowledge, while another part tries to derive anything new or useful based on some kind of probability analysis. I started referring to this as thinking in "patterns and probabilities" about a decade before I was diagnosed.

The patterns are primarily visual in nature, but abstracted, with a lot of color, texture, and sound added (I have synesthesia, hence the mixing). The imagery shifts and evolves with time, and also does so as I explore what I often call a "landscape," since I am part of the landscape, and anything I do can affect the surroundings.

Perhaps oddly, I have an excellent memory, and perhaps not surprisingly, I"m quite good at math and languages (both strongly pattern-oriented). As expected, dynamic social situations are extremely difficult, since I cannot generate or process the patterns involved in real time. Other situations become an exercise in combinatoric optimization, in other words, finding higher areas on the landscape, seeing what might increase their height or if there is another nearby area that is higher (local optima versus global optima).

I dream in this manner often, exploring multidimensional objects of light, color, and texture, or explaining to whoever the nature of these patterns as they can be described using various forms of mathematics. (I also dream about cats.)

I hope this helps others understand, and I hope to read more on this thread to find out how others think.



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12 Dec 2013, 2:42 pm

I think in concepts. It's hard to explain in words. I do think a lot in words, I can also think a lot about stuff I don't have language for. I did that a lot when I was a toddler. The concepts I think in are kind of like emotions. Emotions are concepts, but a lot of concepts aren't really emotions.

I often like to use analogies, but it's hard to know if other people will understand them. Especially in this forum.

I recently got tested for "cognitive skills". I scored the highest in language and abstraction. During the abstraction test I could easily form concepts in my head, but I had trouble explaining the more abstract concepts. I often mentioned phrases related to the concepts. Apparently I was a bit slow on visual tasks. A lot of the time I was just trying to be 100% sure that my answer was correct.

It is a bit frustrating to think like this because I find it hard to prove that I understand stuff. I had this problem in Latin class. I had this assignment where I had to translate phrases into English. I could understand a few phrases, but I couldn't translate them into English in a way that made sense to people. I eventually dropped that class because it was too exhausting.


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12 Dec 2013, 3:44 pm

I've read these posts, and what I am reading suggests visual and pattern thinking.

I am purely a pattern thinker. I think entirely in patterns whose visual presence in my imagination is nothing more than a flash of a trace or shadow or motion. I cannot generate images in my head, although I can "imagine" by means of an abstract process of combining the patterns I have, so that I have the "idea" of the image, but not the image. (That is how I was able to practice architecture for a number of years, by working with ideas of images. But thank goodness I'm not in that profession any more.)

Everything is pattern. However, I cannot explain a pattern's temporal or spatial existence. It just is. A concept is a pattern. An object is a pattern. Logic, the reasoning process, an entire philosophical system -- each is a pattern. The scale of the intellectual concept is irrelevant. The times tables is a single pattern. The entire philosophy of Aristotle which I studied is a single pattern (in which there are more patterns, like fractals all the way down). Speech, music, color, memories, are pattern. What I see are the patterns in things. I can, however, appreciate and do love poetry, music (hence my user name - as you might imagine I can hear counterpoint very distinctly).

Every word I speak or write is a translation of the pattern language in my head. The advantage of pattern thinking is that I can grasp very difficult philosophical concepts and foresee their implications almost immediately. (My regret is that this is not something that will make me any money.... :roll: )



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12 Dec 2013, 3:57 pm

I can completely relate to this. Yes, I think it is possible.



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12 Dec 2013, 4:13 pm

JSBACHlover wrote:
I've read these posts, and what I am reading suggests visual and pattern thinking.

I wouldn't consider my most of my thinking "pattern thinking." I occasionally think in patterns, but I mostly think in concepts. The same concept in my head could be translated into words, a sculpture, or song. I can often get inspiration for songs by looking at pieces of art. I don't think that is pattern thinking.


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12 Dec 2013, 4:34 pm

Do any of you who identify as pattern thinkers have trouble with speech?

I have moderate (and sometimes more severe) issues with spontaneous speech. I was diagnosed with Aspergers, aphasia, and mixed expressive/receptive language disorder (not just autism, go figure).

I think my issues are directly related to the way I think.



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12 Dec 2013, 4:38 pm

DevilKisses wrote:
JSBACHlover wrote:
I've read these posts, and what I am reading suggests visual and pattern thinking.

I wouldn't consider my most of my thinking "pattern thinking." I occasionally think in patterns, but I mostly think in concepts. The same concept in my head could be translated into words, a sculpture, or song. I can often get inspiration for songs by looking at pieces of art. I don't think that is pattern thinking.


Yes, but what is the mode of representation in your mind vis-à-vis the concept?

Also: how do you translate a concept into a sculpture? Are you operating associatively or synesthetically? So let me give you two distinct concepts 1) "virtue" and 2) "globalization"
How would you sculpt each one?



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12 Dec 2013, 4:39 pm

screen_name wrote:
Do any of you who identify as pattern thinkers have trouble with speech?

I have moderate (and sometimes more severe) issues with spontaneous speech. I was diagnosed with Aspergers, aphasia, and mixed expressive/receptive language disorder (not just autism, go figure).

I think my issues are directly related to the way I think.


Yes, but I promise you, you get better with practice.



superluminary
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12 Dec 2013, 4:40 pm

This is a terribly interesting topic.

I suspect we all think in patterns, but it's masked by a verbal or visual presentational layer on top.

Think about when you're about to say something but haven't said it yet. It's all queued up, all the concepts are there in relation to each other. It's pre-verbal, there are no words layered on it. You can feel the structure and shape of it, and you can hold it there in the queue for quite a period without laying words on it. That's a pattern.

I'm a programmer and visual and verbal thinking are not terribly helpful, but the ability to feel the structure of a mechanism is. I tend to use my hands a lot when thinking in this way (but only in private because I suspect it makes me look weird). It's a complex physical feeling involving motion, direction, relationship and mechanism. If I go into it I sense it in the same way I can feel the shape of my heart and lungs.

Turning it into words is like the little flourish at the end. Everything is primed and it all tumbles into place. It's beautiful.



Last edited by superluminary on 12 Dec 2013, 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

superluminary
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12 Dec 2013, 4:44 pm

JSBACHlover wrote:
Also: how do you translate a concept into a sculpture? Are you operating associatively or synesthetically? So let me give you two distinct concepts 1) "virtue" and 2) "globalization"
How would you sculpt each one?


Those are awesome and they feel amazing :)



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12 Dec 2013, 4:48 pm

superluminary wrote:
JSBACHlover wrote:
Also: how do you translate a concept into a sculpture? Are you operating associatively or synesthetically? So let me give you two distinct concepts 1) "virtue" and 2) "globalization"
How would you sculpt each one?


Those are awesome and they feel amazing :)


Haha. That's cute. But I was addressing DevilKisses. Although if you can respond by describing what constitutes your brain traffic from point "A" (virtue or globalization) to point "B" (those "things" which feel amazing), that would be helpful.