Thinking in Words and Pictures

Thoughts are ideas that our brain has to find words or pictures for. I don’t think my brain likes either medium particularly. But as I am so poor at visualisation, words are my only recourse. Occasionally (not often) my brain just gives up, especially if it is a complicated idea. I get the sensation of the thought in my mind, and I recognise ideas or feelings in it and then I try to work out what it was about. But thoughts are so fast, if you don’t get them straight away you lose the original sense it was trying to convey.

I did a degree in Visual Culture, one of the subjects we looked at was semiotics and at the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure said that language (words and other systems of signs) was made up of the signified and the signifier. The signifier was the word or symbol and the signified was the object or idea the signifier referred to. He said the relationship between the two was arbitrary and the result of social consensus. Basically the idea exits in your mind first and then the mind has to find signifiers to communicate that idea.

The strange thing for me is that I can have these thoughts, that don’t have words or symbols and I don’t actually know what they mean. It’s my thought, surely I should know what it means with or without signifiers? It’s a shame, because these thoughts are usually about new ideas or ways of explaining the world and my experience of it. Maybe my conscious mind just doesn’t have the language to express them yet.

Not all autistic people think in the same way. Temple Grandin thinks in pictures, she can visualise complicated designs for farm equipment. I wish I had this ability. Instead I think in words. Not because I’m particularly good at it (I think I‘ve shown my language skills aren‘t very good already). I have to think in words because my visualisation skills are so poor. I find this strange, because I am a visual person. I like drawing and painting and I like watching films.

It means I’ve had to work really hard at getting to grips with language. My reading skills were below average for some of the time I was at primary school. I’d catch up, then fall behind then catch up again. I was doing well in all other areas. I don’t think I had any concept that they were measuring us, or that it was important to keep up with how others were doing. I never thought about how other people were doing. And as it was a lot of hard work for me, I wouldn’t always try very hard. Once you reach a certain level of competency though it ceases to have much impact on your work, so eventually it stopped being a problem.

It’s only now, when I’m trying to express new ideas that I begin to struggle with words again. My problem is that I form sentences mostly by recalling phrases. There are certain sentence structures that I repeat. I’m trying to put these phrases together in a way that conveys what I mean and that is also readable and flows and doesn’t sound like disconnected phrases that I have gathered from different places. Occasionally I get a sentence that I know I’ve created myself, I get a particular pleasure when I’ve achieved this and been able to convey an idea in my own original way.

When you’re talking to someone they don’t usually notice if you repeat words of phrases, but when you put it down in writing it becomes obvious. There is a lot of editing that goes on after I’ve drafted something; the thesaurus is my best friend at these moments. I’ve noticed that I also make jumps between ideas, assuming that the reader will understand how one sentence relates to another. Often in my writing sentences don’t follow very well. Getting the words to flow in a sentence is one thing, getting sentences to flow from one to the other is just as hard. I think my writing must sound very methodical.

One way that I practised my language skills when I was younger was by talking to myself. I can remember the exact moment I began doing this. I was sitting in the back of my parents car. We had been to visit my Nan, and I was talking to myself about what had happened. This monologue when over and over in my head till we reached home. I rephrased parts of it then started again. As I got older I would use this a way of working out how I might feel if an event turned out in a particular way, or how I should respond in certain situations.

All this is very essential stuff, but it did have a negative impact on me, in that my mind was doing overtime for much of my waking hours. And if I hadn’t been born a worrier, it’s probably why I’m one now. I over think everything. I also became very focused on me. Because I can’t imagine other people’s responses these monologues were always about just me and my feelings, of course I didn’t realise this until I was much older. Maybe that’s what causes the stubbornness. I’m inflexible to other people’s opinions because I grew up only ever being aware of my own, I wasn’t even aware that people had different opinions from my own until I was about seventeen. And even thought I’m now aware that other people have their own opinions it very hard to undo this way of thinking. I think all this mental activity while I was a child must have wired my brain in such a way that I now find it difficult to undo.

Word Retrieval

I have poor word retrieval. My sister (the one who maybe dyslexic) has the same problem. What happens when you can’t retrieve the word you want is that you either say nothing, or instead a different word is substituted. The substitute word, though associated with the word you wanted, it is not a synonym but instead is associated in some weird Freudian way, because that’s how the unconscious works. So the substitute word is in most cases inappropriate and leads you to say some strange things, which might not be rude but are still funny to your listeners and embarrassing to you.

Personally I prefer saying nothing to saying something daft. Most times I can tell the word I want isn’t coming and there is another word that I can use if I want. It’s a bit like playing Deal or no Deal. Shall I choose this word or not. It might make sense and end this awkward pause, or it might not. Sometimes you might be half way through a sentence in which case you it is better to just start the sentence again and choose slightly different words. So you would pause, then say ’What I mean is….’ and try saying it in a different way.

Sometimes you might be near the end of the sentence. If I’m near the end of my sentence and I think people have got my meaning then I will leave the sentence unfinished. Sometimes I do this even if I don’t think I’m going to get the words wrong, it saves me the mental effort of looking for them. This sounds really lazy, but the mental effort required for me to talk and look for words at the same time is harder than you know. I think this is why I come across as a serious person, because I’m concentrating so hard on what I’m saying all the time. I can understand why some autistic people don’t speak even though they can. The rewards simply don’t outweigh the work involved, for them that is, and as they can’t see your point of view, you feelings don’t get factored in.

Sometimes, if you have very bad luck, a substitute word will stick. My sister says she often calls the kitchen the bathroom. It really embarrasses her. I told her this sounded logical to me. Both rooms have a sink, they are the only two rooms in the house where you meet water. For some reason they seem to be the coldest rooms in the house and the only ones without carpet; the only ones to be tiled rather than wallpapered or painted. There are lots of similarities.

Recently I was writing a story and I put down the word wave instead of flag. I actually had in mind a small flag to go on the bonnet of a government car and for some reason I put down wave instead of flag. I can see there are associations between the words; flags move in a similar way to waves when it’s windy and waving is also what you do with a flag.

Before we can think of a word the conscious mind must first have an idea it wants to express. Then it makes a request to the unconscious mind for the word that represents that idea. For instance you might be looking for the word ‘kitchen‘ or ‘flag’. Before you can say the word you must first think of the idea. I don’t know how the unconscious finds the correct word, there must be links then between ideas and the words we use for them. Maybe in autism these links are weaker. Hence the need for repetition when I am learning new words. These links can come and go, or maybe they become blocked, because sometimes I can think of a word and other times I can’t.

I find things drop out of my memory quickly if I don’t use them. After doing my French and German GCSEs, I’d say I lost most of what I’d learnt after a year. The same is true for numbers as well, I have forgotten my pin number numerous times because I didn’t use my card for a week. We have so many passwords for everything these days; bank accounts, email accounts, website accounts, etc… the only way I can cope is to use the same password for everything. Before then I was having to create a new password every time I wanted too buy something off Amazon.

Poor word retrieval I think explains some of the language difficulties I had when I was younger. Reading was hard for me. On the other hand I was good at maths, or rather I had a good memory for numbers. I could remember my times table up to twelve before anyone else in my class. Numbers are easier to remember because they have no associations. They mean one thing and one thing only and there aren’t so many to learn. Once you understand decimalisation, and you can count to ten you’re there. A word though is much more complex. Words can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctives and other things besides. Plus your memory isn’t just linking one idea to one symbol when you learn a new word, it must be creating a whole host of connections with other associated words. However, if I don’t continue using words or numbers (like the answers to my multiple times tables), both can drop out of my memory.