Do you think in pictures?

[heaven777]

i think in diagrams, like graphs and pie charts and things that display data visually. even in concepts that are not mathematical my brain makes it that way when i have to think about something.

 

[watersprite]

words won’t always

 

[watersprite]

me as far as I know

 

[watersprite]

Thank you @Forest Cat

 

[watersprite]

I have often wondered if others process thoughts with images and little else.

I get anxious about all of this.

 

[Crysalis99]

Sometimes. But over pictures, I tend to think in very algorithmic manners.

Right below algorithmic thinking, I use mental pictures/video when I am trying to recall lost items, I will basically use video in my head to recount my steps. It can work find items. Unless it was a third party that happened to move an item.

 

[Nervous Rex]

I think exclusively in words, formulas, code - any form of text.

I can't remember pictures or hold them in my head - I have no visual memory at all. My visual perception is so bad that I sometimes can't tell the difference between the numbers that I've filled in on a Sudoku puzzle and the hints that the puzzle came with - and my handwriting is nothing like newspaper print. I just see something and think "That's a 9" without noticing whether it was printed or handwritten.

But with text - I can do wonders. I can see words printed in my head as fast as they are spoken. I can picture a word in my head and read off the letters forward or backward, or from the middle outward. I can remember passages from a book I've read recently or code from a program I've worked on recently well enough to read them back verbatim. I've used this to debug code when I'm not at my computer screen.

 

[watersprite]

@Nervous Rex
It sounds (?) like a parallel kind of filtering and distillation to how, for me, an image kind of “travels.”

it goes from the world to my mind to my mind’s eye to my - creative desire for lack of a better term - to turn the image to a painting.

And then there’s where the parallel ends and the lines or planes angle away.

Because the inage has become a process it is not the original image anymore.

 

[watersprite]

And sometimes my brain visually maps the process and the image itself remains a seed for, perhaps what is best decribed as a deconstuction process, which is an abstract image. Maybe synesthesia not sure.

 

[Nervous Rex]

@Nervous Rex
It sounds (?) like a parallel kind of filtering and distillation to how, for me, an image kind of “travels.”
...
Because the image has become a process it is not the original image anymore.

My brain definitely takes an image and reduces it to "relevant information only" ... and then tosses out the image. When I look at a person, I will understand that it's This-Person-That-I-Know, but if you asked me later what color their hair is, whether they were wearing glasses or if they had shaved their eyebrows off, I wouldn't be able to tell you - that information was not extracted and saved, and - sorry - I threw out the original picture. I would have to look at the person again to answer the questions.

 

[Streetwise]

I do that too, Kelly. If I'm having a conversation I'll just jump to the end of it or go on this random tangent mentally and say something totally unrelated to what we're talking about. It amuses me but frustrates others

I do it when I'm writing typing I was described as erratic obviously as I have autistic neurology I didn't like being manipulated

 

[watersprite]

Separating the phrases into sentences would help with that @Streetwise
Could you elucidate a little more as to what you meant when you added

I didn't like being manipulated

to

I do it when I'm writing typing I was described as erratic obviously as I have autistic neurology

 

[Judge]

words won’t always
View attachment 75262

I see so much consistency of artistic control of watercolors in such an image. That delicate blending- and bleeding of colors. Well done!

Took a formal class in watercolors in college. Not an easy medium to master, IMO.

 

[watersprite]

thank you @Judge
One of these days I hope to figure out a place to sell it and all the others.

 

[watersprite]

A section of today’s abstract expressionist sketch of memories mixed with emotion. Oil. I named it
Liquid Refeshment, Sydney quarantine #13.

 

[Atrapa Almas]

I use words to talk with myself, but I think in systems.

So when I think in an "aeroplane" I see how the airflow is bend down, I see the lifting force and the draft, I see the motor posibilities, the loss of pressure at the end of the wings, how the air curves into vortex, how the water condensates creating clouds, ...

When I think in "water" I see the water cicle, their inner forces that make it reach their minimum density at 4 Celsius, how it solves salt, the way ice crystals do form, its way to create bridges under high voltage or how its created in a combustion motor.

As I focus in a certain aspect of reality, the driving forces and relations of that thing apears. Thats what makes learning so interesting to me, it adds new relations and conect things.

I think its the first time I feel confident to tell others how my mind works.

Thanks for asking.

 

[PercyZ]

I answered a survey a number of years ago that had things like

“close your eyes and visualise x” with answers from very clear to not at all.

I, truthfully, answered ‘not at all’ to all questions as I can’t visualise anything, even the face of my wife.

The university behind the survey got in touch to ask be to become involved in a further study. Unfortunately I was unable to do so due to work constraints.

It would have been interesting to explore it further and the answer may have led to a better understanding of why I have some a poor imagination.

 

[Darkkin]

I think in pictures, horrendously active imagination (I could give Anne Shirley and Paul Irving a run for their money.), but I also have a massive vocabulary, so I can translate visual into written mediums easily. If written context is vague or abstract I will either point it out, ask for clarification, or cross reference the baffling information.

I tend to be hyperspecific about a lot of things, those pertaining to reading and writing in particular.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Sometimes I imagine the most random things inside my mind such as the thought of a drag queen lip syncing to a song.

 

[Slim Jim]

Words. But my mind is maybe Ideogrammatic. And I can recall non linguistic data. Like memories, (sense impressions,) very vaguely. But I don't consider that Thinking. But words, primarily words.

If asked to picture a image. I can, especially if it's a photograph, I've recently seen. Or even a stillshot from a movie. But it's not very clear, it's very indistinct. But my brain definitely does something, and a faint impression of what I've seen, is generated. But it's all so murky. My childhood I swear I had a more vivid imagination, could remember faces more vividly, and actually would have images flash in my mind....like random images of girls in bikinis.

But I might have "aphantasia," or a lowlevel form...it pretty much looks like it...hard to really know what goes on inside other people's heads.