what is "thinking in pictures"?

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Interesting conversation. I've always been more verbal than visual, so for me the thought of being abled to see clear pictures in your head sounds intriguing.There's one exception; when I listen to Joe Hisaishi's (studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki's composer) music I see scenes from the movies in my head. So when I'm listening to Totoro's song I actually see Totoro bouncing around in my mind

I wrote a blog post about thinking in pictures this week, specifically seeing words as pictures: How Red And Blue Make Purple

I call this my all-sensing, no-thinking mode, the most peaceful contented state of mind that I have. Just sensing things without any further thinking.

This might be an Aspergers thing (the speech is archaic, complex and formal, and very early on very strongly developed), but I do think in words.
Someone said Temple Grandin thinks like typing words into Google Image Search.
Well, I think like typing words in Google. What comes up are concepts, that get explained by scentences (or keywords I guess).

You say some thoughts are hard to put into words, but I believe you might be talking about feelings, which are pretty much independent from thoughts...
Untill I was about my "mental walls" got "broken down", which resulted in me feeling feelings for the first time ever, at age 24.
Before that I had developed a typical defense system one uses when under traumatic stress (the kind that causes PTSD) from birth; basically every emotion or feeling got suppressed instantly, before I could consciously notice it.
My body reacted badly and heavily, but I didn't know why and generally could ignore it...

Now that I'm doing EMDR therapy I am encountering for the first time moments where I cannot speak (usually when I'm re-experiencing mortal peril), because the feelings of stress/adrenalin/fear are so intense they just cloud my mind and all thinking stops. That's what emotions seem to do; they come from your most primitive brainparts and can overwhelm all thought and logic for awhile.
This way it's not possible to convey them with words untill reflecting upon them at a later moment...

Yes I think that's what they mean. I always see the words part of the process as a means of clarification, of pinning out out the thoughts on a dissection table for critical analysis, development, familiarisation, evaluation (perhaps even by others, said the Aspie).....I think the anthropologists say that language was the thing that empowered our thought process to enable our rapid technological advancement. I've noticed that I can function using pure mentalese but I have to stop and put it into words when the mentalese isn't getting me where I want to be, both with technical and emotional thoughts. I've sometimes caught myself initiating an avoidant response to things that are slightly scary, and I've benefitted from stopping and setting out my reasons for the avoidance, from making a more conscious decision about how reasonable the risk is.


I can't......I've tried 3 times and slowly getting somewhere, but I've hardly got the tree rotating, and I've barely started on the background. I would think that converting mentalese into pictures would have an empowerment effect rather like language does......I read of an ape solving a visual problem (getting some food using a tool) with his back to the materials, and they said that was evidence of abstraction, he must have pictured trying out a few possible options (wouldn't have "worded" them as he had no language). I think I've done it myself to solve predominantly visual problems.

Reminds me of the adage - "a picture is worth a thousand words." I think they're both pretty useful.

Don't get me started on ancient picture writing. Just wondering if a visual thinker would be happier with a visual language.

Sometimes it's feelings, like in the aversion thing I wrote about above, but it also happens with emotionally indifferent stuff........I'll kind of sense a conclusion but it could take a while before I can put my working into words. It can be a technical problem, the solution will appear in my mind as an encouraging smudge of mentalese, I'll know I've got the answer but I can't immediately say what it is or how I've deduced it......then I have to refer back to the sensation and pull it into fully conscious words. The result is usually identifiable as a product of my past experience with similar problems


I agree that logic stands little chance against strong emotion. It's as if there's an illusion that our thoughts and behaviour are all consciously willed. I even saw one bit of research where they reckoned that the brain normally makes the decision first, via the emotions, and then rationalises up the logic, but we feel that we have just taken a conscious decision. Not just as a pathological maladjustment, but as the normal way the brain operates. Freud reckoned that women usually understood the importance of emotions in driving behaviour much more easily than men. I gather his wife knew when he was going to have an affair with a patient before Freud knew, but that could be a myth.

Reading everyone's descriptions is great! I seem to "think" in a sort of hybrid 2d/3d manner. Here's the best visualization I've found so far: (I haven't posted enough to add a direct link, but just google "BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels" and it should take you to Vimeo.

