Interviews with autistic adults who have good speech and are able to articulate their thought processes indicate that most of them also think in visual images. More severely impaired people, who can speak but are unable to explain how they think, have highly associational thought patterns.
Autistic individuals are often described as “thinking in pictures”. This assumption mainly originates from the eponymous book by Temple Grandin, Thinking In Pictures. In this book she reports that “when I think about abstract concepts I use visual images”, “thinking in language and words is alien to me.
People with autism are often visual thinkers; certainly, many are very good at puzzles, organizing objects, and remembering routes. Therefore, it's logical, though not entirely accurate, to say that “people with autism are visual learners.”
Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words.
Autistic people do not lack imagination
We are a creative bunch. Pattern-thinking is one of my favourite things about being autistic; I see patterns and connections in everything and I use this to inform my creativity.
People with autism, engineers, and those with ADHD tend to say they think in pictures; teachers, in words, and when a word-thinker hears that there are those who think not in words, but pictures, they often are flabbergasted, taken aback, and have a hard time bending their mind around this alien thought form.
Autistic people are thought to have difficulties with identifying and understanding their own emotions. This is referred to as emotional self-awareness.
Our preference indicated a bias in our thinking: left-brain-dominated people tend to think more in words; right-brained people tend to think more in images. This bias indicated to us how to successfully approach an audience, and how to approach communication-skills training.
Most people, when asked to form an image of a person they're familiar with, can see it within their mind. In other words, it's a visual, mental experience – similar to what we would see if the person were in front of us. But it turns out that this isn't true for everyone.
Approximately 60-65% of the population are visual thinkers, so there is a decent chance you are a part of the group.
The autistic brain shows fewer long-range connections but a lot more short-range connections. This means that with every thought, more connections are made, but also more side-steps; it produces nonlinear thought processes.
Some people who have autism actively avoid eye contact and appear confused and anxious when it occurs. Some seemed to make eye contact relatively early but later reported they were actually looking at something that fascinated them (such as their reflection in one's eyeglasses).
“Daydreaming, by itself, is an example of what is called "autistic thinking ", which means thinking that is sufficient unto itself, and not subjected to any criticism.
Crowe makes a compelling and plausible case that Nash may indeed have had Asperger's, in light of his social difficulties and his unique intellectual skills. But the film also profoundly illustrates the importance of providing compassion and strong family support for individuals with paranoid schizophrenia.
Hyperphantasia is the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery. It is the opposite condition to aphantasia, where mental visual imagery is not present. The experience of hyperphantasia is more common than aphantasia and has been described as being "as vivid as real seeing".
Literal thinking in a child with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) goes far beyond the concrete thinking that is associated with young kids or learning disabled children. It results from the underlying communication disorder, which makes them unable to understand the shifting meaning of words in changing situations.
If you can render everything with photographic accuracy, you may have hyperphantasia. You can also conduct several additional tests to check the rest of the senses (hearing, taste, emotions, and others). You can also do an MRI of the brain.
Aphantasia is a phenomenon in which people are unable to visualize imagery. While most people are able to conjure an image of a scene or face in their minds, people with aphantasia cannot.
While there are obvious pros to having hyperphantasia, people who have hyperphantasia may find themselves dozing off frequently, dreaming about the past or the future. It can be difficult to remain present in the moment if they're lost in their minds.
Visual Thinking
Many people with dyslexia often think in images as opposed to words, which is attributed to the unique activations in their brains. People with dyslexia are also more likely to form 3D spatial images in their minds than non-dyslexic people.
Visual thinkers see images in their mind's eye— they include everyone from object visualizers with a knack for design and problem-solving to those who are more mathematically inclined and excel at pattern recognition and systemic thinking.
Hyperphantasia Symptoms: What Do People Report? If we go back to the original Galton study, people reporting extreme imagination listed experiencing mental imagery that was: Brilliant, distinct, never blotchy. Comparable to the real object, as if they were actually seeing it.
Although today autism and Asperger Syndrome are not seen as personality disorders and are certainly not confused with psychopathic (or anti-social) personality disorder, Asperger too was particularly struck by the extreme self-focus and characterized it as 'egocentric in the extreme'.
Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference that affects the way people think and communicate with others. A preference for logical thinking is a characteristic of autism in many people. Not all autistic people lean on logic to guide their thinking, though.
Individuals on the spectrum might compare themselves to siblings, peers in real life and on social media, and falsely imagine everyone else is somehow “better” than they are. This caustic effect to self-esteem creates a downward spiral with the weakened sense of self.