Temple Grandin is a PhD and a leading designer of slaughterhouses. She is also autistic. You can read a fascinating first-person discussion of her method of processing thought and language here:

http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html

And here is an excerpt:

Autistics have problems learning things that cannot be thought about in pictures. The easiest words for an autistic child to learn are nouns, because they directly relate to pictures. Highly verbal autistic children like I was can sometimes learn how to read with phonics. Written words were too abstract for me to remember, but I could laboriously remember the approximately fifty phonetic sounds and a few rules. Lower-functioning children often learn better by association, with the aid of word labels attached to objects in their environment. Some very impaired autistic children learn more easily if words are spelled out with plastic letters they can feel.
Spatial words such as "over" and "under" had no meaning for me until I had a visual image to fix them in my memory. Even now, when I hear the word "under" by itself, I automatically picture myself getting under the cafeteria tables at school during an air-raid drill, a common occurrence on the East Coast during the early fifties. The first memory that any single word triggers is almost always a childhood memory. I can remember the teacher telling us to be quiet and walking single-file into the cafeteria, where six or eight children huddled under each table. If I continue on the same train of thought, more and more associative memories of elementary school emerge. I can remember the teacher scolding me after I hit Alfred for putting dirt on my shoe. All of these memories play like videotapes in the VCR in my imagination. If I allow my mind to keep associating, it will wander a million miles away from the word "under," to submarines under the Antarctic and the Beatles song "Yellow Submarine." If I let my mind pause on the picture of the yellow submarine, I then hear the song. As I start humming the song and get to the part about people coming on board, my association switches to the gangway of a ship I saw in Australia.

I also visualize verbs. The word "jumping" triggers a memory of jumping hurdles at the mock Olympics held at my elementary school. Adverbs often trigger inappropriate images -- "quickly" reminds me of Nestle's Quik -- unless they are paired with a verb, which modifies my visual image. For example, "he ran quickly" triggers an animated image of Dick from the first-grade reading book running fast, and "he walked slowly" slows the image down. As a child, I left out words such as "is," "the," and "it," because they had no meaning by themselves. Similarly, words like "of," and "an" made no sense. Eventually I learned how to use them properly, because my parents always spoke correct English and I mimicked their speech patterns. To this day certain verb conjugations, such as "to be," are absolutely meaningless to me.

I tend to combine the verbal and visual when I think, and tend to store information as a conclusion for which I then have to consciously search for the supporting facts.

What about you?

Dear Sparteye:To have a person so successful despite autism tell her story is valuable in helping both parents and others to be better able to deal with the problem more appropriately. Thanks for the post.

I tend to try to reduce information in constructs to a nuclear argument, the schema of further concepts. (For me, facts which do not bind easily to such schemas are hard to remember.) These concepts may--and very often do--have visual analogues. One type of analogue is character, or plot, so that this kind of thinking may be realized in dramatic production.

Poetic thought is more akin to music or dance and appears independent of me. Language itself becomes world, image, angel. Insistant but not lingering.

Are some of you able to slow down thought by requiring yourself to formulate words and phrases for meaning within your heads (talking to yourself) and, when necessary, speed up thought by only going through visual images and/or emotions? Can thought be sped up in that way?

Maybe I should be asking this of good ole Noam.

Nope. When they're sluggish, they slug, when they're racing, they race.

Brandon! How'd you get inside my head?
Thank you, though, for clarifying for me what thought-processes I do go through. I've been trying and trying to come up with an answer for Sparteye (tremendous post, by the way, Dear!), and couldn't decide where to start. I do both of the things you mentioned, though my
speeding-up isn't always intentional. I generally try to formulate my thoughts and choose my words before speaking, mostly so as not to appear to be an even bigger fool than necessary, but sometimes it is because I have a specific purpose: not hurting someone's feelings, for ex. The only thing I can think of right now when I deliberately speed up the process is when a friend asks me for another friend's phone number: if I don't know it right away, I'll picture the telephone keypad and my "ghostly" hand dialing.
Interestingly, when I get excited (that happens a lot), my
thoughts go into kind of a hyper-drive: my mouth cannot keep up, nor can I form words in my brain--just pictures, usually of the event and/or the person I want to tell. I could see this happening to my son one day when he was about three. He didn't even have much understanding of his own emotions yet, let alone the vocabulary to convey them well. I am afraid I exploded with laughter the day when, after I denied his request, he simmered and simmered, then
said, "you...you...meaniac!" That has become a joke word in our family!

