Do you think in words or pictures?

[TikindiDragon]

That also tends to happen when I don't think about anything concrete.

The internal radio has no relevance (mostly) to whatever else I might be thinkng about. I can be concentrating on pretty in depth things and still have the mental music playing with full orchestration.

[Walker]

Pretty much this, except without the colors.

 

Out of curiosity, for those who think in words, do you dream in pictures or words(is that even possible)? Or can you remember dreams at all?

I do at least dream in pictures. But I have a very difficult time remembering my dreams. I only remember one every few months. And most of the time I wake up feeling like I didn't dream anything at all.

 

I wasn't always like that though; I used to have very vivid dreams almost every night that I could remember. I don't know why that stopped.

[PointOfOrigin]

The internal radio has no relevance (mostly) to whatever else I might be thinkng about. I can be concentrating on pretty in depth things and still have the mental music playing with full orchestration.

Different persons, different minds For me, it works only when I am absentminded/daydreaming.

[wbmorgan]

Incidently, as an addendum to my post, I also think in music. If I say I have a song stuck in my head I will literally mean that it's as if I have an internal radio playing it on repeat. The vocals in a song will often be the only 'language' in my thought process, although if I'm thinking a song I will also have the syneasthetic colours in my head at the same time.

Oh wow. I also have that radio in my head. I often wake up "singing" in my head, my "song du jour" as I call it. Sometimes it's a rock/pop/country song, sometimes it's a classical piece. It will play over and over and over all day long. I love music and singing, though I'm mediocre at both (I've played clarinet since I was 10).

[Alpha Gryph]

I think in sound/music more than I do pictures OR words.

 

However if it were one or the other, I do think in pictures more. I'm one of those people who remembers faces more than names.

 

But I find it interesting that others here are mentioning that "internal radio". I was wondering if other people had that. In fact, it's quite annoying sometimes. I don't always want to be hearing some kind of music in my head, and yet, it continues to play~

[Jet Raptor]

I love my internal radio/ipod. Yeah, it does get annoying sometimes like Alpha Gryph said...like during exams. D: Sometimes I'll be sitting somewhere (like waiting for class to start) nodding to my music. Then people give me strange looks.

This whole thinking with words/pictures/sounds thing is just so weird yet so interesting. Thinking about thinking. Thinking about other people thinking?

 

This is probably a bit off topic, but how can someone/something without language think? Like a dog. Give them what people call "food", but how do they think about it? They don't have the word "food"...do they? I mean, "trained" dogs can "understand" commands (sit, stay, etc) but do they actually turn these sounds into their own words? My dogs seem to know their names. Know what I mean? I think animals do think, but I don't know how.

I think I should stop there because I'm starting to confuse myself...and this post is getting kinda long. ._.

[TheDarkCynder]

Pretty much this, except without the colors.

 

Out of curiosity, for those who think in words, do you dream in pictures or words(is that even possible)? Or can you remember dreams at all?

I dream in pictures and I do remember them often.

[TheTwilightKnight]

Pictures & Words.

[SkylerFarrier]

Heh. As you know, Walker, I think in impressions more than images or words.

The 'thing', the essence behind a word.

Hmm. You know a stencil set? Imaging laying two different stencils on top of each other. The first stencil is my basic thoughts. The second stencil is the English language (Spanish is a whole other example).

For me to figure what to say, first I have to push the thought through the first stencil. There. Now I know what I wish to discuss. But I can't communicate without a language structure, so that thought must also go through the language stencil. Sometimes it fits, sometimes not. And when it does not, the thing I am trying to say gets shaved down, altered. This is why I often confuse people. What I am trying to say does not have a word that fits it, so I must go with the closest word I know.

Due to a rather advanced vocabulary, this is generally not a huge problem, although it often creeps people out when I spew out a string of qualifiers (adjectives and adverbs) to try and narrow down on the impression I wish to convey.

[SkylerFarrier]

Huh. Well, it seems I'm the only one twho voted "other."

 

I think in emotions. Instead of words or pictures, I feel things when I look at stuff, and when I think back to something, I don't remember an image; it's a feeling that I felt when I was experiencing that thing.

 

Anyone else like this?

I voted "other".

But yeah. Images are a key part of mine, but it's more the symbol/idea that a word stands for which is how I think.

[Rachel72]

I do better with visual.. yes u can tell me but SHOW me as well, please

[HawktalonOfRiverClan]

Incidently, as an addendum to my post, I also think in music. If I say I have a song stuck in my head I will literally mean that it's as if I have an internal radio playing it on repeat. The vocals in a song will often be the only 'language' in my thought process, although if I'm thinking a song I will also have the syneasthetic colours in my head at the same time.

Wow, you too? Glad I'm not the only one! If it's a really good song and I really like it, I can "hear" it as clear as day, music and all just like on the track. The cool part about it is I can "restart" any time I want, though I usually just get stuck on one part so it gets annoying. Minus the colors. That's really cool, though, that it does that for you.

