At 01:28 AM 8/15/2002 -0500, Kat wrote: >Two other examples of which I can produce - when I'm driving, I'm processing >what's going on around me in a purely spatial sense, noting the relative >speeds of as many vehicles as possible in my general vicinity, changes in >their direction, etc. In this case there almost isn't an internal >representation, just external sensory input to which I respond in such a >manner that my vehicle doesn't end up in a space that's already occupied or >will imminently be occupied by someone else. > >The second is in a martial art, aikido in my case. Processing all of the >factors that make up a person's stability and balance, and pinpointing the >vector(s) along which sufficient applied force will change that balance in a >desired manner, is entirely non-lingual for me. > >Hope that helps. What you are talking about is exactly the same thing happens to me under those circumstances, but I don't call it thinking spatially, I am just aware that my thinking, under those conditions, is not happening in English, but in terms appropriate to the skills being used. You call it thinking spatially, I call it thinking in the language of those skills. That it is, at some level in my mind, I am still manipulating a set of symbols. Facility, or it's lack, with the language of those skills is one of the main things that limits our abilities. Mmm...is this making sense?