Thinking In Pictures

So I’m in the middle of reading Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin. Temple is an animal scientist, has a PhD, and she is autistic. Her book is an amazing portrait of how she thinks. It has opened up a whole new window into Gavin’s mind and how he processes information differently than the rest of us.

Gav does not think concretely. Those concepts are completely lost on him. Temple points out three categories of specialized brains. First, there is the visual thinker. Children who are visual thinkers often have a hard time with concepts like algebra and foreign languages in school. They are more gifted in art, building, and visual type learning.

Second, there are the music and math thinkers. These type of thinkers think in patterns and numbers instead of images. They generally tend to be good at music, engineering, computers, physics, etc.

Third are the verbal logic thinkers. These people think in word details. They love foreign languages, stats, lists, etc. Often you hear of children with autism who have an uncanny ability to spout sport scores or odd facts (think Rain Man).

An interesting thing that Temple points out is that children with speech delay (Gavin) are usually visual or math thinkers. After reading this portion of the book, I would definitely say Gav is a visual thinker. That would explain why he learned the entire alphabet at 15 months. We had the little magnetic letters on the fridge that he played with constantly. That also explains why we’re having a hard time teaching him to count. We just count, there is nothing for him to look at or touch.

Another classic example of Gavin being a visual thinker is his word association. Since moving to the new house, anytime we’re out and I say we’re heading home, he freaks out. “All done with go home,” he always says. BUT, if I say we’re going to the new house, he’s fine. Now I understand the freak out. When he hears the word “home”, the old house is the image his brain pulls up. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to call the new house home. I have no idea how to change his word association yet. I guess that’s the next step. But, now that I know how he thinks, that better enables us to teach him at home. I suddenly have to get really creative (something I am not good at!)