How Do You Think?

[are]

I 99.99% think in one of two ways:

Primary: Unsymbolized. I think thoughts without words. They're like "semantic units". Where they mean something to me but if i listen there's no voice. And they have connections attached to them and metadata -- like how certain I am.

Secondary: Dialogic. If i have someone listening. Like now. Or just imagining someone else. Then I collapse my thinking into words. But I have to know who i'm talking to or words don't form.

How do you think?
Do you have a story in your head? Is it in words?

 

[lunarious]

I 99.99% think in one of two ways:

Primary: Unsymbolized. I think thoughts without words. They're like "semantic units". Where they mean something to me but if i listen there's no voice. And they have connections attached to them and metadata -- like how certain I am.

Secondary: Dialogic. If i have someone listening. Like now. Or just imagining someone else. Then I collapse my thinking into words. But I have to know who i'm talking to or words don't form.

How do you think?
Do you have a story in your head? Is it in words?

Initially i had the secondary (in bold) mode 100% of the time. Otherwise I was fool-proof ASD 1 or should I say Royal Guard.

I was 100% freeze until i got Defenestrated. After I DDW i won.

Edit: "they" don't recognize my Victory. Have i won then?

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Always with words. The internal monologue is always on... even while dreaming... sometimes with more than one conversation at a time.

I do tend to be a visual thinker... pattern recognition, imagining things, etc... but also with the narrative.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Combination of moving pictures and words.

 

[velociraptor]

Always with words.

Same. But there is also a flow of structure that comes with, I see how things connect sort of as a layer on top of everything else. Patterns always stand out.

 

[Judge]

Spock: "Captain, how do I think?"
Kirk: "Don't ask."
Spock: "But sir, that's not logical given that I already posed the question."
Kirk: "Never mind Spock. Scotty, two to beam up....and hurry!"

 

[vergil96]

I think visually. Images, "films", diagrams, symbols, sometimes also writing...

 

[Grondhammar]

My memory for everyday things is entirely based on images, always. Where are the car keys? I have to recall the picture in my head of where they are.

I never have internal dialogue in words or verbal thoughts.

Otherwise, I think either in logical sequence/steps, or by creating a mental model of something. If I have to remember facts for a test or whatever reason, I imagine a related model already in my head, and "attach" it to the model. I don't think of it as a visual process, but that's the only way I know to describe it.

 

[Jumpinbare]

Images, words, and if applicable, numbers.

 

[UFO]

I believe my thinking is also more of unsymbolized thinking, by concepts or feel of the subject. I often just form a formless idea, or do things "intuitively". Kind of having an understanding rather than "a clear picture". "Fuzzy logic" could be a describing word. If I have to explain the logic to someone else, then I need to convert / translate concepts to mental images or words (it feels like translating to a different language - and rethinking everything in more language friendly way). Sometimes I need to do that even to explain things to myself, as I do find accurate handling of complex structures hard without visualizing them in graphs or words.

I also have an internal dialogue, but that is more of fantasizing conversational situations than a way of thinking.

Sometimes I visualize situations in the vein of "I can see in my mind's eye someone's face when he hears about X". But logical thinking, planning, problem solving etc. is usually without words and mental images.

I reserve a possibility that my "conceptual thinking" is actually a form of visualization even thought I don't admit seeing my thoughts as pictures. Only thing I am sure of is that it is not verbal thinking.

Is there any tests to solve what is really my way of thinking? I mean, answering to this is distorted both by my self-image and the fact that I have to now think in words as I am writing this.

Hmm, all answers from officially diagnosed people go with words or visuals, while me and OP go with concept thinking (so far). Could it be a telling signal about something? Severity, or a stereotypical limitations in abstract thinking, or something?

 

[RemyZee]

I become very zeroed in on what I am thinking about, and talk to myself about it. Also have always noticed patterns: I love to count tiles.

 

[the_tortoise]

I think in mostly sensory...like the world as I experience it through my senses recreated in my mind (memory of emotions and many physical sensations is actually sort of ghostly-re-creation of the emotion/other type of feeling in my body though...that is a bad description but best I can do). Mostly visual spatial -- and almost entirely visual spatial for the limited symbolic abstraction I can do.

And some part of my mind does patterns but that is a background thing...doesnt really have conscious manifestation.

Words are not thoughts for me, I never think in words..I think of words to translate thoughts, but they are not actual things and have no place in my actual thoughts...hopefully that makes sense?

 

[are]

I believe my thinking is also more of unsymbolized thinking, by concepts or feel of the subject. I often just form a formless idea, or do things "intuitively". Kind of having an understanding rather than "a clear picture". "Fuzzy logic" could be a describing word. If I have to explain the logic to someone else, then I need to convert / translate concepts to mental images or words (it feels like translating to a different language - and rethinking everything in more language friendly way). Sometimes I need to do that even to explain things to myself, as I do find accurate handling of complex structures hard without visualizing them in graphs or words.

I also have an internal dialogue, but that is more of fantasizing conversational situations than a way of thinking.

Sometimes I visualize situations in the vein of "I can see in my mind's eye someone's face when he hears about X". But logical thinking, planning, problem solving etc. is usually without words and mental images.

I reserve a possibility that my "conceptual thinking" is actually a form of visualization even thought I don't admit seeing my thoughts as pictures. Only thing I am sure of is that it is not verbal thinking.

Is there any tests to solve what is really my way of thinking? I mean, answering to this is distorted both by my self-image and the fact that I have to now think in words as I am writing this.

Hmm, all answers from officially diagnosed people go with words or visuals, while me and OP go with concept thinking (so far). Could it be a telling signal about something? Severity, or a stereotypical limitations in abstract thinking, or something?

No there is no way to resolve that problem that i found. It just is. But i understand exactly what you're pattern matching to. I found it was subjectively true like a coherent way to think about my unsymbolized cognition. but it's not objectively true. There's no way to know from first-person experience alone.