My Mode of Thinking

Not Just Words

More than ten years ago, Dr. Temple Grandin wrote a book called Thinking in Pictures, explaining in a series of essays how she and other people on the autism spectrum do not think in words, necessarily, but in pictures.  If you said the word "dog" to Dr. Grandin, her thoughts would show her pictures of specific dogs she's known in her life, or seen in pictures.  Whereas the "standard" understanding of how one would process the word "dog" would be the concept of a four footed, furry canine, without a picture.  Most people, if they had a picture included, would have a composite image of various dogs, or a single specimen that represents the entire concept.

In short, most "normal" people are understood to think in words, with pictures as a sort of footnote.  Dr. Grandin, instead, visualizes everything in pictures and then has to translate to words.  For an idea of how complicated that might be, try imagining how to convey, in pictures, everything that happens to you in couple hours of your work day, including any interruptions that might occur.

Our entire school system, from about middle school through grad school, is geared towards people that think in words, and visual thinkers are expected to understand and use vast swaths of text.  Failure to do so may land you a learning disability diagnosis and the scorn of your peers.  Seems a bit unfair, when visually minded people are our very best at doing mechanical work, construction, architecture, and some kinds of engineering.  Think about it: if you can design and build things in your head, without expending any materials, of course you're going to have an edge over someone who has to use materials or a visualization program to try their ideas.  Dr. Grandin would build cattle-processing equipment and other things in her head before even touching drafting equipment or CAD software.  Yet we usually relegate such gifted people to minimum wage service jobs.

More than Pictures

All of this is to note that there are already examples of non-word oriented thinking.  When I first read Dr. Grandin's book, Thinking in Pictures, I wondered if she wasn't describing me as well as herself.  But it wasn't a perfect match.  I have the ability to consider things visually, but it is not how I think primarily.  Nor is words.  Those things puzzled me for years, since I'd not heard of anything other than thinking in words before Dr. Grandin's work, and then nothing beyond "words or pictures."  

You see, I am verbal and can express myself in words, and do, often, as you can see from this blog.  I grew up reading lots of books, and in fact learned most of my vocabulary and grammar that way.  (Perhaps that clues you into how I really think?  If not, keep reading...)  But I also like charts and pictures, despite my test-verified inability to process visual detail in a timely manner.  (I scored in the lowest 5% of people in a test to measure my ability to process and react to visual stimuli.)  I can't construct, say, a whole cattle-processing complex in my head, but I can visually judge momentum and speed of objects.  So I was very good at dodging people in school hallways, and that translates to being pretty good at estimating whether it's safe to cross the street, or if I can merge into any given space on the road.  

But I don't work purely visually at all.  In fact, one of the ways I judge my moods is by checking what song is presently playing in my head.  My brain, you see, acts like an mp3 player.  It's always on, always playing something when I'm conscious.  Sometimes the music is as simple as a snippet of a song I heard earlier, sometimes as complicated as a whole orchestral piece with all the instruments.  The only caveat is that I have to know the music for my brain to play it.  I can't invent music and play it, I can only repeat music I've already heard.  

I have music that I recognize as "I'm feeling depressed," and music that specifically plays when I emotionally feel like I've failed.  There's an entire playlist that's come to mean, "Things are utterly awful right now, but it's going to be okay in the end, really."  I have music that signifies specific people, and music that represents whole philosophical concepts.  I don't really control these designations, and I cannot change them at will.  They simply come into being, and I "hear" the songs in sufficient numbers of contexts that I finally recognize them for what they are.  

I also have a predictive ability that I've honed over the years.  Between my education in psychology and my observations of people and systems, I can usually get around in situations in life without too much anxiety.  For example, most shops have service staff.  If I can't find something I want to buy, but I'm pretty sure they would have it, I can find someone and ask them.  This holds true for clothes shops, grocery stores, spice shops, and hardware stores.  

This ability also extends to people, to some extent, and it's one of the reasons I don't seem as autistic as I am.  I developed social thinking, of course, but in an effort to make my life less unpredictable and anxiety-provoking, I also learned to generalize beyond "in this situation, I should do this," rules.  Because different people expect different things out of others, it's not the best plan to have a "one size fits all" rule for a situation.  

