NarcissusSavage
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 03, 2009
Age: 31
Posts: 656
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 Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:05 am Post subject: |
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| Poke wrote: | My IQ is >3 standard deviations above mean, and I have no visualization ability. As I noted in another post a little bit ago, I just realized this a few weeks ago at the age of 30.
Have you looked at dfan's site? Google can't visualize, his site should be the first result.
That guy explains my condition very well.
It's like my mind deals solely in concepts.
If you say, "Picture a baby sitting on a alligator" --I could never in a million years conjure up a mental image of that, but I have an intellectual understanding of what a baby is and what an alligator is, and I can associate the "concept" of a baby with the "concept" of an alligator.
This type of "conceptual" thinking manifests itself in the way I use language.
For example, consider the concept of "dumbing down" or simplifying communication in order to reach a given audience. When I try to "dumb down" something, I usually end up doing the reverse--I become obsessed with finding the best words possible to explain the concept, and usually the best words I can find to explain a concept are more complicated and involved than... Uh...
See? There it is again. The concept makes sense in my head, it's just hard to find the right words for it.
I feel like I have to preface everything I say (apart from very simple small talk) with, "These are the best words I can think of to describe the concept I'm trying to describe. They are not perfect, they are merely the best ones I can come up with right now."
Another example of my "thinking in concepts" came up the other night when I was playing checkers with my wife. We came to a stalemate that I recognized instantly just by glancing at the position of the "chips" on the board. I said, "Okay, start over." My wife was confused. "We're at a stalemate," I said, "neither of us can win this game." Although my wife is intelligent, it took her a minute or two of examining the board before she understood why this was so.
Now, if you asked me to explain WHY we were at a stalemate, I wouldn't be able to. I could TRY to explain, but it would probably take me thousands of words, and even then I probably couldn't accurately describe the concept. |
I find this very interesting. This describes me as well, for the most part. My standard running thought process is concept based. It functions the majority of the time sufficiently to allow full functioning in my life. However, I can also process thoughts verbally or visually as the need arises.
I generally do not, because I feel that these are less reliable. My verbal thought process is chaotic, too much happening too quickly, it is hard to hold on to any particular thought string, and they fade quickly. However, if I aim to remember a conversation verbatim, or lyrics to a song, or actually listen to a song in my head, then I engage this type of thinking. I find it mentally taxing, and moderately uncomfortable, so generally avoid it.
Visual thinking I like, but while my internal pictures or videos are perfectly clear (I can re-read a page of a book that I have seen) I do not seem to have control over what images or video is recorded. It is unreliable, in that I may want to recollect something important, visually, yet be unable to...although I might have a perfectly clear image of that random guy I passed on the street from 15 years ago. It's a roll of the dice whether or not I can access any particular visual memory...although if I can, I always will. So it is useful, just randomly so. I can also build my own visual images or pictures, they have life like properties and I can run something akin to a personal simulation of an event. I think that is somehow my conceptual thinking working in concert with my visual thinking.
But for the most part I think in concepts, which you describe very accurately. I feel as if I am translating from my native language "Concept" into English every time I try to communicate. The more I do it, the better I have become at this translating business, but I think I've resigned to the fact it will never be completely fluent, that it will never be natural to engage in communication using language. |
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arko5
Raven
Joined: Jul 19, 2010
Age: 24
Posts: 107
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| Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 7:34 am Post subject: |
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| RazorEddie wrote: | | Just out of interest do you get lost easily? I am terrible at navigating around unfamiliar places. A part of my job involves working on-site at factories. I have to be very careful to build a mental description of the building or I'll probably end up getting lost. I've always put this down to my inability to create a mental image of where I am. |
I'm hopeless at finding my way around places, if I ever have to go somewhere new I spend quite a bit of time researching the route and drawing out a map, still quite often go wrong though. Even in my hometown (that I must have lived in for 10+ yrs) I struggle to give directions. I know the way, but as I can't picture it it's very hard to describe.
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Your Aspie score: 146 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 51 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie (confirmed w/ diagnosis) |
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