thinking pictures
thinking in pictures and over 2 million other books are available for amazon kindle. learn more
the idea that people have different thinking patterns is not new. francis galton, in
stunning pictures taken last week newgrange farm, slane co meath show silage being ...
mckinsey insights - get our latest thinking on your iphone, ipad, or android device .
the girl who thought in pictures: the story of dr. temple grandin (amazing scientists )
by better analyzing the contents of a scene, photo software could automatically identify the best pictures .
for thinking pictures and the computer company sun microsystems, which financed the program and donated equipment and technical help, the priorities were not to sell a rock band but to sell the internet itself .
this helps with depth, as noted above, but also with one of the most common problems facing average smartphone owners: it’s easier to take photos than manage them. “we’re just capturing too many pictures, ” essa says. “i take pictures at the dinner table with my family and i end up having 40 to 50 pictures. ” by better analyzing the contents of a scene, photo software could automatically identify the best pictures .
however, not all people with autism are highly visual thinkers, nor do they all process information this way. people throughout the world are on a continuum of visualization skills ranging from next to none, to seeing vague generalized pictures, to seeing semi - specific pictures, to seeing, as in my case, in very specific pictures .
in manhattan, publicity agents for the project did not know anyplace to see the program in the city. the closest site was the office of thinking pictures in jersey city, where a large crowd gathered around a small computer screen .
, wrote that while some people see vivid mental pictures, for others
the idea is not felt to be mental pictures, but rather symbols of facts. in people with low pictorial imagery, they would remember their breakfast table but they could not see it.''
adams, m. j. (1990). beginning to read: thinking and learning about print. cambridge, ma: mit press .
while fluent readers make these types of connections with ease, many readers do not. children need to be shown this type of thinking and then asked to join in and participate in book conversations. this active involvement gives you, the teacher, a glimpse into each reader' s thinking .
people say,' gee, that' s all i get?'
said mr. pfeiffer of thinking pictures .
i say:' yes, and that' s one of the limitations of the superinformation highway. maybe now there can be discussion about expanding it.'
i think in pictures. words are like a second language to me. i translate both spoken and written words into full - color movies, complete with sound, which run like a vcr tape in my head. when somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures. language - based thinkers often find this phenomenon difficult to understand, but in my job as an equipment designer for the livestock industry, visual thinking is a tremendous advantage .
problems with access, parking and congestion in the town centre can be solved with innovative thinking and a will to make things work. i question whether this will is there in some developments. there are a number of places around the country where the town centre has been devastated by short - term thinking .
when i am unable to convert text to pictures, it is usually because the text has no concrete meaning. some philosophy books and articles about the cattle futures market are simply incomprehensible. it is much easier for me to understand written text that describes something that can be easily translated into pictures. the following sentence from a story in the february 21, 1994, issue of
below, we offer ideas from students and teachers who have engaged with these images for ways to use them, or images like them, to teach close reading and visual thinking skills .
i love this. did i miss where the pictures with the original captions are for these pics? i understand these are just examples, but i was hoping to have them. thanks .
9. introduce new ideas: on tuesday mornings, we reveal the original caption of the photo and any relevant back story as well. sometimes, we’re fortunate to hear from the photographers themselves about what they were thinking when they took the shot. the activity, therefore, can transform from practicing visual thinking strategies to gaining a window into another place, time or perspective .
block, c. c. (1997). teaching the language arts: expanding thinking through student - centered instruction (2nd ed .). boston, ma: allyn & bacon .
this article discusses the power of reading aloud and goes a step further to discuss the power of thinking out loud while reading to children as a way to highlight the strategies used by thoughtful readers .
when i wrote thinking in pictures i thought most people on the autism spectrum were visual thinkers like me. after talking to hundreds of families and individuals with autism or asperger' s, i have observed that there are actually different types of specialized brains. all people on the spectrum think in details, but there are three basic categories of specialized brains. some individuals may be combinations of these categories .
reading this, i’ve probably give you the impression that these are boring, dull, staid pictures, and sure enough, they can be. but if done right, their innate stability is a valuable thing .