We tend to think of language as indispensible. But remember, people functioned long before there was any speech. Too bad we have so little understanding of that process. I have had a couple episodes when something made me extremely angry. I carried out a fairly complex series of acts, without any recognized verbal process.
I wonder to what extent autistic children function at that level.

Maybe I should be asking this of good ole Noam.

Didn't he recant everything? Deep doesn't exist, etc. Where's Old Nick?

Sparteye - thank you for this thread.
When I saw length of the link I nearly did not read it but once started I was fascinated and read all.
What follows in blue I found a wonderous description of friendship and autism :

To wash the inside of the bay window, I had to crawl through the sliding door. The door jammed while I was washing the inside panes, and I was imprisoned between the two windows. In order to get out without shattering the door, I had to ease it back very carefully. It struck me that relationships operate the same way. They also shatter easily and have to be approached carefully. I then made a further association about how the careful opening of doors was related to establishing relationships in the first place. While I was trapped between the windows, it was almost impossible to communicate through the glass. Being autistic is like being trapped like this.

The entirety of the piece started me wondering about telepathy ...

started me wondering about telepathy ...
Don't get me started on telepathy, or you'll have everyone jumping you. I posted ages ago how I've always wished I could just send the picture in my mind straight into someone else's. It sure would prevent a lot of misunderstandings.

telepathy

Hmmm . . . wouldn't that be nice.

http://www.skepdic.com/esp.html

But telepathy would be available to eavesdroppers, and that would not be nice.

"But telepathy would be available to eavesdroppers"

There's a lovely word, I think. But I wonder what eavesdropping direct on someone's thoughts would yield--I have the impression thought's a bit different than we think it is. At the very least, it is not as tidy as impression.

"But telepathy would be available to eavesdroppers"

There's a lovely word, I think. But I wonder what eavesdropping direct on someone's thoughts would yield--I have the impression thought's a bit different than we think it is. At the very least, it is not as tidy as its impression.

Are some of you able to slow down thought by requiring yourself to formulate words and phrases for meaning within your heads (talking to yourself) and, when necessary, speed up thought by only going through visual images and/or emotions? Can thought be sped up in that way?

I definitely have different gears. When I am on a roll -- usually, when I have hit my stride in work-related writing -- I am unconscious of my thought processes or of my composition of what I am writing. During other, less lucky, times, I struggle a bit with slower thought and composition, and I am conscious of the words I am using.

Usually, I can easily be taken from the former state to the latter by an interruption. Returning to the state of mental grace is more difficult, but can be done. To me, it is a bit like the mental shift I experience when viewing those Magic Eye pictures.

usually, when I have hit my stride in work-related writing -- I am unconscious of my thought processes or of my composition of what I am writing. During other, less lucky, times, I struggle a bit with slower thought and composition, and I am conscious of the words I am using.

Sparteye, if I didn't know better I'd think we were twins separated at birth!
When I am composing a story and I am in the zone the whole forms and my typing can hardly keep up with the story ... other times it's uphill through a downrushing tide of thick molasses!

I definitely have different gears.

I think I have different gears, too. But I'm struck with a little dilemma. If we can have faster and slower thoughts, then doesn't it follow that there exists time in-between thoughts (or the generation of those thoughts)? And if that is true, wouldn't it follow that there is a bit of time between the thoughts where there is no thought? Are we ever never thinking?

doesn't it follow that there exists time in-between thoughts (or the generation of those thoughts)?

I think, rather that the route we take from problem to solution can be different depending on the mode of thought. When we are striving to work a problem through logically we have to take more steps than we do if we make what are usually called intuitive leaps.

