what is "thinking in pictures"?

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hi there,

i stumbled often over the expression "thinking in pictures". What does it mean?

Does it mean that a person thinks first of the picture representation when it hears or thinks of a certain word? Is it related to this?
When I think of "tree", then you can envision the picture of a concrete tree, an abstract tree, however you could although have in mind the concept of a tree, the attributes it has, e.g. it has green leafs.

Each representation has its own advantages I think, and depending on your custom thinking style you probably have different ideas, goals, and ways to achieve them.

As far as I can say, I think I don't think too much in pictures, I think more in concepts! But it would be nice if someone else thinking in pictures could explain it to me

thanks,

anton

The term is often associated with an American autistic woman, Temple Grandin. She has very highly developed visual skills and can visualise her industrial designs in her mind as if she is watching a movie. She can picture an imaginary building and "walk" through it in her mind, seeing all the details and functional parts in vivid detail.

She had difficulty learning to speak, and tends to picture items in her mind, rather than think in words. So when she hears the word dog, rather than have a vague image of an abstract dog in her mind, she has clear and detailed images of many different dogs that she has seen. She describes it as being like "Google Images" - try typing "dog" into Google images and you will see image after image of various dogs.

She also says that she uses the word "dog" for any animal with certain sensory properties - eg dogs are things that bark, dogs are things with big furry noses, etc. So she classifies things into "dog", "cat", etc by looking for very visual differences that she can rely on to distinguish the various types of things.

She recognises that some people think in more abstract images (abstract diagrams rather than vivid photograph-like images) - typically in patterns, rather than photo-like images. She sees this as a more mathematical and musical way of thinking. And she also recognises that some people think more in terms of words and historical facts, etc.

I am more a pattern-thinker - mathematical - but also something of a word and historical fact person. I don't think in terms of vivid pictures, but more in terms of "sketchy" abstract diagrams.

It is interesting to note that a brain scan of Temple Grandin shows a lot of strong neural connections to her visual cortex - it seems that her brain itself is highly wired for visual thinking.

Interesting.

When I think of a dog or a tree, I see a photograph-like image of a very specific dog or tree (I guess the archetypal one in my mind? A German Shepherd mix and a Norway Maple, as seen from my eye level) - I never knew there was anything unusual about that. When I do math or design something or try to navigate, something like that, I think in colored shapes or more detailed, photographic images and move them around mentally, and when I think about a task that has to be done step-by-step or about how to explain something to someone, I mentally hear the sound of my own voice speaking. When I think about concepts, I see blobs of colored, glowing fog and feel a sensation like blood moving in my head, and think with those images and sensations, only translating them to something more concrete later. All of that happens pretty automatically depending on the topic. I wonder whether any of that is especially AS related (I can see how it's related to the stuff associated with the right and left brain!)

I love the Google Images description, fits me perfectly. What I'm still trying to get my mind around is how people can think of something without images. All thoughts produce specific and clear images in my head.

I tend to see abstract (stick figure) diagrams rather than lifelike images. E.g. two black dots with a thin line connecting them is how I see "relationship". I can easily visualise a hierarchical classification system as an upside down tree - but not with leaves and bark, just a set of lines fanning down and out from the starting point at the top. My mind works more like geometry than photography. I am visualising logical relationships rather than physical objects, while Temple Grandin has amazing ability to visualise vivid 3D moving images, just like a movie being screened inside her head.

I have difficulty seeing lifelike, vivid images in my head - they are hazy and washed out - like looking at something that is under water: you can see the general shape but details are murky and keep changing with the ripples.

for people who don't consider themselves visual thinkers, can you visualize a full tree and circle around it like you're walking in a park on a summer day?

I'm just trying to figure out which I am. Because I can do this, and can play everything back like a movie, but in just normal conversations I don't believe I suddenly go into this mode. It only happens when I'm sitting and thinking by myself.

I was wondering the other day if I hadn't misconstrued the meaning of the phrase "thinking in words." That one comes up occasionally, and I tend to reply by saying that I don't believe people think primarily in words (because we all know of some thoughts that are hard to put into words, which shows that thoughts can be entirely independent of words - and if we didn't teach our kids language, they couldn't think in words, but they would surely still think).

So I'm not sure that they mean the same thing as I do when they say "think." I don't know what thinking in pictures is, because I think in thoughts ("mentalese") and then I might translate them into words, but pictures don't come into it so much. Maybe if somebody says "dog" then I'll see a picture of a dog, so I guess there's a visual component for concrete nouns, and if I think of an activity then I might "see" it happening to some extent, but mostly it's just mentalese and sentences. I guess I think a lot about abstract things, so maybe that's why. But I suppose they wouldn't call it "imagination" if it had nothing to do with images.

