I have limited hearing on one side and lost it fairly late (in my teens). So I do think in a verbal language, however I also picture/visualize things and not always speak to myself in words. This has a weird consequence that, if I am unexpectedly asked to explain the thought process sometime, I have to struggle for words. One perennial but minor difficulty is telling time, as sense of time is mostly visual to me, I do not tell myself the time. But I do not know if this idiosyncrasy is deafness related or not.
You don't have to be deaf to think in pictures. My oldest son thinks in pictures. He also has no sense of time and some other issues. I don't recall if these two things are specifically related. Temple Grandin thinks in pictures and wrote a book with basically that title ("Thinking in Pictures"). My son has to translate spoken words he hears into pictures to understand them and then translate pictures in his head into spoken words. This need for translation means he sometimes has the kinds of misunderstandings with people that you typically see from someone who speaks English as a second language. (And, in fact, he was a late talker -- and was basically pushed into it by mom enrolling him in preschool.)
These days, there is a fair amount of literature on things like lack of time sense and thinking in pictures. Here is what my son once said about living with no sense of time:
Comments
There has been some very nice discussion on deafness here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2111278 I picked up helpful tips from there.
I have limited hearing on one side and lost it fairly late (in my teens). So I do think in a verbal language, however I also picture/visualize things and not always speak to myself in words. This has a weird consequence that, if I am unexpectedly asked to explain the thought process sometime, I have to struggle for words. One perennial but minor difficulty is telling time, as sense of time is mostly visual to me, I do not tell myself the time. But I do not know if this idiosyncrasy is deafness related or not.
You don't have to be deaf to think in pictures. My oldest son thinks in pictures. He also has no sense of time and some other issues. I don't recall if these two things are specifically related. Temple Grandin thinks in pictures and wrote a book with basically that title ("Thinking in Pictures"). My son has to translate spoken words he hears into pictures to understand them and then translate pictures in his head into spoken words. This need for translation means he sometimes has the kinds of misunderstandings with people that you typically see from someone who speaks English as a second language. (And, in fact, he was a late talker -- and was basically pushed into it by mom enrolling him in preschool.)
These days, there is a fair amount of literature on things like lack of time sense and thinking in pictures. Here is what my son once said about living with no sense of time:
http://www.kidslikemine.com/b8timeblind.shtml