the only way i could sell this idea to the stones ,
said stephan fitch, president of the multimedia computer group thinking pictures, which helped produce the program ,
was to say to mick jagger and keith richards:' look, this is really cool, and it' s never been done before. and if you don' t do it, i' ll do it with aerosmith.'
this article praises the power of reading aloud and goes a step further to praise the power of thinking out loud while reading to children. it' s an easy way to highlight the strategies used by thoughtful readers .
a uniquely fascinating view not just of autism but of animal - and human - thinking and feeling, [ providing ] insights that can only be called wisdom.  deborah tannen, author of you just don' t understand
thinking pictures even received a message from a viewing party at a department of defense research lab, which read :
we' re not really partying here, since this is a dod research lab. we' re just watching as technology demonstration... yeah, that' s the ticket... a technology demonstration !
it also received an order for rolling stones merchandise from this e - mail address: b. clinton @ whitehouse. com .
all of that is moot, the next argument goes, because the real disruption occurred when cameras merged with phones, and people shifted from printing pictures to posting them on social media and mobile phone apps. and kodak totally missed that .
one pair of comparators used by wölflinn was closed form against open form. while i’m doubtful you’re set on recreating renaissance or baroque pictures, knowing what the terms mean, and how they can be applied to your photos and make your audience feel about them, is useful .
developing comprehension strategies through reading aloud requires planning and setting up an environment of thinking, listening, and discussion. you will soon learn how to follow your student' s lead: modeling connections, asking questions, encouraging discussion, and using literature to prompt personal storytelling .
10. experiment with other ways to look closely: v. t. s. ’s three - question facilitation method isn’t the only approach to getting students to practice visual thinking. the national archives has developed a photograph analysis protocol for noticing people, objects and activities before making inferences .
wetzstein notes the potential for the depth recognition to have an impact behind photographic effects. by analyzing objects in a scene by depth, a two - camera system could automatically produce better pictures, building on the face, smile, and blink recognition features that are standard in cameras and smartphones today .
discussions with other autistic people reveal similar visual styles of thinking about tasks that most people do sequentially. an autistic man who composes music told me that he makes
sound pictures
using small pieces of other music to create new compositions. a computer programmer with autism told me that he sees the general pattern of the program tree. after he visualizes the skeleton for the program, he simply writes the code for each branch. i use similar methods when i review scientific literature and troubleshoot at meat plants. i take specific findings or observations and combine them to find new basic principles and general concepts .
autistics have problems learning things that cannot be thought about in pictures. the easiest words for an autistic child to learn are nouns, because they directly relate to pictures. highly verbal autistic children like i was can sometimes learn how to read with phonics. written words were too abstract for me to remember, but i could laboriously remember the approximately fifty phonetic sounds and a few rules. lower - functioning children often learn better by association, with the aid of word labels attached to objects in their environment. some very impaired autistic children learn more easily if words are spelled out with plastic letters they can feel .
the more i learn, the more i realize more and more that how i think and feel is different. my thinking is different from a normal person, but it is also very different from the verbal logic nonvisual person with asperger' s. they create word categories instead of picture categories. the one common denominator of all autistic and asperger thinking is that details are associated into categories to form a concept. details are assembled into concepts like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. the picture on the puzzle can be seen when only 20 percent of the puzzle is put together, forming a big picture .
another indicator of visual thinking as the primary method of processing information is the remarkable ability many autistic people exhibit in solving jigsaw puzzles, finding their way around a city, or memorizing enormous amounts of information at a glance. my own thought patterns are similar to those described by a. r. luria in
indeed, practicing visual thinking skills with these images can be fun and a quick activity, but it can also hone important skills that transfer to other texts. making sense of intriguing images like these can be more like detective work than anything else: careful attention to detail rewards the viewer with a “big picture” understanding .
it wasn' t until i went to college that i realized some people are completely verbal and think only in words. i first suspected this when i read an article in a science magazine about the development of tool use in prehistoric humans. some renowned scientist speculated that humans had to develop language before they could develop tools. i thought this was ridiculous, and this article gave me the first inkling that my thought processes were truly different from those of many other people. when i invent things, i do not use language. some other people think in vividly detailed pictures, but most think in a combination of words and vague, generalized pictures .