I get strange visual impressions sometimes. I was struggling to understand an idea once, and when the penny dropped, I got the image of the rubber ink-holder of a fountain pen being inside out, and as I twigged the idea, the rubber ink-holder flipped back into its proper state. Sometimes I use weird imagery like that as mnemonics.

Thinking in pictures is like what Temple Grandin described in her book, the mental visualization and manipulation of detailed images to think and solve problems, and the book of pictures stored in memory, then automatically retrieved when you think of something.

When I think of a tree, lots of specific trees pop up in my mind's eye, and they are all like photographs. I don't think about the concept of the tree or any of the attributes of the tree. I just see the tree with all of its details in my mind, like direct perceptions in the real world. I can see trees that I have seen before, or I can imagine trees that I have not seen before, but either way, there are lots of details, and these pictures are constantly popping up and flying around behind my eyes. Some are like photographs. Some are like paintings. Some are like drawings. It depends on why I am thinking about the tree, whether to collect facts about it or enjoy its purrrtiness or associate it with something else.

In my thinking in pictures world, there is no voice. I don't talk to myself in my mind to talk about the pictures. I think in pictures to represent concepts, just as some people think in words to represent concepts, and there is no need to talk about the pictures. This was one of the reasons that I had a significant speech delay, I think. I didn't think verbally, so I didn't communicate verbally. Later, I learned to apply verbal labels to pictures, from single words to phrases to sentences to paragraphs, so I could translate the pictures into words to communicate my thoughts to others, and that was a big part of my speech development. Not just speech, but also language. I learned to read early, but I didn't have much reading comprehension, because I saw words as pictures and letters as pictures, or I heard words as sounds, without attaching meanings beyond the single word level. At some point after learning to speak, my reading comprehension improved, because I started attaching meanings to words in the form of pictures instead of seeing words themselves as pictures. I think that the difference between autistic thinking in pictures and NT thinking in pictures is that there are no words to go with the pictures in autistic thinking in pictures. Or the words don't automatically go with the pictures, and you have to consciously and laboriously apply the verbal labels to communicate or even talk about your pictures in your own mind. For me, words and labels are not needed for pictures unless I communicate them to someone else, and concepts and abstractions are eggstracted from pictures or represented by pictures, and associations are made amongst pictures.

I started writing a blog last week, and my version of "writing" a blog is making a bunch of pictures for a post, then translating the pictures into sentences, so I think that I am going to eggseed my WordPress file upload limit much sooner than most bloggers.

The only time when my mind is devoid of pictures is when I am focusing on music, specifically singing with my eyes closed. There are only sounds, and I am completely focused on hearing and making them.

thanks so far for these intriguing insights

How can I know more about it?
Is there any books (besides the mentioned of Temple grandin) or blogs about it? Which one to prefer to learn best?

greets
anton

I guess thinking in words is the use primarily of language to make sense of the mentalese. The words, the grammar, the meanings all connect to the blurry logic of the background mentalese that I really can't work with. I can't think or understand anything complex without putting it into sentences. I learned to speak at a very young age because I have basically no inner visual ability and no other meaningful way to deal with things I learn.


No way. I can kind of see a few ideas of tree with intense focus, but most of the time time I make a whole picture, it is a simple, children's book version, and even that takes effort. I struggle even more to fully see images of things I have seen before. When I think about something like a tree, I have sort of a database that I can pull and use different ideas from using language.

Hmm, interesting. I guess maybe I am a visual thinker then. Or at least partly.

I think in both, pictures and words, but I think I think in words more. Sometimes when I'm on a bus and not listening to my music, I try to imagine everything I see what it would all be like if it was a thousand years after all humans disappeared off the planet. So I imagine everything abandoned, falling apart, rusted, overtook by nature, et cetera. But as I do it, I can't do it in pictures, I need a voice in my mind to say ''oh that lamp post would be rusted or fallen over, and that tall building over there would be collapsing'', I can't imagine a life after people unless I have these mental words to help me imagine. So does that mean I think in words?