 

@Ali'i Makani Pahili- The way I always thought about it was that animals think in pictures. Animals pick up sounds--- they know that the snap of a can opener means dinner time, or the ringing of an alarm clock means breakfast--- so it's quite feasible that an animal can learn what a certain word means if it's repeated often enough in the same circumstance. Kinda silly, but there was this one kids' show I saw once, where to the dog, the human spoke gibberish but a few words were understandable "toy" and "ball", which is basically what I'm saying. I don't know if that's right; I'm no expert, but that's just my two cents.

Edited December 13, 2012 by HawktalonOfRiverClan

[StormWizard212]

Interestingly enough, despite the fact that I think in words, I have very very vivid dreams. I had normal dreams (or what I assume were normal ) until I was about 16 when I was on a medication that has a side effect of enhanced dreams, and ever since then, I've had really vivid dreams even though I stopped those particular meds years ago.

 

What my dreams used to be... I could see the picture of whatever the focus was, but everything else was non-distinct. There wasn't really a background, if that makes sense. But my dreams nowadays are like a movie. Every little detail is accounted for and they are extremely real and I often remember them like I'd remember having watched a movie. Where if I was a better artist, I could paint an entire scene from the dream with all the details.

 

I just thought that was an interesting point to mention, since I do think predominantly in words. But my dreams are literally like movies. I don't know how else to describe it.

[Momo]

I generally think in very detailed images, but in random moments I will have thoughts bound by music, which is definitely helpful since I have a musician/artist heart. Many number of times I would actually write down and play these 'thought songs.'

My most vivid dreams, however, are made up of emotions and essences of actual images. For example, my most recent was overrun by panic. I was in a strange backroaded area, driving, but nothing was happening. No slashers or ghosts chasing me, and the place itself had no emotional effect over me so I knew I wasn't just creeped out by the scenery. From that single bundle of emotion I knew that the dream was about my escaping a paid assassin that was after some extraterrestrial artifact I found. Weird, but yes.

My dreams are often so vivid that I actually have them more than once, or at least a variation of the first one. To test this and make sure my mind wasn't just getting the days mixed up, I would write down a short summary and the day I had it on, and sure enough, some would reoccur next week or even a couple days later. o.o

[sheppardkid]

I think in words and pictures, mostly at the same time. Generally, I'll think of the word and then have an immediate image of the meaning in my head.

[Slaskia]

Both, though mostly words. I usually only think with 'pictures' when I am daydreaming or working on stories were I 'act out' the scenes in my head.

[dustpuppy]

I think it's both, with some leaning towards pictures, and concepts play a role too. I almost never think in whole sentences but words do have a big influence on my thought processes, so much so that I switch between languages (and wish I knew more languages to broaden the field so to speak).

[tyto_alba]

I think in both words and pictures. I have a habit of constantly holding conversations with myself in my head. Those are in thought in words.

 

When I want to remember something specific that I saw, I try to pull up the image in my head like one would pull up an image on a computer screen.

[Vakarian]

I think in both words or pictures. I think in words when I am memorizing certain lines in a story, or a poem and for conversing. On the other hand, I would think of pictures in just about everything else--- from reading a descriptive sentence from a novel to envisioning the situation beingsaid in a lecture.

[SecondStarToTheRight]

Pictures.

[HawktalonOfRiverClan]

I had a thought: Are the people here who think in pictures more mathematically or grammatically (as in, you like(d) English class)? I was talking to a friend of mine about this, and she loves math and thinks in pictures. I think in words and hate math but love writing. It just seemed like a strange conicidence.

[earthgirl]

Pretty much both in my case. I make up full stories and scenarios in my head and since I'm a comic artist I trained myself to see both at the same time; at least when I make up an imaginative story.

 

But yeah, sometimes I think in words only but this is rare. When I think about whats gonna happen tomorrow or what my Christmas tree is going to look like it's mostly images.

 

edit: grammarfail. sometimes its better to think in words.

Edited December 15, 2012 by earthgirl

[XDLugia]

I had a thought: Are the people here who think in pictures more mathematically or grammatically (as in, you like(d) English class)? I was talking to a friend of mine about this, and she loves math and thinks in pictures. I think in words and hate math but love writing. It just seemed like a strange conicidence.

I think in words, but I'm awesome in math. My writing could use some work.

So, I guess it just depends.

[TikindiDragon]

I was a straight A student, and loved history every bit as much as I loved science. 'Bout the only thing I didn't enjoy was PE. I was pretty much good at *everything*, regardless of thinking in pictures.

 

Although I have always struggled rather more with completely theoretical concepts in any subject. That doesn't work too well with thinking in pictures. Took me ages to get multiplication of negative numbers.

[Moonlight]

I think in mostly pictures, words don't come easly to me unless they are on paper