the sense of solidity at the top of the post is usually delivered by the structure of the picture, which can rely on a prevalence of strong vertical and horizontal lines. as susan woodford says in her book looking at pictures: ‘the closed form conveys an impression of stability and balance and there is a tendency towards a symmetrical arrangement…’
3) think surgically about where and how to grow in a way that won’t jeopardize returns. focus on city clusters and regions that have distinctive opportunities for growth. this includes thinking purposefully about disciplined capex management and which formats are going to create the biggest impact, whether that’s traditional, multi - use, neighborhood or outlet .
due to the success of the new ground level track we decided we needed more trucks. unfortunately our old truckshed was full, so we decided to build a new one. our proposed location was unacceptable to the planning people so after much thinking it was decided to demolish the old shed and build a bigger one in its place .
and of course the closed form isn’t restricted to renaissance paintings. all the talk of horizontal and vertical lines will likely make you think of architectural photos as being obvious examples of closed form images. and they are often great examples. but closed form images are more than just pictures of buildings. they can make your audience think about your subject in a specific way .
i am fortunate in that i am able to build on my library of images and visualize solutions based on those pictures. however, most people with autism lead extremely limited lives, in part because they cannot handle any deviation from their routine. for me, every experience builds on the visual memories i carry from prior experience, and in this way my world continues to grow .
some third - party apps already do this, and apple’s burst mode in its camera app tries to detect the “best” pictures of a set taken in fast succession. but these early stabs at the idea rely on a handful of cues instead of full - blown recognition. as the photographic tech in smartphones gets better, researchers will be able to take the idea further, essa says .
but as much as computational photography has insinuated itself into all major smartphone models and some standalone digital cameras, we’re still at the beginning. google, facebook, and others are pushing the concept further, and researchers in the field say there are plenty of new ideas circulating that will make their way into hardware–mostly as part of smartphones, the biggest platform for taking pictures and leveraging innovative imaging techniques .
for those that are drawing - inclined, author austin kleon, who describes himself as a
writer that draws
, demonstrates how you can use a tactic called visual note - taking to capture book ideas. kleon, is a huge advocate for pairing pictures with words, a trend we enjoy as children in comics but largely forget afterwards. he also happens to be quite a fantastic artist .
i found visual note - taking to be difficult since i immediately wanted to use words instead of pictures to translate the ideas. but, with a bit of effort, i was able to piece some images together. i still presented the ideas in the order described in the book (moving clockwise), but with some practice, i feel like i would get better at deviating from the standard order .
become comfortable with slight diversions. through conversations and diversions, children make meaning and share connections that are relevant to them. reading aloud to children gives them the opportunity to try on the language and experience of others. it helps them make connections with their lives, and informs their view of themselves and others. thinking aloud helps children learn how to use comprehension strategies that are important when reading independently .
this is a skill hat takes time to develop. as a middle school student my english class was entirely analyzing text. over the years i noticed steady improvement. it is a life skill to be able to look at a situation and use what you know and what’s around you to come to a conclusion. this is something that should be taught to everyone in several forms. pictures is a great idea !
temple grandin, ph. d. , is a gifted animal scientist who has designed one third of all the livestock - handling facilities in the united states. she also lectures widely on autism—because temple grandin is autistic, a woman who thinks, feels, and experiences the world in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us. in this unprecedented book, grandin delivers a report from the country of autism. writing from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person, she tells us how that country is experienced by its inhabitants and how she managed to breach its boundaries to function in the outside world. what emerges in thinking in pictures is the document of an extraordinary human being, one who, in gracefully and lucidly bridging the gulf between her condition and our own, sheds light on the riddle of our common identity .
helping children discover these connections requires planning and modeling. parents and teachers can encourage and support thinking, listening, and discussion, and model
think - alouds ,
which reveal the inner conversation readers have with the text as they read (harvey & goudvis, 2000). parents and teachers can point out connections between prior experiences and the story, similarities between books, and any relationship between the books and a larger concept .
