Creating pictures in your mind? Visual thinking question!

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I've recently been referred to a clinic to see if I have ASD. My doctor asked me to fill in a questionnaire before the first appointment at the clinic, but one of the statements has stumped me:

"If I try to imagine something, I find it very easy to create a picture in my mind."

Would you agree with the statement?

You have to tick a box. Strongly agree to strongly disagree. I'm not sure what to tick for this. What is the something that I'm supposed to be imagining? I can't picture faces very well, or picture what people tell me about clothes, and when people tell me about an event (I always have to know what is happening in advance) I can't really imagine what is going to happen if I haven't done it before.

Do you think it is just generally asking you if you are a visual thinker rather than a wordy thinker? (Like Temple Grandin).

Can you be a wordy thinker and be on the spectrum? Would anyone here say that they are NOT a visual thinker? I'm not sure I am.

Thanks for your help.

I think that you have answered your own question about what to tick off on the questionaire.

You told us you have trouble visualizing things, so you would tick off "no" to the question "do you find it easy to visualize things".

I would tick off "yes, I agree with the statement that I find it easy to visualize things".

Am pretty good at visual thinking. But only at two dimensions. Some folks here on WP talk about being adept at 3 D thinking ( can visual new molecules, or can fix carburaters in their minds' eyes). Don't think that I could do that.

Mention any middle eastern country and I can tell you every empire it was part of for the last five thousand years because I can visualize a map of the middle east and can visualize all of the Empires as blobs of color ebbing and flowing. But I cant tinker with an imaginary car engine in my minds eye.

For me the question asks: When someone tells you to imagine a carrot do you find it very easy to see a carrot in your imagination?
I would answer "Yes" to that however my "Yes" would be more an "agree" than "strongly agree" because the image isn't 100% perfect.

Yes.
Give me a basic written plot line
like in a science fiction RPG sim (role-playing game simulation)
and I can see the whole story unfold
in my imagination, in my mind's eye,
just like watching a movie
... and I can create different endings,
because you can't always predict what
the other people in the game might do.

...

I've always heard that people with autism (or any non-NT condition) generally thinks with pictures, drawings, or even full-moving pictures and movies. Is this true for me? Hell yes.

I've always heard that people with autism (or any non-NT condition) generally thinks with pictures, drawings, or even full-moving pictures and movies. Is this true for me? Hell yes.

For me it's a "strongly agree" yes. I visualize as if I'm inwardly seeing something, and my memories of things that have already happened are the same too -- I see a situation replay again like a video, or I see an object. I'm also a word person too so I don't quite know how that gels together...

When I read fantasy its almost like if theres a movie playing in my head

I'm so used to visualizing things as I think about them, that I don't actually think of it as visualizing, its just thinking. Sometimes the visual image is just sort a vague, background thing, like a faint hologram, other times its a very rich, detailed cinematographic representation, depending on my level of focus. I can't imagine thinking any other way. Its hard to believe NT people think exclusively in words, since most of them have horrible grammar and spelling skills.

I remember reading years ago that most people don't dream in color and that struck me as bizarre. if you found yourself in a black and white world, wouldn't the first thought in your head be "Wait - this can't be real, where are all the colors?" I think the shock alone would wake me up.

I agree with this.

I answer that question "yes" because I have been visualizing things to amuse myself since I was a child. I like to imagine shapes, surfaces and landscapes and rotate them or fly across them, seeing them change.

I'd have to check "Very Strongly Agree". Anything I think of becomes a full-color, 3-D moving image in my mind. I can't really think about, recall or understand something until I form an image of it.

I do believe that you can refine the ability to think visually if you constantly use it over time. However, if you do not have that visual thinking ability, I do not know if it is something that can be gained with doing mental exercises or not. Part of it may be linked to the amount of imagination people had when they were young, as the process of very abstract thinking could change how the brain becomes organized as it matures into an adult's brain.

whenever people say something to me, or when reading, pictures flicker through my mind as if I have a camera inside my brain. Someone once said, "The pipe exploded." And although I knew it wasn't so, a picture of an explosion flashed through my mind. I have no control over it. When I hear a song in which someone claims to be in heaven, I see this garden in my mind, full of wildflowers and sunny. Although I'm well aware of the fact that this isn't the meaning at all.

Aspies are usually visual thinkers. But then some aspies aren't. You don't have to have each and every one of the aspie traits to fit the criteria for asperger.

I'd check Strongly Disagree because I'm NOT a visual thinker. I was born with a rare low vision disorder & my brain sometimes doesn't process things I do see; like I could be looking rite at something my eyes could see & my brain won't realize it's there.

I have almost no visual memory. Very much not a visual thinker. I do have excellent spacial reasoning skills, and I can plan things in 3D really well, which is odd since I don't even see in 3D. But actual pictures? Nope. I couldn't even tell you what I look like, beyond basic things that I've memorized non-visually (hair color and length, eye color, the side I part my hair, etc).

There's a stereotype that autism = visual thinker, but really, you see both highly visual and highly verbal thinkers on the spectrum.