I used to think in images when I was really little (as well as a vocal inner monologue.) Certain words would elicit pictures in my head, sometimes of the thing itself, sometimes metaphorically as something else, or sometimes by picturing something that rhymed with or had a similar sound to the word it represented.
The images faded away as I learned to read, being replaced with images of written words. For a while it was like there were subtitles in my head whenever people talked.
Then, by about my teenage years, even the written words started to fade and my thinking became primarily “inner monologue.” I can remember a handful of the images I used to picture, but most of them have faded from my memory entirely. It makes me wonder if the images were like some kind of mental scaffolding to help me make sense of language when I was young, that my brain didn’t need anymore as it started to mature and understand the world better.
I think I had that too. I remember it caused some kind of strange associations, like books were inherently green because when i thought about them I saw a green book. Then I had like a super strong internal monologue for a while but it got less intense and now everything’s more fuzzy
I used to think in images when I was really little (as well as a vocal inner monologue.) Certain words would elicit pictures in my head, sometimes of the thing itself, sometimes metaphorically as something else, or sometimes by picturing something that rhymed with or had a similar sound to the word it represented.
The images faded away as I learned to read, being replaced with images of written words. For a while it was like there were subtitles in my head whenever people talked.
Then, by about my teenage years, even the written words started to fade and my thinking became primarily “inner monologue.” I can remember a handful of the images I used to picture, but most of them have faded from my memory entirely. It makes me wonder if the images were like some kind of mental scaffolding to help me make sense of language when I was young, that my brain didn’t need anymore as it started to mature and understand the world better.
I think I had that too. I remember it caused some kind of strange associations, like books were inherently green because when i thought about them I saw a green book. Then I had like a super strong internal monologue for a while but it got less intense and now everything’s more fuzzy