categories are the beginning of concept formation. nancy minshew found that people with autism can easily sort objects into categories such as red or blue, but they have difficulty thinking up new categories for groups of common objects. if i put a variety of common things on a table such as staplers, pencils, books, an envelope, a clock, hats, golf balls, and a tennis racquet, and asked an individual with autism to pick out objects containing paper, they could do it. however, they often have difficulty when asked to make tip new categories. teachers should work on teaching flexibility of thinking by playing a game where the autistic individual is asked to make up new categories for the objects like objects containing metal, or objects used in sports. then the teacher should get the person to explain the reason for putting an object in a specific category .
the story then reveals that grace wants to play peter in her class' s production of peter pan, but the other kids tell her she cannot – peter' s neither african american nor a girl. model thinking out loud with a connection such as ,
this reminds me of the time i was told i couldn' t play soccer because i couldn' t run fast enough .
this helps draw the listener into the connection .
current uses of distributed manufacturing rely heavily on the diy “maker movement”, in which enthusiasts use their own local 3d printers and make products out of local materials. there are elements of open - source thinking here, in that consumers can customize products to their own needs and preferences. instead of being centrally driven, the creative design element can be more crowdsourced; products may take on an evolutionary character as more people get involved in visualizing and producing them .
since the birth of photography almost 180 years ago, the relationship between a photographer and a camera has remained mostly unchanged. you open a shutter and capture an image. though you might manipulate lenses, exposures, and chemicals–or, in recent years, bits–there was a nearly one - to - one relationship between what the lens saw and what you captured. but you’ve likely taken thousands, if not tens of thousands, of pictures in recent years that break that relationship without knowing it .
doing something and doing the right thing are also different things. the next explanation is that kodak mismanaged its investment in digital cameras, overshooting the market by trying to match performance of traditional film rather than embrace the simplicity of digital. that criticism perhaps held in early iterations of kodak’s digital cameras (the $ 20, 000 dcs - 100, for example), but kodak ultimately embraced simplicity, carving out a strong market position with technologies that made it easy to move pictures from cameras to computers .
2. practice regularly: every monday during the school year we post a photograph stripped of its caption and context, and ask students what they see going on in this picture. hundreds of students participate every week from classrooms across the country and around the world — from elementary through high school, and even adult education e. s. l. classes — sharing their observations. our partners at visual thinking strategies moderate the discussion and encourage students to look even more closely for more details .
irfan essa, a professor at the georgia institute of technology, heads the school’s interdisciplinary research center for machine learning. he says that an ever - stronger connection among those areas “has grown into more object - centric thinking. ” computational photography moves beyond just capturing pixels, he says, into capturing light, which allows it to extract the geometry of a scene. “if you know where the object is and what surface it’s on, you can do more with it, ” he says .
growing up, i learned to convert abstract ideas into pictures as a way to understand them. i visualized concepts such as peace or honesty with symbolic images. i thought of peace as a dove, an indian peace pipe, or tv or newsreel footage of the signing of a peace agreement. honesty was represented by an image of placing one' s hand on the bible in court. a news report describing a person returning a wallet with all the money in it provided a picture of honest behavior .
for those that might not have aced art class or are be timid to give visual note - taking a try (like me), kleon emphasizes the key is just to get over the hump of the blank page. begin in the middle of the page with the main subject. then, branch out adding sub - topics around the center. use colors to organize ideas. cut out pictures from magazines if you don’t want to draw. the main point is to break out of the traditional note - taking mold and try something new .
the low cost of smartphone - size lenses may change that. instead of using a single, large expensive lens, as on a dslr, performing computation on photos collected from many smaller lenses and integrating the results computationally could achieve high - quality results. this is the thinking behind the l16, cited by wetzstein as an example. it’s a camera made by a company simply called light, with 16 camera elements across three focal lengths. (the $ 1, 700 device isn’t shipping yet and its preorder allotment sold out. )
even today’s best supercomputers cannot rival the sophistication of the human brain. computers are linear, moving data back and forth between memory chips and a central processor over a high - speed backbone. the brain, on the other hand, is fully interconnected, with logic and memory intimately cross - linked at billions of times the density and diversity of that found in a modern computer. neuromorphic chips aim to process information in a fundamentally different way from traditional hardware, mimicking the brain’s architecture to deliver a huge increase in a computer’s thinking and responding power .
