Why do auties think visually but aspies verbally?

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According to what I've read aspies are often verbal thinkers but people with classical autism tend to think visually. (I haven't done any in-depth research on this though.) Can you give me any reasons why that's so?

I am aspie and I see and think for the most part in pictures - the aspies I know do the same - I think non aspies work in words - just my thoughts

Please provide an explanation of the terms mentioned above, they don't always mean the same to different posters on this site.

There has been some research suggesting that in AS the verbal IQ is likely to be higher than the performance IQ, whereas in autism the performance IQ will be higher. People with Asperger's are more likely to have visual perception problems and people with autism have more language problems. Plenty of people don't fit that though. It's all a bit spurious.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this visual thinking vs verbal thinking hypothesis. I really really don't get what it means. Thinking in pictures. How does that work? Say I wrote a short story about a man stranded on an island. If I have the picture of the man and the island in my head, is that thinking in pictures? If I'm writing about a man on an island, how can I not have the pictures in my head?

I've read the Wikipedia entry on visual thinking and, like a lot of their entries, makes no sense. I've also read Temple Grandin's notes about visual thinking and it makes no sense. These, as well as other sources, explain nothing to me. For all I know I could very well be a visual thinker except I don't have a clue what that means.

Here is what thinking in pictures is for me:

I think in pictures in my mind's eye without words.
Ideas are pictures, and I understand the small, concrete details and big, abstract pictures immediately from the pictures in my mind's eye.
When I have new ideas, the new ideas appear in my mind's eye as pictures, and I understand the ideas from the pictures immediately.
When I have to communicate my ideas to other people, I have to generate verbal descriptions of the pictures.
It is verry merry berry difficult to generate verbal descriptions and communicate verbally with other people.

To me, thinking in pictures is not only:

Seeing pictures in my mind's eye while thinking in words.
Visualizing verbal descriptions.

I think that the majority of people think in both pictures and words, but there is a minority who think mostly in words without pictures, and there is a minority who think mostly in pictures without words, and there are other minorities who think differently from these people too.

Thinking in pictures for me means my thoughts are pictures, not words. I can compose words mentally, but not very many at a time and if I try to think in words I either get hopelessly confused or end up just looping the same thought over and over until I stop trying. If I want to assemble coherent thought in words, I end up either writing or speaking out loud instead. Much of what I use in conversation is based on both of these activities, and it is harder to produce explanations that I have not worked out previously.

I think this limited ability to think in words is more a part of my brain that translates thoughts into language. It's not so much thought itself as it is a part of the process of transferring thoughts to speech.

In conversation, this often means that someone will say something to me that I cannot respond to, or if I do respond my response won't really reflect how I think about what they said. It may be something else I'd prefer to talk about or just a scripted response that gets past it. I usually develop my response to these things later on.

I find that it is easier to translate my thoughts into writing than it is to translate them into speech. Speech ultimately becomes repetitive over time for me in a manner that writing does not.

When I hear or read language, it's translated into images. The concepts I have the most difficulty with are concepts that I cannot easily translate into some kind of image that makes sense to me. When I read or hear something that I can't translate into pictures, I interpret it as nonsense until I can find a way to translate it.

I also do not have a running "internal monologue" that comments on everything I do and everything I perceive.

I'm a visual/spatial oriented thinker but I definitely don't "think in pictures" as described by Temple Grandin. I have an inner monologue like everyone else but occasionally there are ideas I don't have the words to express. I have to come up with visual symbols to represent new abstract ideas in my head.

Last edited by marshall on 09 May 2013, 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think in pictures - I have thought and thought but can not come up with a simple answer, but looking throw others posts one guy said "if someone said CAT the picture thinker would see a form of a cat and the word thinker word see the work CAT" I can read spanish very well and speak allright but can not hear a word of it, which accually means I can not see the spanish word as a picture so it is lost to me. I wish I could just beam my thoughts over where people cound understand me. It is though I am lost if there is no picture - just a thought or a PICTURE i should say

Seems like a myth based on people with autism tending to have lower verbal intelligence than those with AS.

I want to beam my thoughts too.

Beaming would be so much easier than generating words.

So many times I've wished I could just produce pictures instead of words.

Beaming holographic images would be a nice way to communicate.

I don't believe that at all. There have bee threads about this on WP before and according to the response that is not necessarily the case. I would be counted as an anomaly if it were true because I am visual thinker and imagine things in pictures and scenes but I also have continuous verbal thoughts.

I don't believe that at all. There have been threads about this on WP before and according to the responses that is not necessarily the case. I would be counted as an anomaly if it were true because I am visual thinker and imagine things in pictures and scenes but I also have continuous verbal thoughts.

Last edited by whirlingmind on 10 May 2013, 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Nope.

Not even close.