Temple Grandin's Thinking Patterns

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Temple Grandin believes there are three different kinds of thinkers in the autistic world: visual, pattern (math and music), and verbal logic.

This is what she has to say:

VISUAL THINKERS

These children often love art and building blocks, such as Legos. They get easily immersed in projects. Math concepts such as adding and subtracting need to be taught starting with concrete objects the child can touch. Drawing and other art skills should be encouraged. If a child only draws one thing, such as airplanes, encourage him to draw other related objects, such as the airport runways, or the hangers, or cars going to the airport. Broadening emerging skills helps the child to be more flexible in his thinking patterns. Keep in mind that verbal responses can take longer to form, as each request has to be translated from words to pictures before it can be processed, and then the response needs to be translated from pictures into words before it is spoken.

MUSIC AND MATH THINKERS

Patterns instead of pictures dominate the thinking processes of these children. Both music and math is a world of patterns, and children who think this way can have strong associative abilities. They like finding relationships between numbers or musical notes; some children may have savant-type calculation skills or be able to play a piece of music after hearing it just once. Musical talent often emerges without formal instruction. Many of these children can teach themselves if keyboards and other instruments are available.

VERBAL LOGIC THINKERS

These children love lists and numbers. Often they will memorize bus timetables and events in history. Interest areas often include history, geography, weather and sports statistics. Parents and teachers can use these interests and talents as motivation for learning less-interesting parts of academics. Some verbal logic thinkers are whizzes at learning many different foreign languages.





Personally, I'm constantly thinking in words. I'm thinking in questions, more specifically. But when I open my mouth, it all comes out wrong. I've never been able to successfully learn a foreign language, I can't memorize anything like bus schedule, in fact, I have to look at it about 20 times before I know which bus to get on. I always hated history and geography and I'm not sure if I could remember a statistic to save my life, but yet, I think in words. And I'm an art student. I'm not a visual thinker, certainly. I've never actually been able to envision a drawing or painting and let it happen, from head to hand, the way I've noticed my peers tend to work. I work in a figuring-out sort of way. I draw because I need to figure something out. I'm always asking questions, because I need to figure something out. I enjoyed math when I was little because of this reason (until we went beyond algebra, then I got completely lost). So I don't think I'm any of these. I think I'm a "puzzle-thinker."

How do you feel about these categories and how you fit within them?

Visual, undoubtably. Lincoln Logs, Erector Set, Tinker Toys and trains when I was young, and now I design stuff and test it and prove it and improve it in my mind before, during and after actually putting my hands back to work.

I think about what I like and how it works. I also plan out mechanical inventions in my head.

She missed mechanical/parts of objects thinkers. And I'm betting she missed millions more.

I think in all three of the styles that you have quoted.

For me patterns and pictures are different forms of visual.

I am not an auditory processor but I relate very well to what she calls a verbal logic thinker.

When I am studying for exams (yes, I am still taking professional exams in my late forties) I pace and verbalise my study notes.

I adore history and ESPECIALLY geography.

I had a map of the world on my bedroom wall from the age of 4 and I put pins in the capital cities which I joined with cotton to map out round-the-world routes.

If you give me an outline map of the US with just the outlines of the states, I can fill in all the state names and I'm not even American.

As a child I used to spend hours writing out lists of soccer teams, one through eleven for entire divisions/leagues.

I am fascinated with NLP and this is an interesting way of looking at sensory processing.

Thanks for putting this into a thread.

There are at least other 3-4 categories, I'm a pattern-thinker: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt109702.html

Im more audio/visual, but i tend to do best with tactile/visual. Legos, games (card, board, or computer), models (toys or "some assembly required") were my items of choice. I also enjoyed math and chemistry as they required hands-on to solve, but i am a poor 3-D thinker (i can see general shapes, but no depth). I am also a lousy artist, as i cannot draw anything from mind and i require a model to actually draw from, but even then i have a hard time adding depth to the drawing.

Visual thinker here! I've always loved to draw although I'm only good at people and fairies/mermaids and I don't usually deviate from those, my mum says I should challenge myself I try more techniques but I'm not really that good or interested in those. When I was a child I used to build alot of towers and loved things like lego and mega blocks. I'm quite artistic and creative and always had lots of ideas and still do, I'm like an idea machine. When I draw I'm like a convier belt, one picture then another then another and have pages filled with drawings, I can draw a simple portrait of a person pretty fast so at school when I had nothing to do I would just do loads of those. I have also always been into lining things up or making patterns out of bits of paper and stuff, when I used to play with dolls I would set them out in arrangements, like if they were at a party I'd sit them down and make them pose, then I'd just leave them there in their little setting and look at my handy work.

I'm a physics major (getting a math minor) and a musician. I have no idea what type I am...

I'm clearly a visual thinker. I think in images, not words and I can visualize things very well. Abstract concepts come to me as interconnected mental diagrams.