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| Do you think visually or verbally? |
| Verbally |
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28% |
[ 26 ] |
| Visually |
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71% |
[ 65 ] |
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| Total Votes : 91 |
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marshall
Under the whirlwind
Joined: Apr 15, 2007
Age: 29
Posts: 2774
Location: North West United States
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 Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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Most of the time I have an internal monologue going on inside my head but it certainly doesn't consist purely of spoken words. For instance I'll often not know how to articulate something out loud yet the idea can still exist in it's entirety as an internal thought. Maybe this seems weird but in my head most words have a "feel" or "aura" that remains clear even if I forget the word itself. Some of my thoughts consist entirely of these "feelings" and "auras" and don't contain any actual words. My thoughts can have the form of language without consisting of actual words. It's like language in that it's mostly sequential, yet it clearly consists of neither words nor pictures.
I'm not sure what kind of thinker this makes me exactly. I consider myself a visual/spatial person since I tend to do best in that area on standardized tests. But I wouldn't say I think in pictures. I'm not sure I think in words either. |
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DarrylZero
One Cool Gumshoe
Joined: Jun 05, 2009
Posts: 1708
Location: Undercover...don't tell anyone! Shhhh
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 2:45 am Post subject: |
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I think I'm predominantly a visual thinker. Reading and conversations usually generate images in my head depicting what's being said. When I'm remembering some kind of event I recall it as a a vague movie or series of images. Sometimes it's like I have a photographic memory where I can recall an image from my memory exactly as it was, but I can't hold on to it for more than an instant.
I'm also visual when I do math in my head. It's usually in the form of a mental image of working out the problem on a white board. A few times I've even moved my finger in the air like an imaginary marker to "write" the numbers. Does that make sense?
One exception is when I try to recall conversations or something someone said; then I hear it as spoken, but usually with no accompanying imagery. I also think verbally when I'm formulating what I'm about to say. Same for my musical memory. Even descriptive song lyrics usually won't generate any kind of image for me. |
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Irisrises
Snowy Owl
Joined: Oct 10, 2007
Posts: 165
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 11:27 am Post subject: |
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This comes up every now and then and I can never understand what it is about.
I have two kinds of thoughts. One refers to the world around me: I observe it, analyze what I see and respond (or, more likely, do nothing). The other refers to the spiritual world, the world inside me, what I heard one profoundly autistic woman refer to as the "real" world as opposed to the "regular" world most people inhabit. Those thoughts can lay dormant for years, or they can pop around like popcorn for no obvious reason. Because the spiritual world is not physically limited (the reason, I believe, I've always had a strong sense of collective self but a weak sense of individual self) those thoughts also appear from elsewhere, which is very helpful (probably the reason I'm still around). Call it intuition or guardian angels or whatever but it's very useful.
Personally I don't think very highly of words, I think people take them much too seriously. I think they are helpful when they are accurate but most people these days don't have or take the time to think things through so they throw words around like they don't matter. So they don't, much.
I think thoughts for me are more the way some people say they see numbers as having smells and colours - they have personalities. Those thoughts that are accurate and helpful, whether they are mine or someone else's, I feed. Those that are not accurate or helpful I try to limit to the best of my ability. But it is very hard work to verbalize thoughts so I can't do it as often as I'd like. I want to reply to things on WP sometimes, I log in and sit there...nothing. My future husband (whom I mentioned a year and a half ago) wants to hear from me sometimes, I can feel him tugging at me...but I can't come up with anything to say. (But with him, he's at least as hard work as I am so it doesn't matter.) (And I think my thoughts and feelings feed him too, even when I don't have words for him.)
But recently I've been trying to practice bringing the two kinds of thoughts closer together, briding the worlds so to speak. I'll say to myself "That's not her" when I see somebody else who's not me - I know it's not, but it brings me closer. Or I'll say "She's thinking about her father RIP" if I am, so I know it's happening in this world too.
That's all a bit complicated and much thrown together. I just don't have anything to say about verbal or visual so I wanted to say what I do have something to say about. |
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MrLoony
Phoenix
Joined: Jun 13, 2009
Age: 23
Posts: 899
Location: Reno, NV
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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Most of the time, when I'm thinking, I'll be thinking in words, but I don't think that's necessarily what comes most naturally to me. I think images come most naturally, but there are a lot of times when I can't "see" them. I think this may be related to something else entirely. I can feel that they're there, though. I understand what the images are, but I just can't see them.