billionaire investor warren buffet famously said that he spends up to 80% of his day reading and thinking. reading books is one of the best ways to learn. but, quickly skimming through a text isn' t enough. to truly benefit from the books we read, we have to read carefully, take notes, and try to apply what we’re reading to other areas of our life. setting up a system for organizing and cataloguing what you read allows you to reflect back on the information later and get the most out of your library .
as these trends advance across the global stage, they are forcing mall operators to rethink how they conceive and operate their properties. this identity crisis is most intense in the u. s. , the country that pioneered malls and has the most malls per inhabitant. thanks to a continued economic slowdown and rapid advance of the digital revolution, the u. s. mall industry is retracting and facing high vacancy levels. websites such as urltoken collect pictures of weedy parking lots and barren food courts, and try to explain how once - thriving shopping centers began to spiral downward .
one of the most profound mysteries of autism has been the remarkable ability of most autistic people to excel at visual spatial skills while performing so poorly at verbal skills. when i was a child and a teenager, i thought everybody thought in pictures. i had no idea that my thought processes were different. in fact, i did not realize the full extent of the differences until very recently. at meetings and at work i started asking other people detailed questions about how they accessed information from their memories. from their answers i learned that my visualization skills far exceeded those of most other people .
before mark zuckerberg wrote a line of facebook’s code, kodak made a prescient purchase, acquiring a photo sharing site called ofoto in 2001. it was so close. imagine if kodak had truly embraced its historical tagline of “share memories, share life. ” perhaps it could have rebranded ofoto as kodak moments (instead of easyshare gallery), making it the pioneer of a new category called life networking where people could share pictures, personal updates, and links to news and information. maybe in 2010 it would have lured a young engineer from google named kevin systrom to create a mobile version of the site .
given that kodak’s core business was selling film, it is not hard to see why the last few decades proved challenging. cameras went digital and then disappeared into cellphones. people went from printing pictures to sharing them online. sure, people print nostalgic books and holiday cards, but that volume pales in comparison to kodak’s heyday. the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012, exited legacy businesses and sold off its patents before re - emerging as a sharply smaller company in 2013. once one of the most powerful companies in the world, today the company has a market capitalization of less than $ 1 billion .
music and math thinkers think in patterns. these people often excel at math, chess, and computer programming. some of these individuals have explained to me that they see patterns and relationships between patterns and numbers instead of photographic images. as children they may play music by ear and be interested in music. music and math minds often have careers in computer programming, chemistry, statistics, engineering, music, and physics. written language is not required for pattern thinking. the pre - literate incas used complex bundles of knotted cords to keep track of taxes, labor, and trading among a thousand people .
there is then a subcategory of jokes that can only be told to close friends. when i was a teenager i was called
tape recorder
because i used scripted lines. as i gained experience, my conversation became less scripted because i could combine new information in new ways. to help understand the autistic brain i recommend that teachers and parents should play with an internet search engine such as google for images. it will give people who are more verbal thinkers an understanding into how visual associative thinking works. people with music and math minds have a search engine that finds associations between patterns and numbers .
visual thinking has enabled me to build entire systems in my imagination. during my career i have designed all kinds of equipment, ranging from corrals for handling cattle on ranches to systems for handling cattle and hogs during veterinary procedures and slaughter. i have worked for many major livestock companies. in fact, one third of the cattle and hogs in the united states are handled in equipment i have designed. some of the people i' ve worked for don' t even know that their systems were designed by someone with autism. i value my ability to think visually, and i would never want to lose it .
we are now more used to thinking that the emotions are rational, partly because we now distinguish the cause of an emotion from its target. if one looks at what emotions are caused by an artwork, not all of these need target the artwork itself, but instead what is merely associated with it. so what the subjective approach centrally overlooks are questions to do with attention, relevance, and understanding. with those as controlling features we get a basis for normalizing the expected audience’s emotions in connection with the artwork, and so move away from purely personal judgments such as “well, it saddened me” to more universal assessments like “it was sad. ”
“i hardly know what to say about this remarkable book... it provides a way to understand the many kinds of sentience, human and animal, that adorn the earth. ” –elizabeth marshall thomas, author of the hidden life of dogs
there are innumerable astounding facets to this remarkable book... . displaying uncanny powers of observation... [ temple grandin ] charts the differences between her life and the lives of those who think in words .