Brandon-- the simple answer--meditation.. a simple meditation.. sit in a comfortable chair.. and slowly become conscious of your senses.. the feeling of the chair , at your back, your buttocks, and arms.. your feet on the floor, the weight of your head.. be come conscious of the feel of the air on your skin.. of the light in the room, of the things in front of your eyes.. the pattern on wall (is a subtle texture from a roller? or wall paper? or as in my cube, cloth? notice the shadows and play of light on things.. how a dark black surface can be brighter in sun light than a white surface in the shade... what aromas are available? coffee? faint oder of cigarettes? what can you taste? any left over sensation (or pop a in a tic tac mint before you start).. and hearing? can you hear other typing away? a phone ringing down the hall? the elevators moving in the shafts? what faint sounds can you find..

and then, after focusing intensely on all the senses, let them go.. no thinking, no feeling just the calm of existance..

Are we ever never thinking?

Fascinating thread, guys! My answer (FWINW) would be something like "yes - but we are never free of the process of pattern-sifting", which is what I believe we do as the precursor to 'thought' or language or other more abstract formulations. I have some interesting quotes from a BBC Radio programme broadcast the other day about the development of langauge in ninfants that has a bearing on this, and on which Brandon may well feeel like commenting, since some of the research was comparing sign and verbal creation. I'll have to transcribe it first!

Are we ever never thinking?
I don't think so, Brandon. You know the expression, "train of thought"? If we say that these "trains" move on "tracks", then I think you can understand what I mean when I say that no one, as far as I know, has a "one-track
mind". That is, we all think about more than one thing at a time, whether we're consciously aware of it or not. Helen, I can't meditate: I'm like that came-to-life robot, Johnny Five--I'm always wanting, "input, input". Even under heavy medication recovering from surgery, I was thinking things.
So, even if we stop thinking of any one thing in particular,
a "train" that's been running in the background comes to the forefront of our consciousness. Even in "the zone" of writing, for example, the mind is thinking things like, "I hope I'm spelling everything right", "boy, this chair's getting hard", "I'm thirsty", or "I wonder what that noise was?".
On the other hand: I suppose we could have immeasurably small periods of non-thought: quarks of the mind.

I can't meditate...Even under heavy medication recovering from surgery, I was thinking things.

It ain' easy, Jackie. When I first tried it I would "think" I was there and something would scream its way out of the depths of my mind and start thinking itself. According to the folks I sat with you weren't even sposed to notice things going on around you. I never made it that far but I did get to the point where nothing was going on in my conscious mind for extended periods of time.


          -- Meditation; it's not what you think.

Jackie, i second Faldage-- the go, go, go, neediness is learned-- and exist like a habit.. it not a bad thing when "the train is on the right track" but-- for me-- its often been on the wrong track-- Long, long ago, i use to get suicidialy depressed.. the train was heading toward the washed out bridge at break neck speed--hey guys, don't worry-- this is something that is part of my deep dark past.. not something to worry about..

now, i make time to meditate.. it's hard.. I haven't gone parachuting, but i have gone down 100 foot dead drop water slides.. where you really are in a free fall.. it scary-- but free fall, is weighlessness.. and even a second or two of it-- is incredable... meditation is a kind of free fall for your mind.. its pretty scary -- the "letting go" of sensual input.. but the sort of mental free fall is .. beyond words.

if its too hard, start with relaxation exersizes.. one by one tighten muscles.. (toes, foot, leg, and then relax them until every muscle in your body has been tensed, and relaxed.. and then try to tighten every muscle, and relax them all... you'll find a few minute of this, "wakeful resting" is equal to about an hours nap. you'll feel (physically) great.. meditation is the same for your mind..

I also practice stillness.. not meditation, because i am very conscious of surrounding.. but i do not react to them.. in times of stillness-- i can "postpone pain" i might be aware of something painful, but the pain is "disassociated" -- stillness scares people-- (when done to excess, the person seems to be catatonic-- ) a mild form of it really bothered my kids-- but i could "turn off" being ticklish.. so when teasing and playing.. i didn't react to their tickling me.. at first they took it as a challenge.. after a while, they realize that they couldn't effect me..(unless i wanted to be effected)

" Even under heavy medication recovering from surgery, I was thinking things."

