Thinking in words

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Doesn't everyone do this? I mean I don't even know. I just assumed everyone's brain worked this way.

Starting in grade 4, I had a 'Mr. Dictionary' thing I did for my classmates. I could spell any word and pick up any typo based on the way the sentence looked at a first glance.

For me the same thing works with computer programs; I know where to find the problem before I know what the error is, the pattern just seems off.

And no, not many minds I've run across work like that, in my experience. Then again, I guess I don't get out that much.

Temple Grandin is the last person I would ask about the different ways autistic people think. For years she repeated "autistic people are picture thinkers". Mind you her "pictures" are often moving video with sound. So when she says picture she doesn't seem to mean it's entirely visual, probably just that visual is always there but sound is only there sometimes and mostly to supplement the visual parts. She's oddly enough also suggested that another autistic person making analogies to music was talking in visual symbols so maybe I don't get it after all. 

Then someone must have informed her that not all autistic people think in pictures. Because she eventually asked hundreds of autistic people and family members (how would even close family know how you think unless you told them??) how they thought. Out of hundreds of autistic people.  Hundreds. She came up with only three categories. 

One of those was picture thinkers like herself. Another of those was people who think in mathematics-like patterns (totally different than what I call patterns -- these are abstract patterns) and may excel in music or math. And then the last was people who think in words. 

At this point I strongly suspect her reason for coming up with only three types of thinking is some kind of cognitive issue on her part (the same kind that led her to think of a music reference as suggesting a visual thought process). It can't possibly be because hundreds of people only told her three kinds of thinking. That's just not a conceivable situation.  You can get more kinds of thinking than that on a Wrongplanet thread. 

Here are just the kinds of thinking I have heard of off the top of my head. Mind you most of these I didn't even have to interview anyone to hear. I've read them in books, read them on the net, overheard conversations, and had conversations with people. And it was before I heard a dozen let alone a hundred that I heard more than three types. So here are some of those types:

Thinking in pictures. Obviously. 

Thinking in words. Obviously. Note that this can be auditory, visual, tactile, or kinesthetic, depending on whether we are talking about heard, spoken, Braille (or similar), or signed. It doesn't have to be auditory. 

Thinking in colors moving past each other in different paths and formations (despite the words used this is not what Temple Grandin sees as visual thought, she sees visual and picture as synonymous). 

Thinking in pure thought, free of any sensory imagery or decipherable pattern, free even of the sense of being able to pinpoint specific thoughts. 

Thinking in schematics. Nonvisually.

What Donna Williams calls "pattern, form, and feel". Pure awareness in a sensing way without any reflection on that awareness. Patterns may be unconsciously formed between those experiences, but there is an absence of what most would call conscious thought (as well as an absence of the way conscious thought orders sensory experiences -- so a table will be experienced as color texture and sound but not as a distinct object-type). Note that the word pattern here bears zero relation to Temple Grandin's use of the word. Many people who have experienced this will refer to it as "not thinking" because there is no conscious experience of what most people call thought. As possibly suspected due to the length of this description, this is my native mode of thinking and the one I always go back to when I halt conscious thought.

Thinking verbally when having a conversation, visually when repairing mechanical devices, abstractly when programming. (That's how I recall my brother describing it.)

Thinking in abstract concepts, in a sequence.

Thinking in abstract concepts, complex multidimensional networks. 

Thinking in abstract concepts, flowing all together rather than neatly separated with lines between each one. 

Thinking in... sort of webs of information united by synesthetic sensory/personality/gender data that would make zero sense to anyone else because synesthesia is so personalized.

Thinking through one's sense of physical body motion.

Thinking in music. (In my case when this happens I don't think it is at all like what Temple Grandin describes. I'm not thinking in the relational patterns that make up both music and math. What happens is that I have what I call my internal jukebox. It replays songs. But not just like having a song randomly stuck in your head. The songs always have a direct relation to my feelings, my understanding of something, or an association to something in my environment. Often I will notice the song before the feeling, understanding, or objects/words in front of me. Sometimes the song will even go "ahead" of my conscious understanding of something. This is just the easiest conscious thought to describe.  Right now the song going through my head is a Donna Williams song related to the kind of "nonthinking" I have in common with her.  One thing that frustrates me is that I often effortlessly compose beautiful, flowing music in my head but cannot get it to sit still long enough to find a way to write it down, and can't play piano (or any other instrument that has several tones at once) well enough to even come close to playing it.  Plus it's often played by several cellos at once or something else like that.  This frustrates me.)

Thinking in those actual abstract mathematical/musical pattern relationships Grandin does talk about, which I forgot to wrote down (and can barely even conceive, except as certain Bach music, which is the concretest form I can understand, and which hurts my brain like language does). 

Thinking in visual symbols (but not pictures). 

And that's just off the top of my head without straining my brain. FIFTEEN different kinds of thinking. Just from memory. And out of hundreds of people she can only find three. She's got to be either shoving things into categories they have no business in (much like the music=visual thing I spotted), or omitting anything she can't make sense out of. I can't see another way she could miss so much of the diversity of autistic thinking. 