– the philadelphia inquirer “a uniquely fascinating view not just of autism but of animal–and human–thinking and feeling, [ providing ] insights that can only be called wisdom. ” –deborah tannen, author of you just don’t understand
i hardly know what to say about this remarkable book... it provides a way to understand the many kinds of sentience, human and animal, that adorn the earth. ” –elizabeth marshall thomas, author of the hidden life of dogs
there are innumerable astounding facets to this remarkable book... . displaying uncanny powers of observation... [ temple grandin ] charts the differences between her life and the lives of those who think in words .
– the philadelphia inquirer “a uniquely fascinating view not just of autism but of animal–and human–thinking and feeling, [ providing ] insights that can only be called wisdom. ” –deborah tannen, author of you just don’t understand
i noticed two main benefits to using this system. first, annotating the text is incredibly quick. jotting down a page number and letter takes only a few seconds, meaning i’m back to reading in no time. second, when i go back to revisit the passages i' ve marked, i can read them in the context of the page. with other note - taking systems that pull passages out of text into a separate document, i occasionally find myself reading a quote and thinking, “what was that in reference to again? ” when i' m reading the quote within the actual page, i can read the paragraph before and after to get a more complete picture .
my thinking pattern always starts with specifics and works toward generalization in an associational and nonsequential way. as if i were attempting to figure out what the picture on a jigsaw puzzle is when only one third of the puzzle is completed, i am able to fill in the missing pieces by scanning my video library. chinese mathematicians who can make large calculations in their heads work the same way. at first they need an abacus, the chinese calculator, which consists of rows of beads on wires in a frame. they make calculations by moving the rows of beads. when a mathematician becomes really skilled, he simply visualizes the abacus in his imagination and no longer needs a real one. the beads move on a visualized video abacus in his brain .
if i let my mind wander, the video jumps in a kind of free association from fence construction to a particular welding shop where i' ve seen posts being cut and old john, the welder, making gates. if i continue thinking about old john welding a gate, the video image changes to a series of short scenes of building gates on several projects i' ve worked on. each video memory triggers another in this associative fashion, and my daydreams may wander far from the design problem. the next image may be of having a good time listening to john and the construction crew tell war stories, such as the time the backhoe dug into a nest of rattlesnakes and the machine was abandoned for two weeks because everybody was afraid to go near it .
every design problem i' ve ever solved started with my ability to visualize and see the world in pictures. i started designing things as a child, when i was always experimenting with new kinds of kites and model airplanes. in elementary school i made a helicopter out of a broken balsa - wood airplane. when i wound up the propeller, the helicopter flew straight up about a hundred feet. i also made bird - shaped paper kites, which i flew behind my bike. the kites were cut out from a single sheet of heavy drawing paper and flown with thread. i experimented with different ways of bending the wings to increase flying performance. bending the tips of the wings up made the kite fly higher. thirty years later, this same design started appearing on commercial aircraft .
i create new images all the time by taking many little parts of images i have in the video library in my imagination and piecing them together. i have video memories of every item i' ve ever worked with - - steel gates, fences, latches, concrete walls, and so forth. to create new designs, i retrieve bits and pieces from my memory and combine them into a new whole. my design ability keeps improving as i add more visual images to my library. i add video - like images from either actual experiences or translations of written information into pictures. i can visualize the operation of such things as squeeze chutes, truck loading ramps, and all different types of livestock equipment. the more i actually work with cattle and operate equipment, the stronger my visual memories become .
more knowledge makes me act more normal. many people have commented to me that i act much less autistic now than i did ten years ago. a person who attended one of my talks in 2005 wrote on my evaluation ,
i saw temple in 1996, it was fun to see the poise and presentation manner she has gained over the years .
my mind works just like an internet search engine that has been set to access only images. the more pictures i have stored in the internet inside my brain the more templates i have of how to act in a new situation. more and more information can be placed in more and more categories. the categories can be placed in trees of master categories with many subcategories. for example, there are jokes that make people laugh and jokes that do not work .
i credit my visualization abilities with helping me understand the animals i work with. early in my career i used a camera to help give me the animals' perspective as they walked through a chute for their veterinary treatment. i would kneel down and take pictures through the chute from the cow' s eye level. using the photos, i was able to figure out which things scared the cattle, such as shadows and bright spots of sunlight. back then i used black - and - white film, because twenty years ago scientists believed that cattle lacked color vision. today, research has shown that cattle can see colors, but the photos provided the unique advantage of seeing the world through a cow' s viewpoint. they helped me figure out why the animals refused to go in one chute but willingly walked through another .
