Generally, I think in words. For instance, if I envision the week, it comes up as words on a white page.

When I'm reading, I visualize more, though I still connect them back to the words on the page. In character driven novels, I always try to see the characters' mind (which of course, comes up in words :-).

What a fascinating question. When I sit and try to analyze what I'm doing when I think, I find it to be as if I were trying to look at my own eyes (without a mirror)--I can't see the things I'm seeing with. What seems to be going on is a kind of private language, an amalgam of words and pictures, a sort of personal, global shorthand.

I should have explored this in Blood and Judgment, where the character comes to inhabit another character's body. I gave him a little struggle to recognize the stranger's foreign language, but I should have had him wrestle more to master the stranger's entire private system of hieroglyphics.

I tend to think in pictures. I have a visual memory - by that I mean that when I recall information it usually comes to me as I saw it. For instance, when trying to remember appointments or coming events, I envision what the calendar looks like with the information on it.

Wow.

Awesome question.

I'll tell you how I think...I'm one of those weird guys who thinks about how I think...all the time.

I love to be aware of my own thinking. Periodically, I will review my own stream of consciousness, and connect the dots to see where a particular train of thought started and what each stop was along the way.

I think in images, with running audio commentary. And the voice is mine, the way I want it to sound, not the way it actully does.

Do you hear a voice in your head when you're thinking?

Yes. And when I'm not thinking, too, sometimes.

And the voice is mine, the way I want it to sound, not the way it actully does.

Me too. My version of me in my head sounds like Robert Goulet.

When I was child of about 9 or 10 years old, I started thinking about death. I had always been taken to church and already believed in God and an eternal existance, but for whatever reason, the question then struck me "But what if I had never been born?" At first, my mind created pictures of a world without me. But then I realized with a type of horror that those pictures were my thoughts, and I actually wouldn't be able to think at all if I had never been. It was truly terrifying, and thoughts that gave me nightmares off and on for quite a while.

A current example: My occupation is accounting, and I find I often think in terms of a type of dynamic spreadsheet. I am very good at doing calculations in my head, and will take individual data, events, or actions and plug them into the mental 'spreadsheet' to see what effect they will have to reach a goal or the 'bottom line'. It's a valuable skill to have and use in my job, however, I do have to fight against using the same thinking with personal relationships, since it tends to treat people as objects to be manipulated rather than as people.

This is a fascinating post, and made me think.
When I picture a week, I see squares--yes, a voice, very quietly speaks along with my thoughts. I tend to "picture" things, while I read, while I praise God. I have little "movies" I play in my head while I worship at church... I often picture heaven, and the Lord riding on a horse down a beautiful street, while we all wave and cheer. If I raise my hands, sometimes I picture I'm a convict, in prison, and I'm visiting someone through the glass, and we put our palms together, separated, but our hands are joined in a way. I sometimes use real movie scenes to enhance what I'm feeling. Always, when I sing, "Jesus, you are my King" from "Amazing Love", I picture Borimer dying, pledging his allegiance to Aragorn, whispering, while he dies in faith, "My Prince." I also picture Lee riding among his troupes before Gettysburg from the movie Gettysburg. They were going nuts with their devotion for him, and would follow him into any battle, and they hailed him, waving their hats, whistling, shouting, it was so moving, and it often makes me think of us and Christ. These are just a few, I could go on, but you get the way I think, at least during worship. Often, in church, I feel like the comic-strip Calvin, the way he looks in school, hands on desk, the stupid smile on his face, staring, picturing those planet adventures.

Bill, your comment about communicating spheres tells what programming languages you've mastered.

How do I think? Let me...count the ways....

Mostly via words, but sometimes in visualizations of connections, recognitions of patterns, something other than a sequential perception.

Words demand their own structure. Not merely grammar, but logical flow, reason. They also take time, even when posited at the speed of thought. Words face the limitation of needing many of them to express, to declare all the relationships and interconnections , the specific emphasis of a single idea. (We creatures cannot think as God does, for whom infinities cause no limitations, whose perceptions are exhaustive taking into account every facet. But we think analagously.)

Anyway, sometimes words don't work in thinking: instead of discussing in my mind whether and how to dodge the potential accident about to happen, I simply turn the wheel and apply the brake. I don't do calculations im my head adjusting for wind drift and opponents, I just shoot the basket.

Sometimes I know that a cake has just the right texture and flavor. Sometimes I understand that a machine has this problem and not that one.

I tend to think in words and sounds and, believe it or not, tactile experiences--I memorize things by my mouth's muscle memory when I say them out loud. It's weird. I'll know I'm wrong when something doesn't feel right when I'm speaking it. Strange.

