Do all aspies think in pictures?

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I believe I think in pictures, but I'm not sure......

I'm just so used to thinking this way, that maybe I didn't realize that it was different or "odd".. Is this "thinking in pictures"?:

For instance, When I try to decide what to wear for the day... I start to visualize the clothes and can "see" where they are in the room or where I saw that piece of clothing last.. Sometimes, I can "see" where it hangs in the closet...

If I think to take the trash out... I see the trash bag and see the steps outside leading toward the trash.. and might wonder what the weather is like before venturing outside.. in case it's raining again.. I might get a visual memory of mud puddles from last time it rained..

Is this rare? Thinking in pictures like the examples above? I have gotten like a little photograph of something i was looking for.. Like, if it is a piece of paper with notes on it, sometimes I can even see the notes.. (I don't have a photographic memory to the extent that I can visualize all the words on a whole page.. but just notes sometimes)..
If you don't "Think in pictures", do words come strongly to your mind all day long? I'm going to read all the other posts on this thread, i just read the first few..

Do other people do that? Do the words come to you, like you hear them, before you speak them (not auditorily like a hallucination or anything, but from within)? I wonder what it is like to "Think in words" more and would like to hear from more people who Think in Words (examples) and people who Think in pictures too.. more examples of what that means? I have self realizations.. like today I was in alot of physical pain.. and at one point, trying to decide whether to take an anti-inflammatory pill for the pain, I said to myself (not out loud, but internally) "I'm actually writhing in pain-- I need to take something for this.." Then, an image occurred in my brain of where the pills were... Is that "thinking in words"? Sometimes, if I get stressed and distracted, I will talk out loud like "O.K., I've got to find my keys! and where is that grocery list!" and I'll have a visual of what the grocery list looks like in my head while i'm looking for it... Maybe it's a combination of both pictures and words...

I've never really analyzed this so deeply before, but I'm starting to realize that most of my thinking is in pictures.. I like to write though (I type over 100wpm -- but I don't actually say the words in my head first -- they just come out of me -- sometimes pour out, like pure expression -- not really "thinking" at all..) How rare is "thinking in pictures".... is that a hallmark of being on the autistic spectrum?

sorry this post is so long... I'll edit it...

i dont think that it is 'normal' to think in either images or words.

if both systems work just as well then there wouldnt really be an advantage to one or the other.

for one, i tend to think in terms of images when imagining dates. i remember learning the spanish days of the week in kindergarten, and even then i have a memory of the distinct "map of the week" that i had created in my head. sunday is at the top and to the left. monday through friday is a cascade; they look a bit like oversized stairs. saturday sits next to friday directly to the right, and directly below sunday. i never imagined any particular colors, but they all sit on a black background, and they look like they are sort of 'floating' there. the year, however, is round or elliptical, but just a single ring of consecutive dates. for some reason the months dont have a spacial representation in my mind. i have no idea why.

anyhow, for most things like writing, or typing (and really almost everything else), i definitely think in words and not images.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=qjAmzeW0fPs[/youtube]

Here's a video on visual thinking, don't know if it has been posted up before, but it answers quite a lot of questions about how visual thinkers think.

This explains a alot. =)

I once was at a science-fair and tried a game called Mindball where you "control" a metal ball by clearing your head from thoughts. And I beat everyone there without even trying. I could sit there and talk and make jokes and still win.

Must have been that I think in images more than thinking in words and that the game measured the "word thinking". ...anyway, it was very fun. But also a bit disturbing having an EEG-flat-line.

No, not all Aspies do, but I believe it's common for us.

I think in pictures, all my thoughts and memories are visual.

Completely the same thats why I can remember alot of things in memory and all of it in detail like theres a video playing in my head of my life, sometimes i would remember it like it was yesterday.

My thoughts are also in pictures, hardly in words though.

The only time when I think in words or numbers is when i'm trying to spell or do a calculation in my head to get the answers... Most of the times, I would of got it right.


superboyian.