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. charles hart, the author of
without reason
, a book about his autistic son and brother, sums up his son' s thinking in one sentence :
ted' s thought processes aren' t logical, they' re associational .
this explains' ~ ted' s statement
i' m not afraid of planes. that' s why they fly so high .
in his mind, planes fly high because he is not afraid of them; he combines two pieces of information, that planes fly high and that he is not afraid of heights .
visual thinkers, like me, think in photographically specific images. there are degrees of specificity of visual thinking. i can test run a machine in my head with full motion. interviews with nonautistic visual thinkers indicated that they can only visualize still images. these images may range in specificity from images of specific places to more vague conceptual images. learning algebra was impossible and a foreign language was difficult. highly specific visual thinkers should skip algebra and study more visual forms of math such as trigonometry or geometry. children who are visual thinkers will often be good at drawing, other arts, and building things with building toys such as lego' s. many children who are visual thinkers like maps, flags, and photographs. visual thinkers are well suited to jobs in drafting, graphic design, training animals, auto mechanics, jewelry making, construction, and factory automation .
unlike those of most people, my thoughts move from video like, specific images to generalization and concepts. for example, my concept of dogs is inextricably linked to every dog i' ve ever known. it' s as if i have a card catalog of dogs i have seen, complete with pictures, which continually grows as i add more examples to my video library. if i think about great danes, the first memory that pops into my head is dansk, the great dane owned by the headmaster at my high school. the next great dane i visualize is helga, who was dansk' s replacement. the next is my aunt' s dog in arizona, and my final image comes from an advertisement for fitwell seat covers that featured that kind of dog. my memories usually appear in my imagination in strict chronological order, and the images i visualize are always specific. there is no generic, generalized great dane .
anna produced an rsa video before. in a eustory seminar in ronda, spain, last year, she produced a video that dealt with stereotypes. her group wanted to show how stereotypes had been used in history. since they started in the stone age, there was quite a long stretch of history left to be analysed. “after we had chosen the events we wanted to include in the animation, there was the task of choosing what things we wanted to focus on”, anna says. “people tend to know all kinds of details about things they are interested in, but not all can be said in a short animation – neither is it necessary or wise to include everything. therefore, we had to think which pieces of information were needed in order to make our point and which details were simply unnecessary. the manuscript of the pictures also has to be done with care so that the voice and the drawings complement each other instead of confusing the viewer. “
my son is autistic and i have a neurological / autonomic nervous system disorder that helps me empathize with persons who have autism. i, too ,
think in pictures
and find some of myself in this book, as well as my gaining a better understanding of how my little boy likely views the world. who better than dr. temple grandin, phd who happens to be autistic, to give insight into the world from the perspective of one who had autism? dr. grandin is an amazing person who has shown what one can achieve if one does not accept
you can' t
for an answer, no matter your circumstances. she and her mother have inspired me to fight for my son, even when
experts
say he has reached his peak or he will never be able to do something. i have learned that sometimes
no
is not the answer. if i had accepted that my son would never do certain things, he wouldn' t be speaking now. most grateful for this and all of dr. grandin' s books .
many people are totally baffled by autistic symbols, but to an autistic person they may provide the only tangible reality or understanding of the world. for example ,
french toast
may mean happy if the child was happy while eating it. when the child visualizes a piece of french toast, he becomes happy. a visual image or word becomes associated with an experience. clara park, jessy' s mother, described her daughter' s fascination with objects such as electric blanket controls and heaters. she had no idea why the objects were so important to jessy, though she did observe that jessy was happiest, and her voice was no longer a monotone, when she was thinking about her special things. jessy was able to talk, but she was unable to tell people why her special things were important. perhaps she associated electric blanket controls and heaters with warmth and security. the word
cricket
made her happy, and
partly heard song
meant
i don' t know .
