A picture is worth a thousand words...

Cliche, I know, but after reading "Thinking In Pictures? that saying is so much more powerful. The thought of thinking in pictures is mind-boggling to me. I am an extremely verbal thinker -- everything I imagine comes up as a series of words strung together, or placed in its representative spot. For example, I once was asked to describe my favorite place to be in the world. This happens to be my best friend's bedroom, since I virtually grew up there -- we've known each other for sixteen years and her bedroom has hardly changed. She has a queen sized bed with no frame in the left upper corner, a dresser about three feet in front of that with a tv and a dvd player. To the right of the dresser is a brown book shelf stacked completely with CD's, and to the left is the door. n the adjacent wall, another brown bookshelf, a tall white floor lamp, and her coral colored closet doors. On the wall directly behind her bed, a large window with white sills and mini blinds. When I visualize this picture, however, I don't see those things. I see the word bed, and clumped around it I see 'green, white, purple' for the colors of her bed sheets. The word 'dresser' is in front of that, with the words 't.v.' and 'DVD player' stacked on top of it. The shelf shows as 'shelf' in very large letters, and the word 'CD' is packed over and over very tightly in between the letters. It is impressive and amazing that someone can not only fully visualize an object, but even rotate and see it from all sides. I have never once visualized an object in its entirety.

Grandin addresses the fact that being a visual thinker has the downside of not being able to comprehend words with which there is no concrete image to associate. But what I am curious about is what happens for words that have multiple meanings. I imagine that the first image associated with the word would be the most widely recalled, but is it possible to file the word away again with a second image? For example, the word 'leech'. From older days it means physician or surgeon, and it's also a blood sucking annelid. As a verb it is the act of using an annelid to suck blood, or more generally to drain or exhaust something. Is there such a way for a visual thinker such at Grandin to remember each of these definitions in conjunction with the same word? Can slight alterations to the word affect how she visualizes? I'm reminded of some of the work I do as a computer technician. Occasionally, work orders are lost before they can be completed and I have to create new ones. however, the system won't allow me to create multiple work orders for the same serial number. I avoid that situation by putting in the serial number with a period behind it. I wonder if the same concept could be applied to Grandin's visualization process.

To better understand the mind of the visual thinker, I took Grandin's suggestion and used Google Images. I typed in a few random nouns that came to mind and sorted through he first few pages of results. Simple nouns such as 'leech' yielded pictures of the animal, but after a few pages I started to see boots, which are worn to prevent leeches from attaching to the ankles or getting into pant legs, and vials of blood because that's what leeches eat. Upon searching 'liberty', I got a plethora of pictures of the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and a Jeep Liberty. My final word was 'symbiotic' for which I received a bunch of pictures of different animals that have symbiotic relationships with other organisms. It was a great representation of the associative way people on the autistic spectrum think.

I am fascinated by this system and have many questions. Do all of the visual thinkers have memories that are inexhaustible? if only a percentage of visual thinkers have Grandin's ability to modify information, is there a point where those without that skill are "maxed out" on their ability to associate a word with something? Do visual speakers excel at word games such as anagrams and scrambled words? Grandin offers a lot of insight on the visual mind but I suspect that she is right when she says that it works in ways forever incomprehensible to the non-visual person.