That is not unusual, but how about this news item, which I find rather improbable.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A British scientist studying heart attack patients says he is finding
evidence that suggests that consciousness may continue after the brain has stopped functioning and a
patient is clinically dead.

Most of the time, forcing myself to write or speak an idea aloud actually makes my mind work better. When I'm sitting someplace, quietly "thinking", odds are it is just daydreaming. :o

I don't know if anyone else has had this experience or not, but when I think deeply about words or phrases themselves, I get images of movements or actions in my head. They aren't always associated with the word. For example, when I have the word "time" really focused, I get the abstract image of a pendulum. But when I think of the phrase "completing the square" (an algebra technique) I picture a guy sitting on a farm tractor seat, bouncing in a semi-circular path.

How's that for weird? That doesn't happen every time I think of a word, only when I'm really lost in pondering the semantics and sound of it.

Cheers,
Bryan

I too am pretty much thinking something all the time. When I go to sleep at night, I think and think and before long my thoughts sort of drift out my control and blossom into dreams.

Because I can't seem to stop the inner dialogue in my head most of the time, I treasure activities that overcome it, like playing music or solving mathematical problems. I once read an essay by Alice Walker about her mother's gardening. She wrote that her mother seemed to be in ecstasy when she had "become all eyes and hands."

consciousness may continue after the brain has stopped functioning and a patient is clinically dead.

Allo Bill,

That is an odd claim. How could this scientist possibly prove this. Since the person is dead he is only makins assumptions and can in no way confirm or deny his point.

Alex, why do you treasure activities that overcome your inner dialogue? I am not quite sure I understand. Do you get tired of thinking?

I don't think I would enjoy being any other way - mind you it is hard to know if you have been only one way all your life.

Generally, I can be thinking several things (have several tracks) at the same time, going at a leisurely pace. When I am excited then I seem to think faster and only one thing.

I think that when you are solving a problem it helps being able to think, I guess the best word is <wide>. A solution can come with just one point but more often comes with a combination of points from different thought sources. Geez, this is so hard to explain. Am I making sense?

One thing that struck me as odd was Temple Grandin's description of her method of processing thought (Sparteye’s original post), she says… If I allow my mind to keep associating, it will wander a million miles away from the word "under," to submarines under the Antarctic and the Beatles song "Yellow Submarine." If I let my mind pause on the picture of the yellow submarine, I then hear the song. As I start humming the song and get to the part about people coming on board, my association switches to the gangway of a ship I saw in Australia.

The road from <under> to the <gangway of a ship> would make perfect sense to me. I think like that all the time and I am not autistic. My brothers always called me a free-form database because of it. I can't imagine it is all that uncommon. Anybody else??

Hi belM!

In my family, we are known for our strange "subject hops" mid-conversation, which are associated with the same kind of associations that Temple Grandin describes. We are all used to it, and those who spend too much time with us can follow (or at least accept) them. My husband still gives me a look of confusion, occasionally, when I make a strange change in conversation topic - but it is always connected in some way in my mind. So I also wasn't terribly shocked at Temple Grandin's train of thought, because that is also how I think. I can't give any good examples right now, of course...The Yellow Submarine reference was good, because I used to say that for every sentence someone said, I could come up with a song that was related in some way!

And yes, I do get tired of thinking. That is where Taekwondo comes in handy. You are concentrating so hard on (a) not falling over, (b) not getting kicked, and (c) trying to get a kick in on your opponent before they move, that all the crazy, active thoughts and worries you were having that day vanish, and you become totally focussed on one thing. I guess it's not really stopping the train of thought, but only listening to one component of it, for a while. It helps to clear out the debris from all the othe trains of thought, all the little bits which were going nowhere but just adding to the feeling of anxiety about life, the universe, and everything. This also happens when I play a musical instrument.

In my family, we are known for our strange "subject hops" mid-conversation, which are associated with the same kind of associations that Temple Grandin describes. We are all used to it, and those who spend too much time with us can follow (or at least accept) them.