BTW I think only some of those types of thinking are more likely to be autistic. Most people in general apparently think in pictures. I suspect the "nonthinking" may be one of the few more common in autistic or highly neuro-atypical other people. 

Anyway, please if you're reading this, don't try to force-fit yourself into one of Grandin's three categories. This is one area she doesn't seem to do well at. Don't force-fit yourself into one of my fifteen either unless you belong there. There are probably hundreds of ways to think and discussions of thinking among autistic people (or any other topic relating to our subjective experience) are badly distorted when people think "Gee there are {3, 4, 20, whatever} categories of experience. Which one do I fit the most?"  A better way to do it if possible is "Does my experience match anything I see here?  If so, what parts?  Then what parts don't match?  If not, what is my real experience like?" I know unfortunately a lot of us find multiple choice easier than open ended questions. But still, even if you can't come up with words that fit, you can at least say "None of the above" or "some parts don't match but I don't know how to say them."

Note if that seems obvious to some:  It wasn't for me. A conversation I found somewhat traumatic (long story involving language problems and bullying patterns) went:

GIRL:  Do you think in words or pictures?

ME:  {Thinking:  This kind of question has two possible answers. Pick the one that's the least repugnant.} Uh.... pictures. 

GIRL:  Then you're autistic. 

BROTHER:  It takes more than that...

ME:  {Repeating questions back to the answer is easy since I'm good at echolalia.} Do you think in words or pictures?

GIRL: {With insufferable smugness} I think in thoughts!

That badly bothered me because I was far behind language comprehension than most people, had barely figured out how to at least somewhat communicate something genuine instead of pure echo (that I don't think in words) and yet the person asking the question... she knew there were more than two answers and she didn't tell me, and then acted superior for knowing a third answer. Of course none of the three are my real answer but still it just... I guess maybe you had to be there inside my head to know why that was so crushing. I replayed that conversation for years trying to hope it would turn out different next time. It was symbolic in a way of how serious my communication problems were for my age despite appearances. 

So when I see people being potentially railroaded into a multiple choice approach to saying something as personal as how they think, I feel the need to speak up and remove the railroading elements if possible. Apologies if none of this information was new to anyone. But I do see enough forcefitting in communities like this that I always want to say something when it seems possibly about to happen. 

I always think literally and in words. That, is responsible for my immaculate spelling.

Yeah, when I realized how little I use words and how much I visualize, I immediately kind of leapt to "visual." But on further reflection I keep finding more dimensions to how I think (like not just visual, but sound, hearing, smells, taste, musical sounds, etc).

Plus I feel like I kind of shift between different ways of thinking depending on what I'm doing, or sometimes just shifting into something that is sort of like a lack of sensory interpretation and attached thought (like whatever I am thinking, I cannot even begin to explain it in English - this is kind of like the sensory impressions that flash through my brain as I go to sleep - hypnagogic hallucinations? Except without the actual hallucinations) or even processing sensory data as anything but a blur and rarely lasts very long when it does as far as I can tell, and I have no sense of time when it happens. I remember once having it happen for about ten minutes? During which time I actually missed a bus because I didn't see that it was something I should get onto, since the idea of vehicles, transportation, having a schedule, etc, weren't even present in my mind. It's not something I typically do (although it happens at least once a day) and I have no idea what prompts it. I just "zone out." I remember what I perceived while it was going on, but do not have typical interpretation (or any interpretation) while it is happening, and may not have one afterward. I seem to recall my thoughts as absent or intense, but as I said above, I can't really describe what my thoughts are like when it happens.

When I write or talk to myself, my thinking processes directly into language - which feeds back into even more intense visualization - but when I'm in a conversation I'm often just looking for phrases or quotes or past conversations I can use to keep up my side of the conversation, but I am not really thinking in more than a few words at a time (which is my normal limit, it seems). I apparently keep doing this when the aforementioned zoning out happens, so I can keep talking and have no idea what I'm saying, let alone what I'm hearing. If I'm talking about my interests, I seem to do more of the same, basically reciting data more than exchanging ideas. When I do get into exchanging ideas, I feel like my brain lights up. I don't know. I'm actually actively engaged in real give and take, which only happens when I'm talking to someone with as much interest in the subject as I have. This is far more likely to happen online than in real life.

Okay, that was long. It may be I spend too much time examining my own thoughts.

That's funny. I've always thought more like


was responsible for my immaculate spelling

Wow, I somehow got the idea that you were more visual. When I think in words, it is almost audible.

It IS amazing all the different ways people think.

anbuend,

I guess I think three ways. Kind of audibly, kind of visually, and a nebulous type of thinking that is hard to describe. Sadly though, I use audible things too much. But I wouldn't go so far as to say I "think in thoughts". I'm sure EVERYONE thinks that third way in varying degrees. After all, even if you "think in pictures" something has to interpret and use it.

Not only can I see a banana I can smell it.

Question: is the word banana yellow for you?

I'm pretty sure I'm a pattern thinker too.
I think in sounds too. Actual I would say my thinking from strongest to weakest is this: sounds, pictures, smells, tastes, words. Although smells and tastes are more memories for me.