People with autism, engineers, and those with ADHD tend to say they think in pictures; teachers, in words, and when a word-thinker hears that there are those who think not in words, but pictures, they often are flabbergasted, taken aback, and have a hard time bending their mind around this alien thought form.
In general, children with ADHD are right-brained learners. They prefer to learn visually — by watching or doing a task in an activity-based, hands-on format, not by listening to lectures, practicing drills, or memorizing.
Visual thinking – aka thinking in pictures – is made possible by our ability to tap into the brain's powerful visual processing center. Even if you're not artistically inclined, visual thinking makes it easier to organize your thoughts, form new ideas, and remember essential details.
Visual thinking, also called visual or spatial learning or picture thinking, is the phenomenon of thinking through visual processing. Visual thinking has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures. It is common in approximately 60–65% of the general population.
The mind of a person with ADHD is full of the minutiae of life (“Where are my keys?” “Where did I park the car?”), so there is little room left for new thoughts and memories. Something has to be discarded or forgotten to make room for new information. Often the information individuals with ADHD need is in their memory…
Hyperfocus is intense focus that can last for a long time. Kids with ADHD often experience hyperfocus on things that really interest them, even when they have a hard time paying attention to things that don't interest them.
Differences in emotions in people with ADHD can lead to 'shutdowns', where someone is so overwhelmed with emotions that they space out, may find it hard to speak or move and may struggle to articulate what they are feeling until they can process their emotions.
Autism therefore entails behavioral but also cognitive atypicalities. Autistic individuals are often described as “thinking in pictures”. This assumption mainly originates from the eponymous book by Temple Grandin, Thinking In Pictures.
Visual Thinking
Research has found that that children with dyslexia have enhanced picture recognition memory and better memory of pictures than words. Many people with dyslexia often think in images as opposed to words, which is attributed to the unique activations in their brains.
If you ask most of the world's population to picture a person, place, or thing, they have no problem conjuring a mental image in their mind's eye. But for a small percentage of the population (estimates range anywhere from 1 to 5%), visualizing or imagining images is impossible.
Our preference indicated a bias in our thinking: left-brain-dominated people tend to think more in words; right-brained people tend to think more in images. This bias indicated to us how to successfully approach an audience, and how to approach communication-skills training.
While not every Autistic person is a visual learner, visual thinkers are common among the Autistic population. We tend to be more sensitive to details and patterns in our environments and therefore, more likely to notice subtle differences in shapes, colors, or forms.
They often see words as a series of pictures and are probably skilled at recognizing patterns, paying attention to detail, visualizing, and spatial reasoning, and they may be gifted at art, design, or working with their hands. Visual thinking is also a very useful skill to have in the digital marketing industry.
Research has found that people with ADHD have more creativity and idea generation than people without the disorder. 3 This can lead to outside-the-box thinking that is so important for innovation. Hyper-focus: Many people with ADHD become hyper-focused on things that interest them.
These may include hyperfocus, resilience, creativity, conversational skills, spontaneity, and abundant energy. Many people view these benefits as “superpowers” because those with ADHD can hone them to their advantage. People with ADHD have a unique perspective that others may find interesting and valuable.
Perception/observation/curiosity
Individuals with ADHD often perceive (intuitively) connections or “flows” that are not appreciated by others. They often enjoy taking a “bird's eye view” of things, and asking the “what-if” questions.
Definition. Visual dyslexia is reading difficulty resulting from either optical visual problems (physical causes) or visual processing disorders (cognitive/neurological causes).
Some teachers and parents can mistake a dyslexic child for someone who is lacking intelligence. But the truth is dyslexia has nothing to do with a child's level of intelligence.
People with stealth dyslexia have problems sounding out (or decoding ) words just like people with “classic” dyslexia. Yet unlike typical dyslexics, their scores on tests of reading comprehension are typically above average, or even very strong.
Visual learners also include many people who don't have autism.
The Asperger's mind enjoys and focuses on details, while the normal mind is more skilled at assembling whole concepts from details. Some people with Asperger's are visual thinkers and others are math, music, or number thinkers, but all think in specifics.
Interviews with autistic adults who have good speech and are able to articulate their thought processes indicate that most of them also think in visual images. More severely impaired people, who can speak but are unable to explain how they think, have highly associational thought patterns.
ADHD meltdowns are sudden outbursts of frustration and anger that seem to come out of nowhere. If your child is struggling to control their emotions, there are ways to help them. For children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), impulsivity can present in many ways.
High-functioning ADHD could mean: you experience severe symptoms but have developed “work arounds” to carry on with daily tasks and responsibilities. your symptoms are mild, and you're able to function with minimal impairment. symptoms are greatly impairing in some areas but you're highly functional in others.
It is essential to realize that people with ADHD are generally emotionally sensitive and may have strong feelings of shame, preventing them from seeking the medical help they need. Aside from medications, allowing the person to process their emotions before a meltdown is a healthy way to help them cope with rejection.