Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions
By Temple Grandin
Riverhead Books, 2022
America’s employers are undervaluing vast numbers of talented workers. Schools are not developing the potential of millions of students. Parents are overlooking the remarkable talents of atypical children.
These are the claims made by Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and well-known advocate for people with autism. Grandin, an autistic woman made famous in the biographical film Temple Grandin (2010), argues that Americans’ cultural values have led us to design schools and businesses that screen out “visual thinkers.”
“Imagine if we catered to visual thinkers the way we cater to verbal thinkers, [that is] if we didn’t assume that we all perceived and processed information the same way, primarily through language," she writes. "If we want to make good on our promises of giving our kids a better life—if we want to engineer a safer, more advanced society that leads in manufacturing, technology, and finding solutions to the challenges of a rapidly changing and complex world—we need to make room for our visual thinkers and their remarkable gifts” (p. 277).
Visual thinkers “see images in their mind’s eye,” which allows them to find associations and connections in the physical world. They might do well with geometry, because it is the math of shapes, but also struggle with algebra, which deals with abstract concepts. Visual thinkers like Grandin tend to do well as graphic designers, architects, inventors, and skilled tradespeople. They can see how to design mechanical devices and infrastructure systems. They can creatively envision ways to restore an old house, solve manufacturing problems, and fix cars in their garages. Some struggle with autism, dyslexia, or other “learning disabilities” that make it hard for them to do well in verbally oriented schools.
By contrast, a verbal thinker, says Grandin, is someone who sees the world in sequential and linear ways. They “talk early and often.” They are writers, teachers, lawyers, politicians, and accountants. They explain life as if everything should conform to a logical, sequential narrative. They usually “have no idea what to do with pictures and diagrams” (p. 37).
Grandin, an extreme visual thinker, “sees the world in photorealistic images,” not in words. Autism makes it difficult for her to write books (she gets help from editors), but autism is also her superpower. Early in her career, the condition enabled her to revolutionize the ways that cattle are housed, transported, and processed. She could see what the cows saw—what made them anxious—and then redesign ranching systems that were more humane.
The problem for visual thinkers, she says, is that nearly all schools and many jobs cater to verbal thinkers.
“The fact is, we live in a talky culture,” Grandin says. “Verbal thinkers dominate the national conversation in religion, media, publishing, and education. Words fill the airwaves and the internet, with preachers, pundits, and politicians taking up most of the real estate…. The dominant culture favors verbal people; theirs is a language-filled world” (p. 13).
Visual Thinking, in our view, is especially important for parents. They are the first to see the natural talents of children. If parents don’t understand the capacities of visual-thinking children, they might fail to help their kids develop according to their strengths. Grandin’s book offers parents numerous insights—including from her own upbringing as an autistic child—into how to recognize and help kids who are visual thinkers.
“I have observed many children held back by a label,” she says. “I see it all the time: the child is pathologized and never given an opportunity to explore the world of potential gifts” (p. 79).
A disability label causes people to see the person in terms of limitations rather than strengths. Grandin describes how people with dyslexia, for example, have often been sidelined by a disability label when in fact they are remarkable visual thinkers who simply need opportunities to master non-verbal skills.
Underlying Grandin’s excellent book is her sincere love for people who are often marginalized because they don’t fit perfectly in the world’s boxes. She argues that parents, teachers, universities, employers need to expand our small boxes and make room for people whose brains work differently. In other words, we need to recognize that we need each other.
Grandin practices what she preaches. Years ago, she learned that she had a lot to share in lectures, academic journal articles, and books. But, seeing the world in patterns and pictures, she struggled to get her ideas on paper. So, what did she do? She asked for help! Her books are the product of beautiful collaboration between Grandin and her editors.
Quote to Ponder
“During the past decade, the British public had repeatedly been informed of scientific studies relating lung cancer to smoking and to general pollution of the atmosphere. None of them, however, had been thought sufficiently conclusive to move the government to initiate measures seriously calculated to discourage smoking…. As a result of the official policy of laissez-faire, local authorities spent only £3624 ($10,147) on educational material relating to smoking in the years 1956 to 1960. Over the same period the tobacco industry spent £38 million ($106.4 million) in advertising tobacco.” — Alfred Byrne, “Smoking and Health,” The Atlantic Monthly, July 1962