Do you think in pictures?

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Yes I have the same problem also. For both speaking and writing. I have to think of how to start, how to say it, what words to use, etc. and it takes forever.

Me, too. I think this may be why I tend to interrupt people.

When I hear a noun, I see like a still photo. When I hear the verb, then it goes into motion like a film. I also see words spelled out.

For people who think in words, do you hear the words, do you see the words spelled out; how does that work?

I hear the words in my head. For you are these images clear, do they have color?

They are very clear and in color but I don't pay too much attention to the color. When my daughter was a toddler, she kept saying she wanted to go to "pie pie". Each time she said it, a picture of a pie and then another picture of a pie came into my mind. Months later, we drove by a popeye's chicken fast food place. She said "Look. Pie Pies".

If someone asks without wanting clarification I often say just "video", or "visual thinking". For me it goes something like this (not exactly like it though):

Full (moving) 3D visualization.
Abstract concepts.
Images. (both moving and non-, but "images" is a bit too weak word for it)
Sounds.

I visualize the beer section at the supermarket.

I think mostly using a mix of words and pictures. When someone else describes a place to me, I can visualize it quite readily. The same thing happens when I read a book. When I think of how I'm going to do something, I often "see" it in my mind. When I try to describe a place or an object or something that happened to me, I have to visualize it and translate that into words. When someone says, "let's go to the supermarket," I see the supermarket in my mind. Just the same, I have a constant running monologue of thoughts in my head.


Yeah, abstract ideas can be tough to translate into words for me too.

Yet another person here who has this trouble. Language isn't my first language - my inner language is made up of pictures, colours, movement, and concepts (fully formed ideas which are neither verbal nor exactly visual, but are just "there"). It is difficult to translate my thoughts into words for speech and sometimes almost impossible. Words and sentences do come up in my thinking processes from time to time, but are always accompanied by images and colours and very much secondary to them.

I have always loved reading books because of the vivid visual images they produce in my mind (a running movie of all the characters and locations which I become completely lost in). Interestingly, they were far more vivid in my childhood than they are now - my best childhood memories are not of anything that happened in the real world, but of the worlds in my imagination produced by reading books! I can't imagine not having this ability. I wonder if people with less picture thinking tendencies have less interest in books? I think I would be a great deal less interested in them if I didn't experience them in this way.

I am unable to visualize images in my mind, with the exception of a small window while I am on the verge of falling asleep. Even then it will only be very faint flash of an "outline" of a specific detail, and not a whole image. When reading or trying to translate my thoughts onto paper or the screen I will hear words, but 90% of the time I think in abstract ideas or concepts. The best way I can think of explaining it is that, if I am thinking about a car, for example, I do not see a car nor hear a car, I just know car. The translation between my thoughts made up of "concepts" and language can be quite difficult for me.

I think in colors, forms, patterns, shapes--sometimes moving, sometimes static. When I walk outside, I am terrified of people and only look at buildings. Sometimes I wear the colors of brick to blend in with the brick sidewalks, so I don't fall over. I think in form and color poems...

When I read, I watch movies in my head. They are in color. I watch the main movie on the left side of my head and the details of the little things in the movie on the right side of my head.

That is SO interesting. It is difficult for me to imagine.

I’ve never understood how people say that they think in either pictures or words. If you think in words, do you see the word? If you see the word is this not thinking in pictures in a limited form? I can create pictures in my mind; When I think of sounds I form pictures of the things that make those sounds; I also make pictures when thinking about smells and touch. I guess if I am remembering experiences or thinking about things that correlate with experiences I’ve had, it is mostly in picture form; if I’m thinking about abstract ideas and data, I can’t picture anything most of the time, nor do I see words; it’s just a blank image. If I am thinking about language and grammar I think in words (at least I see the letters usually in New Times Roman ); if I am thinking in abstract and not thinking in words as I write I often start to make spelling mistakes even when I have used and spelled the words I’m using many times before. I would have to say I think in different ways depending on the types of things I am thinking about at the time: but on the whole I would say pictures mostly followed closely by blank screens and then words.

I think in pictures/movies

IMO, this would still be thinking in pictures at least in a sense because you are still seeing something. All the people I know who think in words (pretty much my entire family I think) HEARS their thoughts in their mind rather than seeing them.

I primarily think in pictures or movies, and I tend to picture what I read as movies and could not recite exact quotes without recalling a picture of the page I read, which is not usually possible for me.

I think there's a spatial element to my thinking because I often feel like concepts exist in a particular space relative to me. This is not a constant and something can move around depending on what else is going on (I may feel that the video game subforum here is off to my left today, but it may end up to my right tomorrow because a video I am watching on youtube is to the left). I haven't really tried to categorize how this works because it is a bit ephemeral and I don't really notice it on an explicit level.

I find it fairly easy to visualize spatial relationships as well.

I think in both pictures/images and words. It's an equal amount. When I read a book, I "hear" the words that I am reading in my mind, but I also "see" what is happening. When I am just thinking (not reading), I "see" and "hear" the words that my mind comes up with, and I also "see" what I'm imagining.

For the most part, what I imagine is in color. An exception is if I'm re-playing a scene from I Love Lucy in my head. Those are in black-and-white, like the original show. And when I re-play scenes from my special interest movies/TV shows, I "hear" the spoken dialogue in the exact intonation as it was originally said, but I also "see" the spoken words (because I have "ticker tape" synesthesia).