Picture thinking

In psychology, picture thinking is often confused with dyslexia, and it is true that people who 'think in pictures' often have difficulty with learning to read, but not all picture thinkers suffer from the normal symptoms associated with dyslexia. Some autistics think in pictures.

Symptoms that most picture thinkers do share are:

• Problems remembering abstract chains of letters, like names.
• Difficulty in explaining concepts they have invented.
• Writing in a very convoluted style.
• Natural ability to 'quick read' whole sentences instead of word for word, but when asked to read out loud what they have read they often use other words than what is actually written.
• Ability to remember exactly the location and relative position of objects they have placed somewhere.
• Ability to intuitively come to conclusions that are very hard to reach by using normal linear reasoning.

What a picture thinker is or does is still debated, but some research has been done in the Netherlands where they call picture thinking beelddenken. in particular, the Maria J. Krabbe Stichting is doing some research (see link below). Researchers there have developed a method of detecting picture thinking in young children by using the so called "the world game" ( het wereldspel ).

Picture thinkers, as the word says, think in pictures, not in the linear fashion using language that is normally associated with thinking. Of course this is a simplification as a complete picture thinker would not be able to use language.

Picture thinkers can come to conclusions in an intuitive way, without reasoning with language. Instead, they manipulate with logical/graphical symbols in a non linear fashion; they “see” the answers to problems.

Picture thinkers are often inventors, architects or electronic engineers.

The word visionist is a way of describing a picture thinker.

The book The Gift of Dyslexia by Ronald D. Davis and Eldon M.Braun describes the relationship of picture thinking to dyslexia. Another book, Thinking in Pictures, by Temple Grandin, focuses on the role of picture thinking in autism.

There are many famous people who were probably picture thinkers, here is a short list:

• Nikola Tesla - discusses in depth picture thinking (Asperger's Syndrome)to a great extent in his seminal document The Problem of Increasing Human Energy
• Albert Einstein
• Walt Disney

External links

• Maria J. Krabbe Stichting
• Autism and Visual Thought
• The Gift of Dyslexia