How do you think?

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The topic of how people think has always fascinated me. Perhaps it's because of all the funny looks throughout life, making me come to the conclusion that most people think differently than me. I think in words, almost like a podcast discussion or college professor monologue without the images or faces. I can never seem to create images in my head when I read most things. The only exception is patterns, I 'see' patterns everywhere and in everything in life. Patterns within patterns connected to other patterns; and I love to watch them dance. I know how to get anywhere I need to get to, but I have never been able to give directions anywhere from point a to point b because I can't remember street names, only personally recognizable landmarks.

Hey Shwaggy.......gotta Love them patterns too. Dont want to toot the Aspie horn too loud, but the prevelance to see patterns in so many things and then connect them with other patterns , bigger or smaller...Almost like Aspie superpower. And location by landmarks seems very familiar too. But am still able to build images of pragmatic concepts
of projects and connecting the image into something tangilble ...seems easy for me . If I have tiniest inspiration .
or perserveration ... ..Many happy visits to Wrong Planet for you .

In an abstract and conceptual like patterns within patterns, that had to be painstakingly translated into words or pictures and vice versa.

Else I do utilize visualization, auditory inner monologues, and imaginary visceral and spatial nonvisual-nonauditory sensations.

I'm also able to zoom into the details, and zoom out on the bigger picture.


But my short term memory and working memory sucks.
And my language processing and cognitive-verbal areas are shot that it's a wonder how am I not diagnosed with a learning disability.

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What-Makes-An-Engineer-An-Engineer-ENelson.pdf

In Eugene Ferguson's book, Engineering and the Mind's Eye (Ferguson 1992), he quotes
Richard Feyman (1988) when he discovered the difference between a visual thinker from a verbal one:

I said, "Thinking is nothing more than talking to yourself."
"Oh yeah", Bennie said, "Do you know the crazy shape of a crankshaft in a car?"
"Yeah, what of it?"
"Good. Now tell me: how did you describe it when you were talking to yourself?
So I learned from Bennie that thoughts can be visual as well as verbal.

Source: What makes an Engineer an Engineer? By Erik Anders Nelson, PE, SE, M.ASCE - Structures Workshop, Inc. 1 Richmond Sq, Suite 147N, Providence, RI 02906 ; PH (401) 383-8988; email: [email protected]

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... t=original

Richard Feynman
"When I work on deep and esoteric things, describing what it's like is hard. It's like asking a centipede which leg comes after which. There is a crazy mixture of partial equations and solutions, and I have some sort of picture of what's happening that the equation is saying is happening. It's a nutty thing, and I don't know that it does any good to describe it. I suspect what goes on in every person's head might be very different.
At high levels, we think we're communicating well, but we're actually having some kind of big scheme going on to translate what the other person says into our images, which are very different.
I found this out because I got interested in our time sense. I would try to count to a minute by counting to 48. I could do many things while I was counting, such as reading. However, I had great difficulty speaking because, of course, I was sort of speaking to myself inside my head when I counted.
Once, I went down to the breakfast, and there was John Tukey, a mathematician at Princeton. I told him about these experiments and what I could do, and he said, "That's absurd, I don't see why you would have any difficulty talking, and I can't possibly believe that you could read."
So, I couldn't believe John, so we calibrated him. It was 52 for him to get to 60 seconds. Then he said, "All right, what do you want me to say? 'Marry had a little lamb?' I can speak about anything. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, 52." It's a minute. He was right. I couldn't possibly do that, and he wanted me to read because he couldn't believe that I couldn't.
So then we compared notes. It turned out that when he thought of counting, what he did inside his head was see a tape with numbers that went clink, clink, clink, and the tape would change with the numbers printed on it, which he could see.
Since he's using a sort of optical system and not voice, he could speak as much as he wanted, but if he had to read, he couldn't look at his clock. Whereas for me, it was the other way. That's where I discovered, at least in this very simple operation of counting, the great difference in what goes on in the head when people think they're doing the same thing.
So, it struck me, therefore, if that's already true at the most elementary level, when we learn the mathematics, functions, exponentials, electric fields, and all these things, that the imagery and method by which we're storing it all and the way we think about it could be, it really, if we could get into each other's heads, entirely different.
In fact, when somebody has a great deal of difficulty understanding a point that you see as obvious, and vice versa, it may be because it's a little hard to translate what you just said into his particular framework and so on. Now, I'm talking like a psychologist, and you know I know nothing about this."

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/richard- ... son-ph-d-/

I don't.

yes, i think in words, can't see a single image "in my minds eye"

I have aphantasia and did not learn this until after my autism diagnosis at age 68. It explained so much. There is a myth that all autistic people think in pictures. nope, just another myth.

Definitely not those of us who are aphantasiac (about 2 percent of the general population, with no ties to autism diagnosis (yet) ) and it is quite likely that those who can picture things in their mind's eye might also (some of us at least) think in words.

I think I may be aphantasic, as I can't imagine a scene I haven't actually encountered. Or maybe that's lack of imagination.

However, I'm great at looking through papers or data and synthesising them to extract meaning and draw conclusions. So it's like I think in concpetual patterns rather than visual patterns (?)

I generally think in words. I see verbalising thoughts as a way of adding them to working memory in my head, like an internal pen and paper.

I am able to conjure pictures in my head, but it’s not my preferred way of thinking.

I am a slow thinker which often makes me feel stupid around others. I like to find the best possible outcome to a problem, a bit like a chess computer trying all the combinations.

Long time ago , thought of myself as a conceptual thinker ....but as usual , sorting concepts can be a longer process, but usually better quality more pragmatic answers .
Was great until I realized not all people think like that...?
And want all the expression or exaggeration type of flowery language that people seem big on in the NT world ,,generally monotone and pragmatic , doesnt always translate as one might hope, when interacting with others

I think in pictures and moving pictures like watching TV.

I mostly think by talking to myself under my breath, or sometimes in my head. I often talk like I'm giving a lecture, explaining my thoughts to myself, which then generates more thoughts and keeps the process going.

Sometimes the monologue stops and I'm not actively thinking so much as watching images (remembered or imagined) go by. I say "images" but they can be in any of my senses.

There's usually background music as well.

Very interesting topic. I think two ways, mostly by hearing my thoughts, and also visually - an example of the second might occur if I am trying to remember how a word is spelt, or the last time I saw a particular person.

Doing advanced maths exams in school years ago at I would sometimes spontaneously hear the correct answer in my head, which embarrassed me as I couldn't explain my "working out" process when asked to, after handing in my completed paper very soon after beginning. I took care to sit right up the front near him so that he would know I had not been cheating.

How my brain turned on and used that mode I have never known but assume the subconscious was somehow involved..