Most people don't think in pictures?

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Think spatially kind of. Well like a person with bad vision but good sonar would. Well like a bat would maybe.

If I'm on the phone with someone I put them in a certain room and if I've never been to their house I imagine a house that's probably based on an amalgamation of other houses I've seen and houses from dreams. Very little doesn't come first in spatial/visual form but sometimes words come out of my mouth without being scenes first.

I also think in images or movies. I can imagine words but they don't look as if they are just written but more like snap shots of were I have seen that word or as if it were drawn. If I have to do something its like a movie clip is playing in my mind. I mostly see movies and I always thought it was different from others. when I was told to think of something like a word and how to spell it. I could not but when asked to think of something like a cat and draw it I had no problem.

I think in sounds and pictures. It's like my mind is either tuned into BBC One radio or Foxtel By Demand.

When I'm bored I go into cinema-mode and I'll be there for a couple of hours until someone comes to talk to me.

When I'm doing chores, or someone is talking to me and I'm thinking without the images I can hear my own voice in my head. Then when I hear others voices (people I have known or whoever I'm thinking about) I can hear their accent exactly how it was.
I'm not sure if that is normal or not. Something tells me that it is.

Do people that think in just words see the word in their mind, as if drawn on a piece of paper and can they hear someone speaking those words?

And do other people that hear an inner monologue talk out loud to themselves a lot? Kind of off topic but I was wondered this. Because I certainly do.

Mixture of words and pictures, hard to explain what it really is though. Thoughts just pop up sometimes and are there.

I think ALWAYS in pictures. Occasionally there can be some words thrown in there in some instances, but there are never words without pictures (and often there are pictures without words).

I think more in words, but very often in pictures, too.
Say I'm driving somewhere, and trying to be sure where I'm going. I use memory of places I've been to draw mental maps of my route, and I can pretty easily find my way around by doing this. I can connect roads up that I didn't know connected, too, at least often.
I've always been pretty good at direction- finding (and map reading), so maybe I'm also a spatial thinker? I'm not sure, but I wonder about that....

I think in words and pictures. There's also times where I know I'm thinking about something but I don't hear words or see anything, I just get a vague notion that I'm thinking.

Thinking in words is basically having an internal monologue right?

I'm not sure what it means, but I am assuming that it means words are used FOR thinking - that is, they help us reach some conclusion. I have an internal monolog, in two senses: a very small number of songs get recycled in my head for many years, and it's annoying. They get in the way. Also, because I have trouble communicating, I practice what I want to say, i.e. I talk to myself, pretending I have a audience I am trying to persuade. But it does not come naturally.

For me, words are lies. Words are the enemy of thought. Words are always dishonest. Why? Because words are imprecise, yet they pretend to be precise. This happens to me all the times on forums: I mean one thing and it comes across as something else. I prefer images and shapes because they are more like real life: endlessly fuzzy, with multiple possible meanings overlaid and fading into the distance.

Reality is fuzzy. Words are not. So words are bad. Pictures are better.

I have a very visual memory and can't HELP but think in pictures. I don't think in 'words', I think in "TV", or rather integrated pictures with the accompanying sounds.

It just sounds odd to me that there are people that cannot think in pictures. how would they remember something they've seen, then?

I guess my thoughts are a combination of both. There are times when my thoughts are neither.

I think in whatever the situation demands.

If I need to think of something to say, I obviously go over it in my head in words. When I'm writing an essay, for example, I generally imagine a concept in pictures and translate it into writing, then I parse and refine that writing further in my head.

If I need to design something, I think about it three dimensionally and rotate it in my head and move in and around it. If I were designing a house, I wouldn't think, 'So, I need a niche in the hallway...', I would think about a 3D model of the house and add all the necessary details to it, all the while moving through and around it.

If I needed to fix a computer, I would explode a model of it in my head and visually go step-by-step through the process; I wouldn't think of it in a list.

Having said that, even when I am focusing on verbal thinking, there are always some images to go with it. When I read a book, whether fiction or non-fiction, I play images in my head as the concepts or scenes come together through words.

The images I think of are mostly static, but not static like a flat photograph; static like, say, Google Street View or a virtual tour. Sound rarely accompanies these images, but I can certainly add sound if I want to. I can also make the static images move and come to life if I want.

Serious Question:

What does it mean to "think in pictures"? Why is this unusual and what are the different "ways to think". Oddly I spent some time on google and wikipedia and I could not figure it out.

Does anyone know?

Here's what I mean: when I think, it's a play-by-play scenario like motion pictures. I can pause, fast forward, rewind, etc. I also can just think of objects. If you say basketball, I'll picture a basketball court. I used to think that thinking in pictures meant more spatially and geometric, like maps or those people who can do a Rubik's cube with their eyes closed because they picture it so well. I can't do that, but I do visualize a generalization, but miss details. I likely won't remember exactly what color shirt you were wearing, but will know if it were a t-shirt, polo, etc. I even think in pictures with words and letters: I spell the word b-a-s-k-e-t-b-a-l-l in my mind, letter by letter, and picture each letter. I used to think I was a kinesthetic/tactile learner because I read and wrote what I read to study. I thought the act of writing it, movement, was kinesthetic. I was wrong. It was actually visualizing the words, then writing them again on my own, one by one, that helped me to learn.

I think in both but I think my visual one may be better than normal (just a guess).

How do you guys think without words? Can you formulate sentences or 'talk' in your head?

I hear what I want to wright but somtimes I go faster than I can wright and the words bleed together.

Hmmm..... Thank you for answering me, that actually both clarifies the matter, and encourages me to improve my visual thinking. Words are pretty annoying but at the same time they can come in handy. I do in fact think in words a lot, and when you're bored and no one understands what you say anyway it's always nice to be able to converse with yourself, or at least think about things in a monologue format.

I'm not sure if it's possible to explain the answer to the question I'm about to ask, but: How exactly do you think in pictures? Can you in fact practice thinking that way? If you can learn to think in words, even slightly, certainly one can learn to think in pictures.