I also tend to think in clusters rather than streams, and the concrete rather than the abstract. This might be why I'm so bad at math and formal logic. :)

I think about this all the time because it wasn't until I was in my 20s that I realized that people could actually form pictures in their mind.
I have no visual capabilities in my "mind's eye" at all. It's very frustrating. I used to think that when they showed characters having flashbacks in movies "wouldn't it be nice if people could really think like that." Then I found out people really could.
For instance, I can't picture my husband or children in my mind. I can describe them to you with words, but I can't "see" them unless they are right in front of me.
It means also that I have a bad memory and am very unobservant because for me to remember something I have to actually form a sentence about it in my head.
I think completely in words and the voice in my head is my own, the way I sound in my head when I talk - not how I sound recorded, ugh!
When I read I don't picture anything, I think that's why I am such a picky reader. I need a good writer to keep me in the story and I don't need any description at all because I can't picture it anyway.
I finally found a study on this one time, but have been unable to keep up with the packets of questions and whatnot they send me. One day I'll take the time to do it.
From what I've researched so far, I'm pretty sure that when I fell out of a truck at age 9 I damamged some the part of my brain that's in control of visual pictures.
Totally sucks because I'd give anything to be able to close my eyes and conjure a picture instead of black!

GinH- I find your comment fascinating, actually, they all are, but your's especially. Can you dream in pictures?

I think in pictures. I think. :-)

Good question.

Interesting. When reading or listening to a narrative, I often think in images, fast visual snatches that center on a particular object or locale as much as a person. Tastes and smells sometimes spur similar reactions. It's completely different with abstract arguments and ideas. Those come through almost like algebra or geometry.

I daydream alot, and I visualize designs I want accomplish or imagine that I'm teaching with profundity, but I don't think I tend to think in visual terms. I may think in rhythm and sound more than anything else.

I just went to a restaurant to pick up lunch, and I visualized my order a bit. I imagined my wife and I having the two-for-one margaritas they were advertising, which she wouldn't do and I probably wouldn't either. But that was small amount of the time I was out. I noticed visual and audible details the rest of the time.

My version of me in my head sounds like Robert Goulet.

Hilarious. I sound like Lauren Bacall.

Not really.

My version of me in my head sounds like Robert Goulet.

Hilarious. I sound like Lauren Bacall.

I sound like Clint Eastwood, punks.

GinH, I can relate to what you posted. I remember that when I, a guy of 21, first really fell in love, I realized at some point that I could not exactly picture her in my mind's eye. People who mattered less to me I could visualize, seemingly quite well, but not her. That's my impression anyway, but that's over 30 years ago!

I should add that it wasn't a case of a love-from-afar; I spent quite a bit of time with her; but even so I didn't have a distinct image of her in my mind, even after three months or so. Or so it seems as I think back.

Michele
I do dream in pictures but then when I wake up I can't picture what I just dreamed.
And Shoreham, for me its not just about only seeing vague pictures, I literally can form no sorts of pics at all.

Michele
I do dream in pictures but then when I wake up I can't picture what I just dreamed.
And Shoreham, for me its not just about only seeing vague pictures, I literally can form no sorts of pics at all.

"The idea that people have different thinking patterns is not new. Francis Galton, in Inquiries into Human Faculty and [Its] Development, wrote that while some people see vivid mental pictures, for others 'the idea is not felt to be mental pictures, but rather symbols of facts. In people with low pictorial imagery[*], they would remember their breakfast table but they could not see it.'"

"It wasn't until I went to college that I realized some people are
completely verbal and think only in words. I first suspected this when I read an article in a science magazine about the development of tool use in prehistoric humans. Some renowned scientist speculated that humans had to develop language before they could develop tools. I thought this was ridiculous, and this article gave me the first inkling that my thought processes were truly different from those of many other people. When I invent things, I do not use language. Some other people
think in vividly detailed pictures, but most think in a combination of words and vague, generalized pictures. "

From "THINKING IN PICTURES, Chapter 1: Autism and Visual Thought," by Dr. Temple Grandin

http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
-------------
*E.g. "My powers are zero. To my consciousness there is almost no association of memory with objective visual impressions. I recollect the breakfast-table, but do not see it."

http://galton.org/cgi-bin/searchImages/galton/search/books/human-faculty/pages/galton-human-faculty_0083.htm

(The Galton.org pages include an image of a page from Galton's
Inquiries, plus, if you scroll down on each page, an "OCR Rendition - approximate" that may be easier to read.)

GinH-

I am the exact same way. I just realized that people can literally see things in their head as well. It is absolutely bizarre, isn't it?

I can not even picture what my own face looks like (or my wife's, or an apple, or a car) when I close (or open) my eyes.

I also have a very poor memory in a sense. I can sometimes remember different things that I have done, but can not picture, see, or feel the experience. I have very, very limited memories from childhood (I'm 24 now) and the memories that I do have are random. Memory for me is more like a recall of data.

My dreams are sometimes vivid and are visual, but I cannot picture them when I awake. I wonder if this is at all common?

This is the first time that I've ever read something that describes how I think! I've always thought in shapes - times, journeys, activities, filling an hour/day/week, past or present are always shapes and trends to me. Like a graph or series of connecting shapes, that's about the only way I can describe it. There are colours too, defining my perception of things being hard/easy/good/bad/pressurised etc. I've always found it really hard to explain as I can't draw how I think, and I've never met anybody who thinks in the same way.

I can think in pictures too, but that's more day-dreaming or imagining. My more basic thoughts are in shapes. Does that even make sense?!

It's great to finally read something about it!