Sensory Thinking

[alyra]

it was said there are twp types of thinking - language thinking, and sensory thinking. It was said that Language Thinking is common for neurotypical folk - and sensory thinking is common for folks with autism,etc. 

 

A "quick" explanation - sensory thinking is thinking with a lack of words. the thought is experienced as pictures most commonly. Temple Grandin is the most well-known person who's talked about this. For me, it is actually in the form of tactile sensation. Only recently - about four or five years ago - I had developed the ability to think with complete sentences. If I thought with a single word before then, it was a phrase - or half a phrase - or even half a word - sparringly. Predominantly, I would think with tactole thought. In my best attempts to explain - thought for me has mostly been experienced either as a blob with weight, size, location, and texture - or as a vector, zooming around in my mind's space. (which is usually about a meter around my head as a center, but occasionally has extended further. also, there's a fourth dimensional nature to this sensation lol. not gonna bother trying to explain) 

 

 

 

long story short - I'm curious if anyone else has ever heard of sensory thinking, has direct experience regarding it, or would like to ask me questions about my experience with sensory thinking. To be frank, I think it's kind of silly to imagine that it's uncommon that people do have sensory thinking - but whenever the subject of thought arises. it is something I am curious about. how do you think? do you think with words only? or do you think with pictures? and for those of you who have internal visualization of images - do you claim that this is the nature of how you think, or just memory to you? I'm wondering if there is a difference between "recalling a memory as an image or similar sensory experience" and "thinking using images or other sensory experiences"

 

 

(note that this is definitely not awareness - awareness of actual real sensation is one thing. experiencing created sensations as the way to be a "logical mind" is another). for me, there is nothing in the world comparable to what my tactile sensations of thought actually are - the closest thing is if I hold a mass of playdough, and close my eyes, I can tactily guess it's size shape and weight and texture. but no this is not touching the object or feeling it with my hands - it is representing the object in my head as if it is inside my mental space. my mental membrane lol. is if there's this vat of suspension liquid which is my brain, and my thoughts exist in it, and I feel it with this liquid.  does this explanation make me sound crazy? normal? I wanna know what your experience is - and what your response to my rant you probably didn't read is. 

 

[Toby]

I don't know. Doesn't seem weird at all. Of course some people think primary in sensations/feelings and of course just thinking and mind can be felt as an energy in one's energy field. In NLP they discern different "channels" that people use or can use.

[alyra]

yes - something I've been wondering ever since I Started talking about it is if it's actually more common, just that people tend not to spend the time being aware of it which would be awkward to ask. "what - you don't think with sensation? are you sure you're not unaware??"

[alyra]

to be honest - I've never really been able to really answer the "visual, kinetic, auditory learner" question. I am none of them really. I suppose I am most like the kinetic learner - but if anything that is more so because I have always been "internally blind" and when I was a kid and teen had very impacting communication difficulty - but if those setbacks weren't there - I actually would be a visual learner. I typically have disliked "doing" something before I understood it. 

Edited February 7, 2017 by aryberry

[Martin123]

@aryberry for me thought is just a sensation in my head that I express through letters, as if Im writing in my own head.

[jse]

2 hours ago, aryberry said:

A "quick" explanation - sensory thinking is thinking with a lack of words

Related to body language?

Edited February 7, 2017 by jse
clarity

[alyra]

it's - instead of thinking "ok. I got to focus on the task at hand. which is. cleaning! ok cleaning, theres this space here. oh, this can go in the other room." it's not thinking language at all - but instead processing similar kind of progressing thought interaction using, in my case, tactile sensations.

 

To explain my experience, it's like I have extra appendages, except it's floating in space. about the size of a fist. I might reach out to touch the appendage, but all I touch is air. there is no actual part of my body there, and only rarely does it feel like a tendril - usually a disconnected blob. and these phantom appendage contains complex information - perhaps a number I'm remembering during a calculation, or cars I'm keeping track of while driving, or an amount of details that describe what an image would look like if I could see it. but I can only hold a few details at a time in my focus - yet the blob itself, I know that it contains all the details, comparable to if I was looking at a picture and focusing on the dog's eye, but instead of seeing anything, I feel it.

or if someone speaks a paragraph to me, I feel multiple "floating blob appendages" forming together and moving around and morphing until I understand what was said. then that understanding is a blob of information that I feel.

 

I've heard that sensory thinking is most often comparable to like, say, playing a silent film in one's head instead of having an inner language - based dialogue, but I don't experience that so I don't want to try to explain what that's like. I'll probably misinform. 

 

note that "sensory thinking" as I've said it is a new, not yet popularly used term - googling it gives me "sensory processing" and is talking about something not quite the same.  

Edited February 8, 2017 by aryberry

[Martin123]

@aryberry Check out the movie arrivals! =D.

[alyra]

4 minutes ago, Martin123 said:

@aryberry Check out the movie arrivals! =D.

you mean the alien thriller that's showing now, called Arrival? or something else - in which case could you provide a link?

[Martin123]

@aryberry yes that one