the autistic mind works via these visual associations. at some point in jessy' s life, a partly heard song was associated with not knowing .
urltoken no longer supports internet explorer 9 or earlier. please upgrade your browser .
in a well - publicized gambit to promote their pay - per - view broadcast on showtime this friday, the rolling stones broadcast 20 minutes of live audio and video from a performance at the cotton bowl in dallas on friday last week on the internet, becoming the first major rock band to do so on that network of millions of computers. but their moment in the limelight was tarnished by a little - known band called severe tire damage. knowing that the channel carrying the stones was open to anyone, and wanting to take advantage of the worldwide audience the stones would attract, the group broadcast an impromptu performance from the xerox parc offices in palo alto, calif. , directly before and after the stones concert .
we didn' t want to stamp on the stones broadcast, but we did want to play before an appreciative audience ,
said mark weiser, who plays drums in severe tire damage and works at xerox parc, the company that helped bring about the internet service known as the multicast backbone, or m - bone, which makes audiovisual broadcasting possible. the m - bone, however, is not quite ready to replace television. the stones show, for example, had low - quality sound and images and could be received by few computers .
though the rolling stones claimed to be performing the first major concert live on the internet in their press releases, they weren' t the first band ever. at least three other groups beat them. a seattle rock group called sky cries mary claimed that distinction when it sent a live performance over the m - bone two weeks ago, although a little - known band called deth specula was on the m - bone in august, and severe tire damage performed an hour - and - a - half show in june 1993 .
the internet has become the biggest promotional tool for the music industry since the invention of the press release. nearly every major record label and many independent ones have staked out space on line, where they supply fans with information (and dispel rumors) about bands and offer pop musicians for live chat sessions. with only a fraction of the world' s record buyers plugged into the internet, however, what can be more valuable for a band is the publicity that comes with breaking new ground .
aerosmith received national press coverage in july when it claimed to have created the first single to be available exclusively on line. but a service called the internet underground music archive had already made some 75 songs available only on the internet .
on - line music services are sometimes made available before the technology is perfected. many consider internet record stores for computer home - shoppers to be the next step in the music industry' s evolution. with this in mind, a store in denver called locals music made its jukenet service available for consumers on the internet two weeks ago. the problem: it has received only six orders because it still has a small catalogue and has several technical bugs to work out .
in the case of sky cries mary, the band had to scramble to perform on the internet .
we had been planning to do the multicast for a long time ,
said nick turner, the band' s manager .
but when i heard the rolling stones were going to do it, we arranged to do it in three days so we could beat the stones .
taking bold new steps in technology can help older musicians like the rolling stones prove their relevance in the 90' s. but these musicians are often less likely to take risks and can take months or even years to be persuaded .
olivier pfeiffer, mr. fitch' s partner, said :
the stones didn' t want to miss the boat and have pearl jam or aerosmith do it next year. and then there' s the money side of it, to make them see it as a kind of promotion for the pay - per - view .
from the new york times. you may opt - out at any time .
you agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for the new york times' s products and services .
it' s a research and development project for us ,
george paolini, a spokesman for sun, said .
we want to show what the technology is capable of. i think it will be a wake - up call for the corporations to know that this technology is out there.
thinking pictures is an american multinational corporation specializing in software , media , and consulting . it was founded in 1993 by stephan fitch and olivier pfeiffer . thinking pictures has introduced a number of innovations in the fields of internet technology , interactivity , and digital rights management . 
thinking pictures is an american multinational corporation specializing in software, media, and consulting. it was founded in 1993 by stephan fitch and olivier pfeiffer. thinking pictures has introduced a number of innovations in the fields of internet technology, interactivity, and digital rights management.
thinking pictures is an american multinational corporation specializing in software, media, and consulting. it was founded in 1993 by stephan fitch and olivier pfeiffer. thinking pictures has introduced a number of innovations in the fields of internet technology, interactivity, and digital rights management.