Question for NTs (not about parenting)

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Hello! Even though this questions is not about parenting, I am posting this here because I think this board likely has the most NTs on it.

I am wondering, when you think, is it in pictures or words?

I have autism, and I think in pictures (sometimes with a few words mixed in, but never without the pictures--and often with just pictures alone). Up until last year or so, I thought this was completely normal....and apparently it is for people on the spectrum. I thought it was normal for everyone though, so now I am curious how often NTs think with just words. I asked my mom this recently and she says she thinks in words. That seems so odd and practically impossible to me.

Sooooo, if you are NT is it words or pictures that make up your thoughts???

I am NT and I think mostly in words. Often there are pictures as well but those pictures always have a narrative running alongside them, describing them. I can't think of a "red flower in a blue vase" (for example) without hearing those words describing the picture I am also imagining.

Sometimes there are just words, no pictures.

There are never just pictures, no words.

NT here, and I think in pictures. Or rather - concepts. I guess that counts as pictures? But I'll often feel emotions and ideas in my head that I can't express in words. I write a lot and often consider myself good with words but quite often there are things going on my head that I can't even talk about, because I don't understand them.

I thought others thought in words and I was just weird for a long time, but I blame this on novels (especially YA novels), because they always seem to have the main characters thinking in words, not in images. So I believed it was just what people did.
I'm curious as to the results of the poll too.

I just asked my Dad this question and he said the same thing.

I am the complete opposite of you. I usually have pictures in my head; sometimes these are still pictures while others are like full movie films minus sound. I see them when I am wide awake and in great detail, while still see what is real around me (ie. I don't mistaken the thoughts for reality, I know they are thoughts.) I picture the red flower in a blue vase that you mentioned, and I can say the words with it if I want to (like mentally vocalizing what it is I am looking at), but I could never say the words without having the visual to back it up.

Very interesting! I still don't understand how it works (the words with no pictures), but I think it is quite fascinating!

I think feeling something that cannot be expressed (like emotions) is different than actually SEEING pictures though.

Still, I find this interesting!

What I mean by pictures is this: if I think "cat", I see a cat. I don't mentally "hear" cat. I mean, I CAN mentally hear the word cat, but that it not the first thought in my mind, and that is not what is natural to me.

When it comes to more abstract things, such as emotions, this is more difficult. I sometimes have difficulty identifying emotions of myself and of others, so it is not easy for me to feel "happy" when I think of what it is. I visualize it, but the picture itself is more abstract than say "cat" and I wouldn't be able to explain what I see as I could with my picture of a cat.



It's interesting that you mentioned this because when I read novels, every single word (or sentence) I read is translated into a visual picture in my mind. So when I read a novel, I am simultaneously watching the movie my mind creates with the words.

Not NT either but was thinking abt making a thread like this, I've been fixated on it for days! I'm the same as you littlelily! Relevant part in bold.

same here. Or when anyone talks. Or for anything. When I read craigslist and look at the job postings I imagine what the office building looks like and the people who work there, not their faces but their overall vibe/way of moving/etc, and when it says "bilingual skill appreciated" I then think of a specific example like a shop with an employee wearing a vest that says "hablamos espanol" or something and I imagine someone coming up to them grateful that their language is spoken there and how the employee would likely be happy to be helping a member of their own community and I imagine the fluorescent lights in the store and the dry air of the mall and everything.

FWIW my NT therapist asked me if I think in pictures and I said yes and she told me she doesn't know how she thinks, it just happens instantaneously, without a middle medium like pictures or words.

EDIT: I guess the correct phrase is "se habla espanol". With a tilda over the n but I don't know how to make those in type.

Also I know you want to hear from NTs so this is useless but:



When someone says "happy" I usually remember a specific instance when I was really happy, either in a dream or real life or a mixture of the two, like being at the beach at dusk with a lukewarm breeze blowing over the boardwalk and bright light and being with family members and lining up to buy caramel corn at the window that's right there and I feel the magical feeling running through my veins. So actually my mind works more like an all-sensory-experience-encompassing movie, or just an in-my-mind-but-more-magical version of real life, rather than a series of pictures. But again I'm not NT so sorry for barging in on the thread.

Now that you mentioned that, I have a question for you! When you envision people, do you see their faces. When I am reading a story, for example, I can visualize them from head to toe (clothing, hair style, shoes, even posture). What usually lacks in my vision is a face, though. I mean if I try to picture a family member or a celebrity I know of, sure, I can see a face. But when I am CREATING an image from scratch in my mind (as I would with a novel, for example), I do not see the faces. If I try to picture the face, it is VERY difficult for me. Do you have similar experiences or do you find it easy to picture faces? I think for me, this is because I do not look at faces in real life (when I picture, say, a family member, the face that comes up in mind is an actual PICTURE I had seen before, not usually a time when I was really looking at there face since that doesn't happen). Since I don't look at faces in real, I don't real try to look at them in my thoughts either.



