Thinking in pictures in everyday life situations among autistic adults

Clara Bled (1) , Quentin Guillon (1) , Isabelle Soulieres (2) , Lucie Bouvet (1)

1 CERPPS - Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches en Psychopathologie et Psychologie de la Santé
2 UQAM - Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal

Autistic individuals are often described as thinking in pictures. The aim of this study was to investigate the phenomenological characteristics of mental representations and inner experiences of autistic individuals. 39 autistic individuals and 80 control adults answered an online questionnaire. Autistic participants reported a more frequent use of visual mental representations than controls for different types of everyday situations. Moreover, autistic individuals defined their visual mental representations as more detailed than control participants. Furthermore, when describing their inner experiences, autistic participants used perceptive visual themes whereas control participants relied more on the description of events and memories. Our results support the hypothesis that some autistic individuals indeed "think in pictures". We discuss the impact of such a visual way of thinking in daily life.

Keywords: autism; visual mental representations; inner experiences; phenomenology; thinking in pictures

Domains: Psychology; Psychiatrics and mental health

Clara Bled, Quentin Guillon, Isabelle Soulieres, Lucie Bouvet. Thinking in pictures in everyday life situations among autistic adults. 2020. ⟨hal-03078449⟩