If I have a conflict with Chris, my spouse, I know that I can bring it to him directly, plainly, and expect to have a reasonable discussion about it.  However, if I have a conflict with a coworker, I can't safely expect that tactic to have similar results.  Unfortunately, many neurotypical people don't like the direct and clear approach to conflict.  It's too confrontational, or seems accusatory, or something.  So instead I have to pick my words with great care, get input from a third party as to how best to approach the problem, and essentially bend over backwards to avoid upsetting the person I'm upset with.  You can see I'm a bit biased here, but hopefully my point is still intelligible despite that.  

Finally, I have the ability to memorize flavors.  This is rather helpful when cooking, as it makes me able to mix flavors in my head.  This is, I suppose, somewhat similar to Dr. Grandin constructing equipment and facilities in her head, but much simpler and less visual.  A couple weeks ago I marinated chicken breasts in pesto and honey, and served it over brown rice and quinoa.  I don't think I've ever had those flavors in combination, but I figured it would work reasonably well, given the results when I mixed them in my head.  They're not flavors I'd normally put together, but it seemed to me that they complemented each other.  I served it; Chris and I both liked it. 

So how do all these things, words, pictures, music, prediction, and flavors work together?  What do they have in common?  In the end, how is it that I think?  Well...

A Third Kind of Thinking: Patterns

It seems to me that what all these things have in common is that they contain patterns.  Words come in sentences, and adhere to specific rules for spelling and grammar.  I learned them by osmosis, mostly, from reading hundreds of books and absorbing the spellings and grammar that made it past the editors in publishing companies.  (I also learned them in school, but really, I wasn't that great of a student; if I hadn't had an edge, I definitely wouldn't have qualified for advanced classes.)

Pictures and visuals, at least as I use them, also come in patterns.  Graphs adhere to rules, which is how you read them.  The momentum and speed of a car or a person is predictable by a number of circumstances, which I used to great effect in school and to this day.  I can, to a limited extent, do simple visual calculations.  If I need to move an object in space, but can't use my hands for some reason, I may see a flash of a tool that I could use to move that object.  A simple example would be needing to pry out a nail.  If I had no hammer, I might see the flash of my multitool, which has a tool that could be (mis)used to pry a nail out, and how I might use the multitool attachment to pry out that nail.  Effectively, this pattern translates to "multitool ~= hammer ?"

Music is rife with patterns.  Especially pop music, which tends to be simpler than the grandly complicated orchestral and symphonic pieces one finds in classical music.  One of the staples of many pop songs is a simple, but catchy, chorus.  This is then surrounded with verses that convey what the song is actually about, but the chorus repeats between each one, providing a predictable and attention-grabbing anchor for the rest of the song.  Because the chorus is so simple, it's easy to memorize, which then allows people to focus on the verses.  

Pop music is perhaps the simplest example, but all music, even the complex works of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart, has patterns built into it.  Such patterns are sometimes called "themes," and they are, to my understanding, one of the few ways to identify an unknown piece of classic music.  My mother, who has her Masters in music, has a book specifically to help identify music by its theme.  I remember it on her bookshelves in her office, a curious mix of text and short musical notations.

My social thinking and my understanding of how to deal with situations also follow patterns.  Often decision trees, specifically.  Many situations can be generalized.  How you act in a store, for example, often follows near-identical rules regardless of what store you're in.  Particularly the way I shop, which is "like a man", as I understand it.  But people stress me out and exhaust me, so I'm okay with that designation as long as it helps people relate to me.

The general decision flow for shopping is as follows:

1. Can I easily locate the item I came for?  If yes, locate and proceed.  If no, look around a bit longer before asking for help, because that's part of what store employees are for.  Once found, proceed.  
2. Repeat as needed for entire shopping list, ideally proceeding from the back of the store to the front.
3. Locate place to pay for items and pay.  
4. Leave ASAP.

Finally, flavors are sufficiently memorable to me that eventually I store them somehow, and can take them out as concepts and put them together.  Probably somewhat like people match colors and outfits styles, some things just taste better together.  I can sort of mix and match flavors in my mind, without having to necessarily try it in real life.  For instance, chicken and pesto are pretty common flavors to put together.  I figured out a few weeks back that honey is a decent addition to that mix.  Not too much, just enough to give it a sweet balance to the savory of the pesto.  Recently I tried the same thing again, but with a bit of sriracha sauce as well.  It added a minimal burn and some spice to the balanced sweet and savory, which ended up turning out rather well according to Chris and myself.

Make sense?  What modes do you think in?  Words?  Pictures?  Patterns?  Something else entirely?