Sometimes, I'll be able to see them, though.
_________________
"And with their gushing over music and fussing over ceremony, the empire became divided against itself." ~Chuang Tzu
"Let reason be your only sovereign." ~Wizard's Sixth Rule
Website = full avatar |
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Morgana
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 21, 2008
Posts: 1311
Location: Hamburg, Germany
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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| mgran wrote: |
I've also dreamt that I'm reading pages and pages of text... and those dreams exhaust me.
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Oh yeah, I have those dreams too! Sometimes they seem to take all night. I often have the feeling that I´m in an ancient library, reading long lost, archaic texts. It´s pretty cool.
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"death is the road to awe" |
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Psygirl6
Sea Gull
Joined: Mar 28, 2009
Age: 30
Posts: 236
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| Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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| I think visually and written. i have difficulty with the whole verbal part. That is why I do not do well with verbal instructions, unless they are accompanied by any visual instructions. So I can not be told or asked to do something. It has to be written down and/or shown to me. |
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OddFinn
Velociraptor
Joined: Jun 28, 2009
Posts: 473
Location: Finland
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| Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 1:56 am Post subject: |
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| Morgana wrote: | | mgran wrote: |
I've also dreamt that I'm reading pages and pages of text... and those dreams exhaust me.
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Oh yeah, I have those dreams too! Sometimes they seem to take all night. |
I'm glad I am not the only one to sometimes dream in text.
Sometimes it's like reading a newspaper, there are some pictures, too. |
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mgran
Phoenix
Joined: May 23, 2009
Posts: 662
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| Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 2:34 am Post subject: |
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Wow, Morgana and Oddfin! I had always thought I was pretty much alone in dreaming about reading so much... What a relief to hear that's not the case.
Morgana, a lot of my dreams of reading have been set in a libary too, and I'm not always reading books. Sometimes it's scrolls. When I was younger I wondered if it was the library at Alexandria... then I started keeping notes of the fragments I remembered, and realised that it was gibberish, not ancient wisdom. 
But I still like the dreams. Even if I do wake up exhausted with my head cluttered up with words. |
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zeichner
Supporting Member
Joined: Sep 11, 2008
Age: 51
Posts: 631
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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| Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 9:56 am Post subject: Re: Do you think visually or verbally? |
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| Absquatulate wrote: | | ... but then I started looking into the matter and saw that Temple Grandin has a book "Thinking in Pictures" in which she asserts that people with autism think only in pictures.... |
Hi Absquatulate - welcome to WP! (Love your avatar, BTW)
In the expanded edition of Thinking in Pictures (copyright 2006), Grandin corrects herself & revises her concept of the way people on the spectrum think. She uses the term "specialized brains" - in which she contends that "all people on the spectrum think in details, but there are three basic categories of specialized brains. Some individuals may be combinations of these categories."
The three categories she lists are:
1. Visual thinkers (photographically specific images)
2. Music & math thinkers (patterns)
3. Verbal logic thinkers (word details)
Personally, concepts appear in my mind first as patterns (not specifically visual) - and I almost immediately begin the process of translating those patterns into words. This process of translation takes the form of an internal monologue, in which I try to come up with the best combination of words to communicate the patterns to others.
The translation process wouldn't be necessary, except that I need to deal with other people & they always seem to want verbal explanations for my conceptual reasoning. Sometimes I'm stumped at translating my thought patterns into words. Connections that seem self-evident as patterns often can't be explained verbally. At these times, I borrow a joke from the "Car Talk" guys & say that my reasoning is "unencumbered by the thought process." 
_________________
"I am likely to miss the main event, if I stop to cry & complain again.
So I will keep a deliberate pace - Let the damn breeze dry my face."