No, no, no--thank you very much for responding! The poll itself is for NTs, but it is interesting to hear perspectives from other auties and aspies who might be similar or different from me in their thought processes.



That you mention this, I think this is what naturally comes to me when I think "happy" or "sad" as well. When I am trying to specifically come up with a feeling for it, then I get those abstract visuals I cannot describe and which make little sense to me. But I do often take (for me: very EXTREME--since I have trouble identifying emotions most of the time) events in the past and think of those as representations of what happy is. Maybe that is part of the reason I often have trouble identifying emotions: because I only represent these rare extreme instances with the words "happy", "Sad", "angry", etc.

When I'm reading a story I don't see faces AT ALL. It's actually very frustrating. If the story specifically says what they look like I still usually can't remember or even "believe" that's what they look like unless the writing is really vivid and convincing. I remember people I know kinesthetically, in terms of how they move and viscerally I guess, the feeling I get when I look at them and am, around them, their general shape and size. Kind of the way ghosts are portrayed in movies maybe? And I DO look at their faces in real life, very closely! When they talk to me half the time I hear nothing they say and am just taking in their face and the way it moves! But the exact details don't store in my memory for some reason, just the gestalt I guess.

EDIT: in my mind they look kind of like they do in the sketch in my profile picture.

I am (mostly) NT and I think in words. Lots of words, all the time, go through my head. I talk to myself constantly.

When I read (which is most of my free time ) I can envision the story-I see the people, places and things as a movie in my head as I read (if it's a good book with good story tellng),

When I think of things or people or places I think of the words-the descriptors-I do not "see" them in my head unless I concentrate on seeing them.

Well I am not sure if I am on the spectrum or not but I was thinking about this topic yesterday.

I was reading Tracker's book and he said that he personally thinks in pictures and that people who had a speech delay often think in pictures.

I did not have a speech delay. Honestly it usually seems that I think in nothing. No words or pictures. It's just blank. So maybe that's thinking in concepts? However if I THINK about thinking, it will be words, like an internal monologue. I never think in pictures.

I watched a presentation a couple of weeks ago, called Deceiving Images and the feeling I got from it, was that many people think in pictures, or at least that they can be manipulated in that manner.

Here's a link if you're interested. It's a bit long, but I didn't think it was dry.

http://www.linktv.org/video/2142

This is incomprehensible to me. Do you at least "see" the word like it's typed on paper in your mind? I did that when I was in spelling bees.

i am NT and tend to think in both words and pictures. in my head i hear the words and see pictures of the major words. when i read, i hear the words in my mind and sometimes will build a picture if its a really descriptive passage, and often will hear voices saying the dialogue with the proper tone and expression.

the main difference between how i and my SO think (we've discussed this quite a bit) is that my pictures are generic and his are photo realistic. so if we both think of a red house, i see a generic red house that my mind creates out of my knowledge of what a house looks like and its colored red, just floating there in space with no background, and my SO sees a specific red house in a picture setting that he has seen in the past. i create a red house, he recalls a red house. i dont think of a specific red house unless i am thinking of that one specific red house. not sure if this is a result of the fact that he has a much better memory than me, or the reason for his better memory.

I think this way too. Sorry for unclearness.

I don't think of normal things (events, objects) with words, nor do I think of emotions with words, though you're right, they're not images either, per se.



Oh, I am the same way. What I meant was that I THOUGHT that most people thought only in words because of how CHARACTERS in novels were shown to be thinking. I thought I was rare for thinking in images. I imagine books in my head like movies, except I too don't see the faces! (Perhaps this is related to not being very good at recognizing faces - see my post in the face blindness thread.) I can't form my own characters' faces in my head when I write novels, so I go on model database web sites and find a face I like, so I can look at it to better imagine my character.

Sorry for a bit of off-topic-ness there.

Hi. Interesting post. I am actually a writer (unpublished as of yet.)

And yes, my characters think in words. It never even occurred to me to write it another way. Not sure how that would be done. "In his mind, John saw a picture of a big red apple." Maybe?

hmm... I honestly think in both continually. I always have a full stream of pictures and images floating through my mind but there is also self dialogue constantly too. I also think I may have a mental form of verbal stimming too bc frequently throughout the day since I can remember a portion of the lyrics of a song will continually roll through my mind. Its the only real break I get from my brains constant yapping.. hahaaa..

I did try to do one without the other and I can pull up images without any words but words are always accompanied by imagery. But really in the day to day deal, I continually do both seamlessly.

As for reading, I do see everything including faces and actually hear the characters in my mind with individual voices. I do not care for writers that are overly descriptive because I prefer to fill in the blanks myself.

I also daydream frequently (it's how I go to sleep) and these are exceptionally realistic including the sounds and feeling of the environment, etc.

Interesting discussion..