What do people mean: "Autistics think in pictures"

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Yes, but I'm maintaining that your surface thoughts originated in time before your awareness of the words for those thoughts. Sort of like how you have to shear a sheep before you can tie up the wool in a bundle. It's just that it happens so quickly, I suppose there's really not even much of a point in insisting that it happens at all, unless we're getting into the nitty-gritty of neuroscience. I am being anal.



I can identify with that.

As a child, I recall that I very rarely thought in words. This probably explains why I had a tendacy to interpret literally what people say back then and talked at a slower rate than the other students.

Today I think in a combination of words, pictures, 'videos', and numbers depending upon the situation. If I'm designing something, solving a math problem, writing a computer program, or working on a puzzle, it's usually pictures and numbers. If I'm remembering directions, people, grocery lists, where to drive or walk to, usually pictures and 'videos'. Reading, usually images and words. Conversation tends to be a combination of mostly words, but also images for words that I don't know the precise definition of, along with attaching images to people and objects and sometimes 'videos' to situations and events. Sometimes if I'm remembering what a certain sensation or emotion felt like, I will merely recall what it felt like and not always have a word or picture attached to it. When remembering events that occured to me in the past, it is usually remembering my thoughts at the time plus recalling what I experienced with my 5 senses then(and is usually a 'video' type memory or thought, but I often don't get conversations accurate when I hear them from other people. I much more easily remember conversations when I read them). When typing on a forum, mostly images and words.

I'm always thinking and well aware of it and sometimes I wish I could make it stop; I'll often uncontrollably think of a certain topic, which will then distract me from trying to pay attention to something or someone else. during times when it is needed, I sometimes I can't describe my thoughts to others. Most of the time, I can, but I often am told I don't make sense when I do.

For all I know, this could be typical and normal thought processes for most people.

I don't buy autistics thinking in pictures is an autie thing. Dyslexics think in pictures too and I'm sure little kids think in pictures before they know how to read. There even NTs out there who are visual thinkers too. Temple Grandin has mentioned her siblings are also visual thinkers but she explains how different her visual thinking is compare to most people.
Not all autistics think in pictures. I don't even think the majority of them do after being on the forums for so long because they have said how they think.

I think thinking in language means only thinking in words and there are no images in their head when they think. It's like looking at a book with no pictures.

I can't do that. That is a photographic memory.

That is also not accurate. My thinking is in no way linear, and in fact it includes more dimensions to it than something vision-based could possibly use (which is why I say spatial but not visual). What I have less of than usual is abstract symbols in my thinking -- I can do them but it's an effort and they go away the moment I stop trying hard. I seem to handle that stuff some other way.

Temple Grandin really doesn't know a lot about how autistic people think, she just finally said "Oh, so some autistic people don't think in pictures, but they must all think the same way as each other," and concocted a new "kind of thinking" to pin on the rest of us that isn't that much more accurate than to say we all think in pictures.

I think in abstract concepts, pictures, graphs, diagrams, etc, in my head. Which is probably why I have such a hard time putting my thoughts into words, regardless of my apt vocabulary.

Every human can think with pictures.

Do you find it easy to manipulate 3D pictures in your head?

The general shape, yes, the visual image, not really. But on that BBC brain sex test or whatever, the thing where it makes you pick out which objects are the same one but rotated different ways, I got all of them right. And I find certain kinds of geometry really easy, except I am bad at putting it into a linear proof. But it's more a feel than a picture.

Definitely anbuend! I've tried to say this same thing to Dave in the past. Just because I don't think in pictures, does NOT mean I think in a "linear" fashion. Patterns, patterns. Think Fractals Dave. Interlocking and a whole, just a piece of it doesn't work. It's the whole reason I find the way that I was taught to program (flowcharts) so difficult to do. I think about the problem as a whole, and fill in the details as I go. I've always done my programming ass backwards from the way I was told you were supposed to do it. I did the flowchart after the program was done to satisfy the instructor, but a flowchart (linear) has NEVER aided me in programming, it's too restrictive.

Yeah, fractals, weird topology, that sort of stuff is fairly intuitive to me. In fact when I did a science fair project, my project was developing a bunch of fractals that even the teachers didn't understand. (I tried to generate fractals using the same methods as the Sierpinski Gasket and Sierpinski Carpet, but with larger numbers of sides, with the result that instead of the polygons like the square and triangle, you got these almost flowered-type things with increasing numbers of "petals".) My problem is that I have a really hard time translating these things into math-language. (In fact I once took two math classes that covered the exact same subject, and was told by one teacher that I had zero aptitude for it, and one that I was amazingly adept at it, with the only difference being the first one relied more on equations.)

Before I knew anything about autism or Asperger's I knew that I thought differently because I had a hard time projecting what I was thinking into speech. The best way that I can describe how I think is in concepts with no visual form. Just sort of an idea. I used to tell people that I think in 'thoughts'. I don't think like that all the time though. For simple things I use words or images.

I can't

^^ don't you see dreams?

Only dreams yes. Not awake. Not day dreams, either.

I cannot control them like local thought and I can't dream when I want to.

I agree it is quite a rare thing. In fact I've never met anyone who doesn't see images in their head.

It's the most difficult translation of all. How do you say you think in "thoughts"? I realise even NTs 'see' pictures/film ect when thinking, but at what point would that make them visual thinkers?

Question for those who said they think in words: is it like an internal monologue going on inside your head?