I think in sensations, concepts and words. The degree of verbalization depends entirely on the adressee of the thoughts - if it's something I want to talk about to somebody I usually verbalize (I want to be able to actually say it in a comprehensible way and need some training for that), if it's something for myself I don't really verbalize. For example when I prime myself for an action, it's entirely in pictures of what's happening that lead to the ghost sensation of my own actions (like, the idea of pressure in my hand and the texture when gripping something)

I tend to parse written language a lot easier than spoken language - I always subvocalize and at the same time perceive the 'concepts' associated, and when reading I can slow down and speed up the way I need it. When listening to somebody, I need to move (doodling helps too), and I always, always repeat everything I am hearing subvocalized. Otherwise I can't pay attention and thus can't follow.

I also seem to have different 'tracks' running. I'm doing Spanish immersion and one day I suddenly realized some part of my mind had been constantly translating everything I heard or read in other languages to Spanish. I also perceive things with all senses, even when some of them have to be filled in by memory. Visual-tactile are the strongest associations, meaning that when I look at something (real or imagined) I involuntarily imagine how it feels. (I really like to look at people's hair ... )

i hionk in text messages

Something I just recently noticed is that I CANNOT think verbally UNLESS I do at least some sub-audible vocal motor movements (mainly movements of my voice box and lips), and I do often talk quietly to myself. I do not have fully internal verbal thinking like NTs seem to have.

I only recently found out that some people don't think in pictures. I tried to think without pictures and it totally doesn't work for me, I can't turn them off.
Words help me think clearly, but they never take the place of pictures.

My memories and imagination is mainly in picture but when I think "logically" I use internal monologe. Doing online test it results that I've mainly this last function (auditory digital).

I think that "picture" are more down in the autistic spectrum (and/or for people who talked later than usual) while the stereotype of "little professors" have mainly internal flow of words.

I think in auditory and visual at the same time. I see the image of what I am thinking about and internally hear my voice thinking the words. Kinda like narating a slide show. Sometimes I cant comprehend what someone is saying unless I get a mental picture of what they are saying...it gets really funny when my mind comes up with the wrong mental picture.

Like the time I asked my mom...what are we having for dinner?? she said tuna caserole. But I heard cat and my mind pictured our neighbors cat named tulsa. So I screamed and said...I dont wanna eat Tulsa the cat!! ! My poor mother just stood there dumbfounded and then busted up laughing and said, "NOOO, TUUUNNNAA CAAASEROLE. And I was so relieved but really did not like the idea of tuna any better.

But on the plus side...this type of thinking makes me a great writer because I can hear the words and how they will sound and I have vivid mental imagery to draw upon. In this way, being autistic is my blessing...and tulsa the cat convos are my curse. My best friend calls them, JoAnnerisms.

I thought everyone thought in pictures until I read about Temple Grandin and I didn't know what she was talking about with her thing in pictures because why was it a big deal? Everyone thought in them, I thought.

I have always been a visual thinker and I admit I can see words now but I can't stop seeing pictures. But my thinking doesn't work like Temple's. I believe she has the wrong conception about autistics thinking in pictures, she says lot of them are but I find that to be untrue. She really needs to come to these forums and educate herself on individuals.

Well, I definitely do. I always think of images and I can visualize a lot of things. I'm also a very visual learner, which makes me bad at things like English and History where you can't really see what is going on, unlike Math and Physics where there's always graphs and diagrams.

My thoughts almost have it's own five senses. So yes, I see in pictures but not only that, but also in moving pictures, and I can see words as well as hear them, which sometimes causes me to talk to myself or stare blankly at nothing in particular. And if I think about a certain taste or smell then I can actually almost taste or smell that taste or smell.
And while I do think in "moving pictures" they aren't always very vivid, like I can easily picture a face I've already seen, but I have trouble picturing a face without ever having seen it. so in my moving pictures thought with people I've never seen but only imagined, i can't easily visualize what their face looks like or what their voice sounds like.
some of my friends also think in pictures, but most think in regular thoughts, which I don't know it consists of cuz that's all they said. but my aspie friend thinks in moving pictures and in words

My normal thought is mixed verbal/visual, but I can switch to a much more one-sided thought mode when lying in bed after waking up. It does not work always; I think it happens when I wake up from a dream. I must have been lying on the right side for hours and keep that position after waking up to stay in the alternate thought mode. In this mode it is much easier to keep a visual picture in mind. The mental image disappears and the mode wanes if I open my eyes. Whenever I find myself in the visual mode after waking up, I try to stay in it for as long as possible by not moving and keeping the eyes closed.

