Thinking in pictures study

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Hello WrongPlanet group members,

I’m Lucie Bouvet, and I am an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès in France. I am conducting a research study on the topic of "thinking in pictures" in autism. As part of my research, I am interested in analyzing threads related to this topic on the Wrong Planet forums. We are going to conduct a qualitative analysis on previous posts that discuss personal experiences related to thinking in pictures.

This study will be conducted in strict accordance with ethical guidelines, ensuring anonymity and confidentiality. No personal information, usernames, or any identifiable data will be disclosed in any publication resulting from this research. We only intend to collect age and gender (when publicly available) to characterize the sample that contributed to the data. The findings of this research will be utilized solely for scholarly purposes and will be published in academic journals. I’ll also post the results here in this thread.

If you believe that your previous posts might fall into the topic of "thinking in pictures" and that you don’t want your post to be part of this study, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Thank you!

!	Cornflake wrote:
	Post approved.

Does it include info about Aphantasia and/or Synaesthesia?
I have those.
I think only in words or weird sensory associations.
I can't remember if I wrote about them before.

Is there a link to the study? Is the study done online or in person?

You may have seen what I wrote about maths and the reason why I can get difficulties because I think in visual pictures when I think deeply about things. I think in series of visual dots like dice or dominoes and the patterns of dots. Fine unless maths includes letter characters (E.G. in algibra) where I will then be in the "Deep end".
In maths I would mentally get the answefs but part of the maths exams would have points for showings the workings out (And as I had to do it mentally via dot patterns, I could not show how I did it as ones mind works faster than one can write dots down on paper, and it would not make sense to most people anyway because my mind would often work in dot patterns... Which I think other people do not do?) So to get the maths exam points I would give the answer (Which was usually correct (If not it was because series of dot patterns are in different mathematical bases which I may have been thinking in too much depth to get the dot answer which means that I may have forgotton a "Surface think" by getting the base wrong... (There is limitations to how much one can mentally do while retaining much of the visual picture thought processes in parts of ones memory before then shifting the various deep thinking picture thought processes forward to bring them together correctly in the surface thought so one comes up with the right answer.
But to show workings out when ones mind does not think in conventional ways, I had to write my answer further down the page and work backwards from my answer trying to think like conventional peoples methods and try and show logical workings out.

I failed college due to its advanced maths BUT went back to re-sit GCSE maths and was able to do the whole exam without thinking deeply at all (What I call "Surface thinking") and got 100%. Problems I get is where I have to think deeply about things where picture thinking does not work in number or letter forms. The only option from an early age was to think in pictures of dots and as I got goodat it, by thinking by seeing the patterns the dots makewhich was a whole lot quicker to get answers than thinking in dots and counting the dots. Is a much slower thinking process than others do mental processing because I am left visually counting dots or counting patterns of dots and converting them into the right "Base" in my mind.

BUT I am very good at designing things in my mind. My Grandad and his Dad were both designers. I could not go down that line due to the maths and due to computers. When it was technical drawing I was good (Though I preferred using my mind) but when CAD CAM came in, I found it so mentally restricting I hated it! Future career over before it began!)

But mentally I can play with visual designs in my mind much like they show people designing things on modern computers that show holographic 3D pictures floating in the air. My mind can do that without computers and fit 3D visual parts together etc.

