Most people don't think in pictures?

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So I think in pictures, images, video, motion images (ie, movies), and so on. I recently found out that it is most common for Aspies and people on the spectrum to think in pictures. How is it that most people think?

I never think in pictures, just in words.

I almost never think in pictures. Generally all my thinking is done in like 10 page essays in my head at any given point. And then on messageboards like this I condense it all down to like 5 paragraphs per post which is still long.

I'm diagnosed NVLD, though, nonverbal learning disorder. My verbal IQ is like 130 but my nonverbal IQ is like 80 or something.

i have read that the most common way of thinking is a combination of pictures and verbal. But to think in only pictures or only verbal is rare.


I don't know how I think. Neither words or images come up.

The way I think can only be described as a scrolling message board that moves at the speed of light. Day-dreaming is a different story though.

I guess I see pictures, but more like a recreation of the scene. Like if I think of something I am designing, I can see it as an exploded view, or at any stage of assembly. Or if I remember something I see the whole scene as it happened.

I can't think in images. I couldn't even properly imagine what my own room looks like. Actually, now that I think of it I don't even know the colour of our living room walls

I never realized that this was common. I always think in pictures. I've heard philosophers and linguists talk about thinking in words and I thought they were crazy. I find it very hard to think in words. Sure, I can pick up words from my memory (like now) but it feels very unnatural, and I don't use words for thinking.

I always think in shapes. Objects have shapes, obviously, but abstract concepts do as well. Time has a definite shape (I could draw if if you want). So do numbers (a combination of the paper number line I saw as a child and multidimensional wire meshes). I often think through complicated topics concerning philosophy and economics, and it's like pulling threads or navigating a river of rocks: all kinds of connections and shapes.But words don't feature at all.

I think in pictures too and I can also see words. I would say I am both but I say I am a visual thinker because it takes pictures for me to get it. But mine doesn't work like Temple Grandin's does.

Sounds kind of like fractals.

That's true for me as well - but I think in terms of abstracts and shapes. I don't know what clothes I own and I have only ever learned two car number plates in my life, but general patterns and connectedness between big concepts are very easy.

I am pretty much exclusively a visual(pictures) thinker. I don't understand how else you *could* think(not that there's a problem with other ways to think, I just can't wrap my head around it!)

I have images in my head all the time, and sometimes it's hard to know which things I need to say to people because I will see the image in my head and not notice that other people can't see it, too. I also sometimes think in abstract shapes, and I feel (both physically and emotionally) in abstract shapes and colors. I also always have music in my head, even when it's music I'm making up or variations on music I've heard before. Once, I had an orchestra tuning stuck in my head! Also, I sometimes get words stuck in my head in a very rhythmic pattern. I also used to memorize car liscence plates for fun when I was ten and eleven.

I am a very verbal Aspie (though much more versed in written than in spoken speech) but I do think in pictures. Much the quicker and easier way.

Same here.

Interesting.

I was just trying to find the words to describe how I think and that sounds fairly similar.

I think in systems, how an engine works, how the different parts relate to each other and work together. Or when I look at an OS map, I understand the way features relate to each other in a way that most people seem to have a great deal of trouble thinking about.