Taken from my blog post: Let's Talk About: Modes of Thought - Followup; a link is also available at my tumblr blog.
I'm a mixed mode thinker. About 60-65% aural (i.e. I think in words and hear the words as though they're being spoken out loud); about 20-25% visual, and about 15-20% what I've taken to referring as "conceptual thinking".
Aural Thinking: This is, as I mentioned above, mostly thinking in words and hearing them as though they're spoken out loud. This is very much my primary mode of thinking, even though my primary sensory mode is visual rather than aural. And it's very language-based, rather than general sound based, because it's all words. And I can think in English and French (I was in French Immersion from age 5 to age 12, and became at least passably fluent in French... i.e. I can think in it, and even with minimal exposure since I was 17, I can still switch to thinking in French easily enough), and sometimes words from German, Latin, and Spanish pop up. (I learned Latin and German in high school, 3 years each, and Spanish I learned fragments of from visiting my parents in Costa Rica, not to mention the influence of French and Latin.)
This is also, I think, how I learned intonation (see upcoming posts on social thinking and paralinguistics, but basically this is the "emotional content" of your voice). Most of us (whether diagnosed as Asperger's or Kanner's Autism) have very flat intonation, and according to my mother, that's what I used to have as well. But one of the ways in which the aural component of my thinking makes itself known is that when I'm reading, the words are scrolling through my mind as though they're being said, with all the intonation, pauses, and other elements of speech that are involved in neurotypical verbal communication. I'm not sure, because I don't remember - I didn't even realize I used to speak in a monotone - but it's quite possible that I figured out how to use intonation by matching my voice to the "sound" of my thoughts when reading out loud. However, this is just a possibility, not a certainty. Either way, I believe that might give people an idea of how the aural element of my thinking works.
This also means that when I'm writing, I tend to think in sentences and paragraphs, and sometimes my fingers can't keep up with my thoughts. It also means that there have been times when I've had a narration of my actions going on in the back of my mind. Not often, but sometimes. It's kind of weird. Usually any "narration" is involved in stories I'm working on, but there are times.... *shrugs*
Visual Thinking: I seem to have two different ways of thinking visually. The first usually occurs when I'm asked to spell out words - I have to close my eyes (unless I've spelled the word out frequently, like referring to bones when talking around the dog, or referring to certain things around children that they shouldn't know about yet, like surprise parties) and I tend to see the word roll out in front of my "mind's eye" as letters on a dark background. As far as I know, this never happens when I'm writing... just when I'm asked to spell words verbally. I think I may also do that when an unfamiliar word is mentioned - visualize what it sounds like in an effort to figure out what it means (see above re my learning Latin and German - I do love etymology) - but I'm not certain of that.
The second way involves seeing actual images in my "mind's eye". The images don't necessarily tend to be "complete"; the focus is very much on the important aspects of the image (which usually involves a story, and so focuses on the characters); and the colours all tend to be pale or faded, no matter how intense I know they actually are in "reality". It's hard to describe, because there aren't necessarily words for how it works, and I think that there's an element of my "conceptual thinking" (see next section) linked in there as well. In part because when I'm getting this kind of visual image, I also get a general "emotional" sense from the scene.
This visual thinking plays a part in my interest in 3D graphics. I sometimes get ideas for images that are a mix of aural description and visual imagery, and to get them out, 3D graphics seem to do the trick nicely.
Conceptual Thinking: Okay, this is a very complex element to the way I think, which is part of the reason it took me so long to get ready to do this post. A lot of factors are in play in this "thinking mode", and it's even harder to find words to describe it than with the visual thinking.
First of all, there is a kinesthetic (movement-oriented) element to it... but it's so wound up in the rest of the "conceptual" element that I can't isolate it as "this is a thinking mode of mine". (Unlike one of my best friends, who seems to have kinesthetic mode where I have visual mode, at least in terms of percentages.) The kinesthetic element is probably best illustrated by the way I build mental maps of locations. I don't get lost often (luckily, I don't have the problem with identifying places that some autistics do), and my ability to build mental maps plays a big part in this. But while I can translate paper / visual computer / written directions into my "mental map", none of that is how I perceive my mental maps. They're a mix of "this movement series takes you here, and here's an alternate movement series that can get you to the same place" - which is where the kinesthetic element comes in - and something that I've been grasping after words to describe ever since I figured this out. I still don't have them. The best I can come up with is the "idea" of location - which is part of why I named this mode "conceptual" thinking. It's more abstract ideas that don't necessarily correspond to sensory input.
This is also where my tendency to use metaphors and similes to relate concrete examples to abstract ones seems to belong, in terms of "modes". It's very much a linking of concepts, which is the other reason I decided to describe this mode as "conceptual". And as you can see from my percentage estimates, it's very much a large part of the way I think.
In fact, I have the feeling that this mode is how my subconscious works... and also most of my problem solving abilities. While talking to myself about problems (or writing about them) seems to shake those abilities into action, I don't seem to do the actual problem-solving through either aural or visual thinking modes. It's a lot more abstracted than that. Once I've got a solution, my brain tends to translate it into one of the other two modes... but during the working out process, neither words nor images can really capture what's going on.
And this is part of the problem with the way society expects people to be able to put things into words. There's even a saying I've heard of, which basically goes that if you can't explain a concept in your own words, you don't really understand it. What happens when someone doesn't have the words to explain it... because they don't think in either words, or something (like visual imagery) that can be easily (or somewhat easily) switched over to words? Things I understand in my "conceptual thinking mode", because they're so abstracted, can't be explained in words, not really. Not completely (see my example above regarding my mental maps concept). That's part of where my use of metaphors and similes comes in. I may grasp a concept / idea with my "conceptual thinking mode", but be unable to explain my understanding without resorting to metaphor. It's also a way I can use to translate the abstracts of my conceptual mode to visual or aural mode. (Which may be one reason why I literally fell in love with the idea of metaphors and similes as soon as we started learning about them. It gave me access to... well, translation software for the different modes of thinking in my brain!)
At any rate, that's pretty much as far as I can go regarding the description of my "conceptual thinking mode". I don't really know what else to say about it. *shrugs* Just... it is abstracted, and words don't work too well to describe it, but it's there, and it's part of the way I think.