To me too this seems absolutely normal! We used to call it 'grasshopper logic'.

And what after all is a non-sequitur but a train of thought that no-one else can follow?

I believe the different connotations and connections that different people have/make from the same starting place are fascinating.

I believe the different connotations and connections that different people have/make from the same
starting place are fascinating.
Me too. A game that I play sometimes at the Board , looking at a long thread without having looked at it before:
I read the last post, and then the first - usually it seems that there is no relationship.

Ha! Too true emanuela. You are right, this board is a perfect example.

But the switches in the thread usually lead to some more lively discussion, so I welcome them.

When I have something important to write or speak, I generally spend a few moments mulling over the salient points and then consign them all to the soup pot I keep simmering on the back of my mental woodstove, later to serve them up when needed. It works for me.

consuelo

Bean, I'm guessing that most people have a certain degree of chain-of-association going at all times, and sometimes we make subjective connections which no one else could discern from the objective subjects. Usually, though, I don't mention the endpoints of the chain and don't articulate the associations, but just let the mental dialogue continue internally. It's hard though, because sometimes I lose track of what's occurring in the conversation I'm supposed to be in, and then I'm thought vague or absentminded. It's genius I tell you! Genius!

Like you, I have a tendency to recall songs associated -- by time, place, subject or some other factor -- with events and conversations then occurring. My stepmom used to be amazed (and a bit annoyed) at how I was always humming or singing a line from a song, in apparently random succession, because I was always being reminded of songs by the things she was saying. She's gotten used to it now ...

Having a conversation with my autistic son is especially challenging, since he lacks the vocabulary to articulate what he wishes to convey, and will attempt to communicate his thoughts with associations he has made which don't necessarily comport with associations anybody else would make. Sometimes, it's like playing Chinese charades (I speak no Chinese).

>>In my family, we are known for our strange "subject hops" mid-conversation ...We used to call it 'grasshopper logic'<<

We called it "leaps in logic" and then there were inside family references that - although seemingly unconnected to the subject at hand - were a perfect riposte in the conversation for family members ... . usually followed by laughter.
Then, there's good old Imagination and Oblique Thinking.

Years ago I heard a psychiatrist posit that there are two types of ways people coverse : those who finish each others' thoughts and people who never interupt. Makes for interesting times when the polar opposites meet!The MD called for a recognition of the differences to avoid misunderstanding the behavior.

In earlier post here I mentioned being "in the zone" sometimes when writing ... say I'm writing a scene in a narrative ... it's like a movie running in my head and I have to get it down fast. I can see the people, hear the vocal intonations, see the room, and what everyone's wearing, what they're doing while talking and at same time my brain is choosing the words to convey what I'm "seeing and hearing" even though I am really making it all up!
Other times the scenes come hard and they're the ones that require many rewrites to get the same flow.
Hard to explain.
My book is now hundreds of pages long...maybe someday it will be finished ... I can hardly wait to see how it turns out!

To me too this seems absolutely normal! We used to call it 'grasshopper logic'.

I concluded long ago that the people on the Board are very non-average. However, the "average" person listening to our family's conversation does indeed get confused. I think it's because we are perfectly comfortable saying the off-topic thing which we are thinking, and letting the conversation continue in that direction if it wishes, whereas most people may have those trains of thought but don't say them out loud. In fact, we often let the second thread continue and have two conversations at once, which is a bit tricky with only two people!

My stepmom used to be amazed (and a bit annoyed) at how I was always humming or singing a line from a song, in apparently random succession, because I was always being reminded of songs by the things she was saying. She's gotten used to it now ...

I think I got the tendency to sing through my days from my mom. She knows the first line (only) of "every song ever written" and I have picked these up from her. I think my husband was also somewhat frustrated with my tendency to sing little snippets of songs all the time, often inventing lyrics to fill in what I didn't know, but he's now accustomed to it. (I keep telling him - if he wanted a normal wife, I was the wrong choice - and he knew what he was getting himself into! )

Bean, tell him that it is a good thing to have a soundtrack to your life. And think of the money you can make selling the album.