The visual mode helps me think much more clearly about problems that have bothered me the day before. The problems must be visual in nature, however. They have to be representable by a concrete mental image. For example, a good problem to think about in this mode is how to rearrange the furniture in my room. The room and everything that is inside just stays effortlessly before my mental eye and allows me to zoom in, out, rotate the view, and move stuff around.

That ease of mental imagery comes at a cost, however. While creating, keeping and manipulating concrete images is much easier, it is harder to think about abstract things. I tried to think about insurances, free will, or consciousness. It was almost impossible to have a single coherent, useful thought about any of those concepts. This reminded me of Temple Grandin, an extremely visual thinker who writes she cannot think about abstract concepts without imagining a concrete picture. When she thinks of dogs, she always sees a concrete dog. I tried this by thinking about "Dogs hunt cats". I immediately saw a concrete dog of a specific race, with a specific size and color, hunting an equally concrete cat. In normal thought mode the dog and cat are much blurrier and not real visual pictures. I use this test to find out whether I am in visual or normal thought mode when I wake up.

I believe there are two things causing the visual thought mode. The first is probably the brain still having its attention switched to the inner mental eye, because I find myself in this mode most often when waking up from a dream. The second cause I believe is that lying on one side for hours has flooded one side of the brain much more strongly than the other. When I change my position after waking up by turning on the other side, I fall out of the mode. Lying on the right side fills my right hemisphere with more blood. This hemisphere seems to be responsible for concrete visual thinking.

This might sound ridiculous, but the reason I believe this is that I sometimes am in a different alternate thought mode when waking up lying on the left side. Mental imagery is much harder then, but something else is easier: mathematics. After finding I was in a strange thought mode that was not visual mode, I experimented with different things and found that the way I do calculations like 19 times 23 is much different in this mode. Normally I just try to do the multiplication procedure I was taught in school: 10 times 23 plus 9 times 23. But in left side thinking mode, the numbers got a life of their own. 19 was not just a random number but presented itself as 20-1. I computed 19 times 23 by computing 20 times 23 and then subtracting 23 from the result, which is easier. This trick might be an old hat for many, but I normally do not compute this way. And lying there in bed this way of computing just came natural to me. I tried another computation: 25 times 17. 25 pulsed in front of my eyes, activating all kinds of relationships to other numbers. 25 is 100 divided by 4, which is 2 times 2. So I computed the result as 100 times 17 and divided the result by 2, and then by 2 again. Again much easier than the school procedure.

This reminded me of Daniel Tammet, an autistic who has savant skills in the realms of numbers and languages. Lying on the left side must have flooded my left hemisphere, responsible for mathematical thinking. I call this thinking mode Daniel Tammet thinking mode. Thoughts are much less associative in this mode than in Temple Grandin mode. In the latter I have problems switching to a completely new thought that is not visually related to the current one. Daniel Tammet mode is also better for abstract reasoning. I thought about the abstract concept of marriage. I found it pretty easy, coming up with different metaphors. A couple marrying is a bit like cells forming a multi-cellular organism; they use synergy to attain common goals. Marriage is also a bit like getting publically shackled to each other: by limiting your own future possibilities, you become more reliable and predictable to your partner. Now these metaphors are not really brilliant insights, but they showed me that thinking about abstract concepts is much easier in this mode.

Each mode has its advantages and disadvantages when compared to the other and to the normal mode. I alternate sleeping on the left side on one night and on the right side on another, so on some days I wake up in Temple Grandin thinking mode, on others in Daniel Tammet mode. I also try to keep a repertoire of visual and analytical problems to think about when managing to wake up in one of those modes.