All my thoughts/ideas/concepts have 3 dimensional qualities but when I'm "sorting the images" (trying to think of something/figure something out), I kind of scroll through the 3d objects on something closer to a 2d plane (kind of like the video). My challenges are with emotions and direct interactions. When I make eye contact, I forget which "video clip I'm watching" (ie what I'm thinking) and get flustered. Also, I don't really attach emotions with the analytic part, which makes things... interesting. When I was younger, I compensated by scripting and copying. Now I'm learning how to have more meaningful interactions by focusing (mostly just slowing down) and checking my emotional state. It is a VERY manual/non-intuitive process for me to "check in" with myself, but its the only thing that keeps me from flipping out if the outcome of my decision/action is outside the expected range.

That is interesting - and your comments about language delay.

When I am seeing logical diagrams, I don't express them in words. They are an alternative to words - they are shapes.

But I think in words all the time - my brain is a regular chatterbox. I am often rehearsing conversations, speeches, etc - the inner voice in my head talks and talks most of the time, except when I am visualising schematic diagrams I guess. I often imagine talking to an invisible audience, or continue (in my head) a conversation that I had in real life (say, the day before). After visiting my psychologist, I might think further about all the things I could add or expand on what I said during the session - not "Oh, no! I should have said that!" but just rehearsing additional material, trying out different things, just to see. That might go on, at varying times of day when my mind is relaxed, for several days until some other mental topic takes over. I often imagine giving a talk on autism, for example, especially when I am out walking by myself and my brain is relaxed and just rambling on with whatever it pleases (usually special interests). Sometimes I do public speaking and I rarely need notes because I have rehearsed the general material so much that I can just ad lib.

Thanks, I needed your input to get to my answer. I wasn't sure if I thought in pictures or words, but whenever I thought about it it put me in word mode, so I couldn't tell. But your description helped, and I don't think in words internally. There is no voice in my head unless I'm having to put my thoughts out into the world somehow.

I see images, but they flicker between somewhat realistic and more patterns and logic depending on what I'm doing. I suspect this may be partly because of years of programming experience. Now I wonder how people who aren't visual thinkers could ever be programmers. If you can't see the logic and flow of the program as a real thing, it would take so much more effort to code it.

I do wish I were better at visualizing fully real items in photographic quality. If I try to imagine a tree and then walk around it, there is always a tree in the middle of my circle, but branches shift around, details change, it doesn't remain fixed. Perhaps that makes me something more of a pattern thinker, as was mentioned before.

I'm very much a visual thinker. I also have extremely good visual memory. When I play music, I'm also heavily visualizing things, and I also visualize all the notes and everything, in these weird shapes based off of their fingerings on guitar or bass or piano (if I'm not playing one of those things I'm visualizing shapes that are based off of the bass fingering, like when I play ocarina). The shapes are based off of the chord/scale/mode/key the part of the music I'm listening to is in. It's really hard to describe and really weird.

I also can use visualization in other ways. For example, I can say the alphabet backwards with pretty good speed even though I don't practice it, just because I can visualize all the letters in the alphabet in a line, and just scroll through it and read it backwards.

The 'google images' description fits my way of thinking pretty well. If you say 'guitar' I think of many different types of them and see them in my head. I also visualize their internal components, even what the inside of the pickups look like, all that stuff.

Huh. I don't think the entire alphabet was presented to me in order for learning. The alphabet is a song for me, and songs only go one direction. Now, ask me to read you any particular row on a keyboard from memory, and I can do that.

I think of the alphabets that were up on the walls in classrooms when I was growing up, in a line across the wall above the blackboard, usually.

Oh, I also forgot to mention, I really don't think in words - only if I'm talking or trying to think of something to say. While I'm doing that though, I'm also very vividly visualizing the things associated with the words.

I think what really shocked me was how unaware I apparently am of my thinking and how I do it. Is it weird not to think on how you think? Until reading about Asperger's, it had never occurred to me to question how I think.

I wouldn't say it's weird - I've been diagnosed with autism for almost my entire life, but I didn't think about it at all until I started coming here and talking to other people on the spectrum. I thought everyone thought the same way as me (meaning I thought people thought visually, rather than thinking that most thought verbally.)

Thinking in pictures allows me to visualize when reading a fictional book.

I used to rehearse upcoming (possible) conversations and minutely scrutinize earlier situations/conversations.
In fact, I used to stress out about this almost 24/7, never being able to get to sleep because my brain just kept thinking out possible social scenarios and how I should best act in each.
These scenarios both ruined my life (costing me countless hours of sleep and causing stress) and helped me fit in a tiny bit (rehearsing made me appear a bit more NT)...
I had so many and kept rethinking them or making up new ones compulsively...

It's better now I'm on anti-psychotics for the stress.