Bilingual people: What language do you *think* in??

[hatmoza]

Troll_Whisperer said:

hatmoza said:
Frankly, I think the people who are saying they think purely without words are full of shit. But that's just me.

The example of food Trollwhisperer provided above is true, and I'm sure there are many other instances of thinking with "feelings". But don't tell me, someone who speaks several languages doesn't have words going through their minds when they're working through their thoughts. That's absurd.

In my personal opinion, that would only be true if you were living by yourself on an island your whole life. If anything, the formation of words and languages helped develop cognitive abilities throughout history. Ever heard of constructivism in education? The idea of constructivism is pretty big in schools these days and it's basically the concept of how we build on past knowledge to increase our learning skills ... mainly thinking.

You're right, it's definitely just you.

Don't believe me, but it's 100% true. I really only think with words when I read or write those words. Why would I and several other people be lying?

I can easily find a few discussions online about this and you'll find many people think in concepts:

http://intjforum.com/showthread.php?t=24280

http://www.healthboards.com/boards/showthread.php?t=844786

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8gu1p/do_you_think_in_words/

http://able2know.org/topic/175479-1

 

Edit: Actually, I'm gonna ask you: what do you tell yourself? In what situations do you think in words? Can you give me examples? I'm curious about this.

Notice how I said "purely without words." I'm very familiar with different learning styles and how they can be associated with thinking. I'm well aware that some people lean towards being visual learners/thinkers. However, my argument (and again this is a personal opinion) is that as long as you know a language, you will have a stream of words going through your head at any given time.

I believe that you are  predominantly a visual/abstract thinker. But I absolutely refuse to believe that that completely substitutes words.