- Fiona Apple - "Better Version of Me" |
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alba
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 01, 2008
Posts: 927
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| Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 4:46 pm Post subject: |
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| zeichner wrote: | | Connections that seem self-evident as patterns often can't be explained verbally. |
For me too. The way I think is the way you described it zeichner. My thinking utilizes numbers, frequencies, tones, patterns, cycles, pulses, levels and their interconnections. I'm certain my native "language" is non-linear. A great deal of it won't translate adequately into either words or pictures. In part because language is linear based. It generally doesn't translate well into pictures either-- for the reason that it is more associated with tones, pulses, and frequencies than with visuals. Both my parents think in patterns as well, so it was probably genetically passed on to me.
This thinking in terms of connections between numbers, patterns, and tones is more likely to translate [for me] directly into a feeling and then the feeling can be described with words, but it's not a very accurate rendering of the original thought. I believe some autistics who think in patterns are only capable of translating both thought and feeling into movement. It is my contention that many autistics thinking in patterns-- are not aware they do, nor are their caregivers and professional support team aware of it. This, IMO, is the underlying cause of at least some of the communication failure, if not most of it.
Translating pattern type thinking into movement is considerably easier than translating it into words, pictures or feelings. When I was much younger, movement and dance was really my only outlet of genuine-accurate-articulate expression. Little did I realize at the time I was actually finding an expression for my basic thought pattern through movement. It may also be noted that frequently I can describe a thought through metaphor, when nothing else proves adequate. So first movement, then metaphor when translating pattern type autistic thinking into communication techniques. This is an original thought. I have not done research to arrive at these conclusions. They just seem self evident to me.
Rodolf Steiner developed a moving communication/dance technique called eurythmy based on this belief. It is my understanding that he did so in order to facilitate communication between the individual and all other lifeforms, including human, as well as to connect up with the entire universe. I don't know much about eurythmy, but I think it should be evaluated as a therapeutic technique with LFAs--before some of the more severe therapies, which tend to restrict movement, are utilized. Frankly, humanity remains ignorant as to how autistics translate their thoughts into communication. NTs may get the sense we are expressing something personal in a unique way. But the NTs, and we ourselves, remain clueless how to get it across in a way that can be easily understood. And of course, whatever method we are using is vital to our ability to communicate with the rest of the world. Stimming, and various forms of apparently bizarre movement, may be--for LFAs and others on the spectrum-- the only way we have of expressing how we think and feel and respond to our environment.
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Last edited by alba on Mon Jul 06, 2009 9:53 pm; edited 9 times in total |
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Morgana
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 21, 2008
Posts: 1311
Location: Hamburg, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 3:49 pm Post subject: Re: Do you think visually or verbally? |
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| zeichner wrote: |
Personally, concepts appear in my mind first as patterns (not specifically visual) - and I almost immediately begin the process of translating those patterns into words. This process of translation takes the form of an internal monologue, in which I try to come up with the best combination of words to communicate the patterns to others.
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Wow, thanks for that explanation! That sounds quite like the way I think- definitely "conceptual" in nature.
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"death is the road to awe" |
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Odin
Supreme Genius
Joined: Oct 13, 2006
Age: 23
Posts: 2076
Location: Moorhead, Minnesota, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Almandite wrote: | I think verbally, although if you were to say "duck" I would picture first a duck, then the word.
Temple Grandin's updated theory is that Autistics think either visually, verbally, or in patterns like math and music. They tend to think very strongly in one way and have difficulty accessing other ways of thinking. This seems pretty accurate to me. One of the things I like about her is that she updates her theories when new information is shared with her. |
I mostly think in patterns and symbols as well as pictures.
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My Blog: My Autistic Life
Last edited by Odin on Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Danielismyname
Zombies ate my NT
Joined: Apr 03, 2007
Posts: 8270
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| Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Moving pictures. |
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millie
bits, pieces, brass, animals
Joined: Oct 26, 2008
Age: 47
Posts: 2981
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| Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:45 pm Post subject: |
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movie screen - 3 d and technicolour. lots of pictures. but strange shapes as well that have a weird feeling to them. cannot put this into words. it is an abstracted way of being that exists outside of language perameters.
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animals are the safest friends to have |
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Dilbert
Phoenix
Joined: Mar 30, 2009
Age: 35
Posts: 747
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Both. I pronounce the words of my thoughts in my head. But I also visualize especially when I'm trying to recall the past or when I'm trying to solve a problem. |
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