h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
Thinking in pictures!
Yay! I have always thought this way.
I have wondered how strange it is to others since I thought everybody did.

I recall reading about this lady before I had the internet.
I just ran acrossed her again.
Some of the pages might be disturbing to animal lovers but I think they are easily avoided.
She works in the cattle transporting - processing industry.
I heard about her long before the horse wisperer.

Mush of her "talents" come from her autism and coping skills.
http://www.templegrandin.org/

Just read this. abbi, good link.

It's weird, i can relate very much to what she is saying...but mainly 'cos i seem to have the opposite form of this, i see everything as words, it's like having an autocue in front of my head. This is one reason i have great difficulty learning French, *IF* the word is written down for me, i can store and retrieve it, but i can't do it just from hearing it, it makes no sense at all unless backed up by the visual letters.( i was better in Arabic, but that is different alphabet and goes right to left)

There are obviously different forms of autism, i probably have one, god knows what sort. I taught myself to read aged 3, but still can't handle numbers beyond 10. I am good at spelling, but totally unable to remember my own phone number. I am "supposed" to be an artist, yet apparently i am colour blind (i hotly dispute this, i think i just see more shades than most folks!) I cannot sing the main tune of a song, but apparently do natural third part harmony, which is considered to be incredibly difficult.

I can only tell right from left if i physically write my name in the air, then i know it's my right hand doing it...but i don't know which hand to use when eating.Hence Arabic seems totally logical to me, most "Westerners" can't cope 'cos it's back to front.

I have lots of synaesthesia stuff, which i thoroughly enjoy, i giggle a lot at squiggly noisy things, i dream in fantastic colours and laugh in my sleep, tee hee, there are benefits, mine is not a monochrome world (although i do take photographs in black and white, never colour, i am concentrating on light and shadow stuff, i go into reverse and see it all in black and white)

But my boxes are me seeing stuff as if i was 2 inches tall. Lovely little worlds.

Aww what the hell, all brains are very different, all unique.

zdt

the bbc's horizon about synaesthesia
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/derek_prog_summary.shtml

I found it very intresting....

not being funny. Terri, a way of doing left/right, hold your hands out, fingers forward and thumbs out to the side, palms away from you, the left hand now shows a perfect L shape with the thumb, the right hand doesn't

Funny you should mention that, Animal. That's the only way I can remember which way is left and which is right.

As for seeing things in pictures - me, I see text. It's taken me years to get some of my colleagues to understand that I don't care at all about their pretty diagrams; if they can't explain a concept to me in words, they might as well not bother trying... I can appreciate visual input from a purely aesthetic point of view, but I only really understand information that's given in words.

this is what makes "mankind" unique and why we have come along way from flint tools, to going into space, we "see" in different logic, except there's a few on the planet that only have tunnel vision, but that's their tough luck

You do find the most interesting things Abbi

Which way up do you put your hands for the Animal trick???

Hey Ivan, glad to hear you also do the word thinking thing!

zdt

put your hands in front of your face, palms away from your face, thumbs pointing together, your left hand makes the L shape(index finger and thumb(can't do it with toes though)

If you can do it with toes, an interesting new circus career might be beckoning...

My thumbs point the same direction, no matter how I turn my hands.

I bought two copies of Temple Grandin's book "Thinking in pictures" and gave one to a minister at church and the other to Uvula.

I can visualize sentences and entire paragraphs.

I have a very strong picture and smell memory sense.
Sometimes at work, I spend hours being awash in tides of memory.

Oh yes I remember you mentioning her before.
I remembering wondering if it was the same person.
I have either forgotten or lost the link

She worked up north in this state and she was on our news quite a bit.

She is a kind of a poster adult for the aspies.
Her book is a bit dated, though, as it reflects older and less refined thoughts about the colors in the autistic spectrum.
Her own viewpoint, by her admission, is a bit narrow.

I've just been told to read Oliver Stone's 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat' when I mentioned this idea...anyone read it? I'll see if I can get hold of it this week and then report back.

I realised a while back that I visualise things very very poorly. I seem to think in sounds and feelings/emotions.
So if I was told to think about dropping a cup and it smashing on the floor...I would be able to hear it drop and smash, and would be able to think about the feeling of the cup in my hand and then on the floor, and what emotions I would experience about dropping it...but couldn't tell you what the cup looks like unless I concentrated on that one thing, or be able to actually see it happen or anything.

Having said that though, when you are considering er..bother now I can't think of anything, but does one think in concepts when considering several things at once? I mean, how do all those thoughts work when they are overlapping and considering different things etc all at the same time? You can't be thinking in the same way for all of them or else you'd have pictures/sounds/words all poking each other. Any sense?

Sorry that all seems to have got a bit jumbled up.
Kat

Oliver Stone I think you mean Oliver Sacks
http://www.oliversacks.com/

Oliver Stone is a film director
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000231/

Oh dear...that would be the one.

it would have been worse if you said Jamie Oliver.




many famous Olivers in the Twist

"does one think in concepts when considering several things at once?" Do you mean like: "Does your image of the word 'dog' actually consist of some type of dog, or does it consist of a whole set of 'doggy-like' features?"

Talking of learning styles, Ivan and animal,mine I have discovered, is auditory... I learned a lesson about different styles once, when I had to do a seminar once, and was talking about neurotransmitters (the topic was ADHD), and getting puzzled looks from the front row, then I put an overhead up, with a diagram of what I was talking about. Lights went on, on those faces in front of me!

I rely on hearing things to learn, or to understand, which is why I can't manage to learn sign language, I get my orientation all mixed up. If my son or anyone draws a diagram in the air, I insist he makes sounds as he does it, or I can't 'see' it!

I can't visualise, which is a huge handicap for a writer - how can I describe what I can't 'see'? But I get by!

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That's me too, Kat! (Although you describe it much better than I do...)