When I have to think about something hard I try to do it without words in my mind. I believe this makes it easier for the brain to subconsciously work on those, without having to "translate" it first.
However I still use "pictures" in my mind. I wonder if it's possible to actively think about something without using things linked to our physical senses (hearing, seeing, touch,..).
Sounds like intuition based on experience, where a new situation is compared against your experience, with the brain filling in the gaps.
>When I have to think about something hard I try to do it without words in my mind.
Hard in the sense of difficult to solve and unfamiliar, or in the sense of the level of focus or concentration?
For example, I know a heavily right-brained person, and when he reads a book, instead of the intuitive sequential pattern (even page-odd page-even-odd-even-odd) he may read it in a zig-zag (even-even-odd-odd-even-even).
The analogy is synchronous processing (left brain) vs multithreaded (right brain).
On the other hand, right-brained people seem to have problems doing 'obvious' things like finishing chores in order, telling left from right or positioning something on a blank page.
But can it really be simultaneous (at the same time)? I mean there's still a "micro sequence" involved. it seems that the real skill here is context switching, pattern recognition and applying patterns to different contexts.