On a recent radio broadcast I came across some quotations that might be of some general interest to fellow logalugs - skip this if you like things short'n'sweet, honey.

Transcribed from:
Life As An Infant
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Tuesday 26th June 2001


Ms Alex Karmelov-Smith, head of Neuro-cognitive Development Unit at the Institute of Child Health in London:

“In the last 3 months of pregnancy babies are actively processing sound, and amongst the sounds they process are mother’s language – and the language she hears through the amniotic liquid, the baby will hear these. So the babies are born able to distinguish their mother tongue from language sin other language families, so they’ll suck harder on a dummy to hear their mother tongue than say another language. They recognise their mother’s voice at birth (and remember, once the baby is outside the womb the voice is very different to the way it was filtered through the amniotic liquid) so the baby has actually registered something about the abstract qualities of her voice, to recognise them against other females’ at birth. They also pay a great deal of attention to language, and this could be a great deal to do with what they have experienced in the womb, but also the fact that we interact with babies linguistically from the moment they’re born!”

“Early on the baby is picking up on sound patterns, and we know from tests that babies can discriminate between syllables (bah from pah, for instance) very early on (6 months). We also know (and this is an interesting fact) that they watch the mouth while people are speaking….” (demonstrated by orientation towards a screen matching the sound being played from choice of 2 screens)

“Babies of about 17 months know about English word order… before they are producing language themselves… and what you see developing in their production is first words, then putting two words together ( “mummy go!” )… and then gradually they build up strings of three and four words… and the grammar of English builds up gradually.”


James Law, Professor of Language & Communication Science at the City University, London:

“The most important thing a parent can do [to encourage a child’s language development] is to listen to them! Language is essentially a social activity… [children] will not learn language by being stuck in front of the telly!”


Alison Gopnik, Professor of Psychology University of California, Berkeley (also author of ‘How Babies Think’):

“When babies are born they are already making distinctions between all the sounds that are going to be important for all the languages of the world.”

“One of the things that you see with babies from the time that they’re about a month old is that they do something that can best be described as flirting. They don’t actually talk yet, but… it seems as if the babies are already turn-taking, they already have an idea of the structure of conversation, before they have any words. It’s like the aspect of conversation, which isn’t really about ‘I want to tell you what my plans for the day are’ but which is really about ‘I am a person and you’re a person and we are in touch with one another’, that part seems to be what babies learn first, before they have the part about ‘here’s something specific that I want to say, to inform you about what’s going on in the world.’”

“Children seem to be looking for patterns and regularities in the sounds they hear around them from a very early age… actively trying to figure out how they work… picking up ‘that’s what the rule is!’ , sometimes over-applying it.”


Laura-Anne Petito, research scientist at Montreal Neurological Institute:

“We have known for, like, 100 years that the left hemisphere of the brain is primarily engaged in language processing. We also know that very specific parts of grammar is processed in very specific tissue… in this are right near the ear on the left-hand side of the head.”

“By 12 months a child is combining sounds (‘gaba-ba-da-ga’) and… creating a temporal frame [which] is what human words get slotted into… Deaf children exposed to sign language, much to our surprise, also produced a highly selective set of hand movements, and these movements were combined in rhythmic moving and holding (move-hold, move-hold, just like alternating consonant-vowel, consonant-vowel) alternating patterns. Also like a hearing child, they produced these forms and they were entirely meaningless – so they didn’t want anything, it was just kind of the sound play you see in a baby, called crib-speech, it was the hand-play that was ultimately going to be used to construct all the signs in their language. That was what was so exciting… because at 6 months they went through the same developmental stages… jargoning. At 12 months, the deaf child expanded their manual babbling into the whole sentence of a signed language in the same way… jargon sign… controlled by the same brain tissue that controlled speech [in the vocalizing children]. The brain is highly flexible and is sensitive to particular types of patterns, but can grab every morsel of the body that you give it… it will take the hands if given the hands, the tongue if given the tongue [in order to output these patterns]…”

Hope I got the names about right - haven't checked yet [mumble-mumble]