Based on what I’ve read from here I’d have to say what I do can also be considered “thinking in pictures”.
Unfocused pictures and motion pictures combined with conceptual 'stickers'. When first learning something new and/or interesting my mind will take a mental photograph of all things around me and the time. If I’m sitting in a classroom usually the board or the teaching will be photographed combined with any other visual stimuli like seating arrangements of students, current locations of trees, and whether it was night or day. This picture will act as a point of reference for any previous concepts or information having been gathered that could be connected with the newly learned concept and will get 'stuck' to it.

One such example of this is the first time I heard of the term "hard water", I was walking through the woods on one of my junior high field trips and someone had mentioned hard water while I was insuring I did not fall into the small stream. The second time I heard the term was in my Biology 11 class. The third time was in my Grade 11 Chemistry class. These three photographs held very little information so they got 'stuck' to a picture of the reference book I was reading about for the electrolysis of water which holds the majority of the conceptual information on "water".

The motion pictures are a bit more difficult to control because it's as if frames have been taken out. The only effective use I’ve gotten out of this has been in studying physics. When thinking about the change of angular acceleration, my mind has an image of a figure skater spinning about with her arms outstretched, the formula T=I(alpha) is floating in mid-air adjacent her. As she brings her arms in the formula arbitrarily changes to T= (1/2I)(alpha) to signify the obvious increase in angular acceleration.

Sometimes if there is a diagram of a problem and I do not completely understand it my mind will lift the diagram out of the page and cause it to start its expected motion. If there is no diagram I'll usually draw what I think the problem being discussed would look like in my mind and play with it until the concept becomes clear to me.

I've done this since I was in elementary school and never really thought it to be unique in anyway (still don't). The problem I've had is I sometimes cram too much of a single concept into a single picture, this causes my writing to have holes in it (it's easier to think about something than articulate it). I've been under the impression that as my vocabulary grows I'll be able to condense much of this information into shorter sentences and the problem will eventually cease to be.

I think in layers of images, now that I'm starting my 4th decade in a few days.
When I was a kid, I thought like this:
http://flic.kr/p/9YBd81
linking so I don't have images distracting people-
I saw letters and numbers in my head too, and I won spelling bees because I could see the word in my head.
I lost spelling bees because of anxiety.

As I got older, it got to be more like this:
http://flic.kr/p/c2UiYj
One part of the image in focus and the rest dim or out of focus.

Now, it's layers of in-focus images surrounded by out of focus parts. My brain disregards what it doesn't need and focuses sharply on the important stuff.
Like, if meet a hot redhead with green eyes. I see her hair in technicolor and her skin and eyes (especially green eyes). Everything else is black and white and/or out of focus.
If I see a motorcycle with an engine problem, my brain will see the engine and make the parts that are broken or needing tuning as color sharply focused. The rest is out of focus black and white. I know there is, for example, a script on the seat in white. But, I couldn't say if it says Corbin, Honda, Harley Davidson, or whatever.

These images have a short shelf life in my head and dissolve pretty rapidly unless I close my eyes and stop taking in visual stimuli.

That too ^

I can do 3d images and rotate them in my head. I can see drawings on a page and make them work to the point it distracts me and I forgot why I was supposed to be looking at it. I kind of slip into neutral sometimes and sit taking in an image in a sort of zen way.

Your experiences btbnnyr and how you perceive your visual thinking is very similar to mine, including your relation to music. I feel that music is a form of thinking in itself - full and complete without any associations. Besides the visual thinking I also have a tendency to see and form patterns, but I wouldn’t say I am a pattern thinker per se. Patterns are rather the result of a patterned world.

I also had a speech delay, but I do not know whether the visual thinking and/or some sort of inherent wiring was the reason for the language delay or was visual thinking just reinforced in the absence of language. But being very able to speak, I still dominantly think in pictures.

Visual thinking is often presented here and in media via concepts, like if you think a tree, you see a tree, but in my opinion this offers too much of a simplified picture. I do not think (in) individual concepts. Visual thinking happens, at least for me, in a visual landscape, where concepts are a part of that landscape like furniture is part of my room. You move in that landscape, you change things and your perspective, you see whole scenarios with their parameters, new associations (-> new ideas) form, new sceneries are being revealed through the ones you went through, relations are being seen and cause and effect is visually visible. That is how thinking as a conscious thing occurs in my “visual” brain.

Deep down I think that pictures, words or other representations are ultimately just a reflection of the interaction happening in our brain, a bit like the interface of a computer is offering us a unified picture and enabling output and input with the system. Being in the music and sensing things (like the wind, sand in my fingertips or seeing the shadows move) is the purest form of thinking to me and no overanalyzing and conceptualizing could ever beat it.