Another aspect which I know I get from my Dad (Other side of the family to my Mums side) is that hevery rarely ever wrote anything down in whatever he was making. He was a carpenter but also designed and made things out of metal or other materials. Everything my Dad made was from his mind. The only times I saw my Dad write anything down, was when he had to calculate angles of roof beams which he did quick drawings using pencil on a piece of wood.
Now my main hobby (Special interest) took on a whole new meaning and aspect when about 15 years ago found myself in a position where I had no income. Model railways are expensive and it was as if my hobby had died on me when I couldn't spend on it as most of my income went on my hobby... BUT when I sat there on the floor of my bedroom feeling depressed as I had to quit a decent job (Masking had worn out and hit burnout so I had to hand in my notice which had happened right throughout my employment history) and wasn't allowed to sign on benefits (As I left by choice), so no income... And I sat there and a 7mm narrow gauge kit I bought came into sight. I didn't even model in that scale, but I loved the look of the loco the kit would make, and the chassis was the ssme as one I did model in.... And I realized that I could use this new scale to use the scrappier items I already had from the previous scale to create my own locos and stock TO MY OWN DESIGN (It is called "Freelance" modelling). This opened up a whole new area to me where I would spend months, even years in thought on different designs before I went to try them out. Even kits I alter to add my own "Look" to them... It has been like re-inventing my hobby again! It's BRILLIANT! I LOVE TO USE MY VISUAL MIND TO EXPLORE MODEL RAILWAY DESIGNS!
I spent about two and a half years in my mind (On and off... Not all the time) on designing my own couplings. First part was what I call my "Mk1 coupling". After trying it without success, I re-evaluated what didn't work and after much more thought came out with my Mk2 which is a success. The reason why I needed to design and make my own was that to buy couplings was out of my budget. I also wanted something that looked prototypical and was reliable, and would negotiate very sharp curves. Success!

(I shared this on a model railway site I am on).

I am hopeless at languages. English vocabluary is limited. Other languages just don't work! My mind just does not retain new words for long unless I regularly use them... To learn another language one has to retain lots of new words one would rarely use, so I am at a big dissadvantage from the start!
Yet visual scenes I work well in and retain memory of them for a very long time.
I can remember a Western diesel coming into my local station (2 miles from where I used to live) and the last time they were used on that line was when I was a year old. I remember the claustrophobic pram which I was only in up until six months old. I can remember my first words at 8 weeks old. (My Dad went buzzerk and I thought I had done something wrong so I kept quiet until normal speaking age!) All visual memories and scenes... I say picture form. My mind works in film form recalling visual scenes.

^I think you may have mentioned that before MountainGoat, about using the dots for maths because I remember being amazed that someone else did this. I tap out the dot patterns of dominoes for numbers with my pen or finger when i'm calculating, always have done.

I've always had the difficulty that my visualising is very detailed and I'm often unable to realise my visualisations to my satisfaction because i either don't have the knowledge or can't create as fine things as i imagine. This was really frustrating as a kid when I'd visualise things like treehouses or go karts and be unable to make them to the standard i could envisage them.

Nice. I count the dots in my mind from the patterns they make. Rarely used my fingers to count as I only have ten, and maths equasions were rarely less than ten!

No it doesn't include aphantasia and synesthesia, we only focus on visual thinking

We are going to analysis previous post on WP so there is no link to the study. I posted the message just to inform the community about this study

You're going to use previous posts on WP on personal experience as datum for a scientific study? Is it qualitative?

Similarly, I'm wondering about those of us that think in pictures, but can't actually see the pictures we're using to think. (I'm guessing it's from brain damage, but I can clearly generate complicated mental imagery to solve problems, I just can't ever see it)

When I don't have obsessive thoughts in my head or work through potential problems, I've got like nothing going on in my head, even though I'm clearly thinking and doing things.

My synaesthesia is in fact visual, just not in the standard way.
I see colours and shapes and swirls which I can interpret for meaning.
They're stored in my lexicon just like a visual memory would be.
Every colour and shape or random picture has a meaning.

Am sorry to qualify my post in this way, as it maybe the same as thinking in Pictures . But mostly
when I think on a idea or topic . that is my own originality ...the thoughts come as images ... And it seems as if somehow my mind intuits how things are to be percieved . And all the associated images that need to comprise the final concept . This is a constant for me . But as long as it is a creative topic .. It can be a great and even calming distraction. That occurs as a part of a life/ creative process. It affects practically all aspects of my life . At one time
seems it was a curse ,with dealing with other humans . Then was able to harness it to primarily to creative pragmatic processes . And used it to invent new things that served me . Sometimes it was merely blending concepts on primarily a practical level.

I'm always thinking in pictures. I can't think any other way.

Yes it is qualitative study, it will look like this : https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0188446