Visualization

All my thinking is visual. When I think about abstract concepts such as getting along with people I use visual images such as the sliding glass door. Relationships must be approached carefully otherwise the sliding door could be shattered. Visualization to describe abstract concepts is also described by Park and Youderian (1974). As a young child I had visualizations to help me understand the Lord’s Prayer. The “power and the glory” were high-tension electric towers and a blazing rainbow sun. The word “trespass” was visualized as a “No Trespassing” sign on the neighbor’s tree. Some parts of the prayer were simply incomprehensible. The only non-visual thoughts I have are of music. Today I no longer use sliding doors to understand personal relationships, but I still have to relate a particular relationship with something I have read – for example, the fight between Jane and Joe was like the U.S. and Canada squabbling over the trade agreement. Almost all my memories relate to visual images of specific events. If somebody says the word “cat,” my images are of individual cats I have known or read about. I do not think about a generalized cat.

My career as a designer of livestock facilities maximizes my talent areas and minimizes my deficits. I still have problems handling long strings of verbal information. If directions from a gas station contain more than three steps, I have to write them down. Statistics are extremely difficult because I am unable to hold one piece of information in my mind while I do the next step. Algebra is almost impossible, because I can’t make a visual image and I mix up steps in the sequence. To learn statistics I had to sit down with a tutor and write down the directions for doing each test. Every time I do a t-test or a chi-square, I have to use the notes. I have no problem understanding the principles of statistics, because I can see the normal or skewed distributions in my head. The problem is I cannot remember the sequence for doing the calculations. I can put a regression line on a graph full of dots visually. The first time I tried it, I was off only a few degrees. I also have many dyslexic traits, such as reversing numbers and mixing up similar-sounding words such as “over” and “other.” Right and left are also mixed up.

Visual thinking is an asset for an equipment designer. I am able to “see” how all parts of a project will fit together and see potential problems. It never ceases to amaze me how architects and engineers can make so many stupid mistakes in buildings. The disastrous accident where the catwalks at the Hyatt Regency fell and killed 100 people was caused by visualization errors. All the calculations were correct, but the architect’s original design was impossible to build. Further visualization errors made during construction resulted in doubling the load on poorly designed fasteners. Academic requirements probably keep many visual thinkers out of these professions. Designing a piece of equipment with a sequential mind may be just as difficult for an engineer as statistics equations are for me. The sequential thinker can’t see the whole. I have observed many incidents in industry where a brilliant maintenance man with a high school education designs a piece of equipment after all the Ph.D. engineers have failed. He may be an unrecognized visual thinker. There may be two basic kinds of thinking, visual and sequential. Farah (1989) concluded that “thinking in images is distinct from thinking in language.” I have also had the opportunity to interview brilliant people who have very little visual thought. One professor told me that facts just come out of his mind instantly. To retrieve facts, I have to read them off a visualized page of a book or “play a video” of some previous event.

There is however, one area of visualization I am poor in. I often fail to recognize faces until I have known a person for a long time. This sometimes causes social problems, because I sometimes don’t respond to an acquaintance because I fail to recognize them. Einstein was a visual thinker who failed his high school language requirement and relied on visual methods of study ((Holton, 1971-1972). The theory of relativity was based on visual imagery of moving boxcars and riding on light beams. At an autism meeting I had the opportunity to visit some of Einstein’s relatives. His family history has a high incidence of autism, dyslexia, food allergies, giftedness, and musical talent. Einstein himself had many autistic traits. An astute reader can find them in Einstein and Einstein (1987) and Lepscky (1982).

In my own family history, my grandfather on my mother’s side was co-inventor of the automatic pilot for airplanes, and on my father’s side my great-grandfather was a maverick who started the largest corporate wheat farm in the world. My two sisters and one brother are all visual thinkers. One sister is dyslexic and is brilliant in the art of decorating houses. My brother can build anything but had problems with calculus when he tried to major in engineering. He is now a very successful banker and did well in all other subjects in college. My youngest sister is a sculptress and did well in school. My mother and grandparents on the mother’s side were all good at higher math, and many people on my mother’s side were well-known for intellect.

Drawing elaborate drawings of steel and concrete livestock stockyards is easy (Figure 6-3). I am able to visualize a motion picture of the finished facility in my imagination. However, drawing realistic human faces is very difficult. Figure 6-4 illustrates a buffalo-handling facility I designed. Since it was a government low-bid contract, every piece of steel had to be visualized and drawn on 26 sheets of detailed drawings. I am very proud of this job because I was able to accurately visualize everything prior to construction except for one little ladder. When I was a child, my parents and teachers encouraged my artistic talent. It is important to nurture talents.

Discussions with other high-functioning autistics have revealed visual methods of thinking on tasks that are often considered non-visual. A brilliant autistic computer programmer told me that he visualized the program tree in his mind and then just filled in the code on each branch. A gifted autistic composer told me that he made “sound pictures.”

I was good at building things, but when I first started working with drawings it took time to learn how the lines on a drawing related to the picture in my imagination. When I built a house for my aunt and uncle, I had difficulty learning the relationship between symbolic markings on the drawings and the actual construction. The house was built before I learned drafting. Now I can instantly translate a drawing into a mental image of a finished structure. While agonizing over the house plans, I was able to pull up pictures out of my memory of a house addition that was built when I was eight. Mental images from my childhood memory helped me install windows, light switches, and plumbing. I replayed the “videos” in my imagination.