This is very easy when dealing with concrete concepts and physical things. More abstract concepts are difficult, and trigger more unusual and creative associations.  Sometimes it works well, as described by Dr. Grandin:

"Growing up, I learned to convert abstract ideas into pictures as a way to understand them. I visualized concepts such as peace or honesty with symbolic images. I thought of peace as a dove, an Indian peace pipe, or TV or newsreel footage of the signing of a peace agreement. Honesty was represented by an image of placing one's hand on the Bible in court. A news report describing a person returning a wallet with all the money in it provided a picture of honest behavior"

Other times, it doesn't work as well. As a child, when conceptualizing the idea of "dead,"  I adopted the common picture used in much of the media to represent the concept of death: a picture of the soles of a person's bare feet, with a toe tag (like the cover of Mary Roach's recent bestseller "Stiff", or these pictures) .   Unfortunately, not knowing the context of what was going on in the picture, my childish mind formed a very simple association: bare feet = dead.

Over time, this association developed into a near-phobia of feet.   Seeing bare feet triggered this old association, and a deep sense of unease.  This made social events, such as pool parties and backyard barbeques, very uncomfortable.   The urge to stare at the objects of my discomfort was strong, yet I knew it was rude to do so. So I did my best to suppress the urge, knowing that the whole thing generally made me seem weird.

When I became conscious of the association and placed it within its proper context the feeling began to lose its power. In the interim, I can only image the social opportunities that were lost.  However, this experience helps me to understand how some autistic children develop associations that make them scream in terror of what, to others, appears to be completely benign.

Another area in which the intersection of associative and visual thought contributes to my social issues is in the area of names. As I mentioned, when I hear words, they are translated into pictures.  In the case of nouns, the picture is usually, but not always, a representation of the object described. 

Verbs tend to generate a picture representing that activity. Adjectives and adverbs are little more difficult to translate, and tend to generate more novel associations. Once again, very similar to what Temple Grandin describes: "The word 'jumping' triggers a memory of jumping hurdles at the mock Olympics held at my elementary school. Adverbs often trigger inappropriate images -- 'quickly' reminds me of Nestle's Quik -- unless they are paired with a verb, which modifies my visual image."

This dynamic, when applied to names, can have unexpected results.  Names like "Mary," or "Michael," are what I call "iconic." They have no other associations, other than as names.  I like these names.   When I hear these names, my brain will generate pictures of the people that I know that share that name.  However, if a person's name happens to be, or sounds like, a word in common use, then strange things happen. 

Rather than bringing to mind a person, names like "Karen" and "Michelle" evoke pictures of things (a carrot, and a seashell, respectively). Names that sound like an adjective, or a noun that can be anthropomorphized, generate combined pictures.   So, the name "Harry" and its sound-alike "hairy" combine to form a picture of a hair-covered person, like bigfoot, or "Cousin Itt."  The nickname "Shelly" makes me envision a person covered with shells, as if  attacked, en masse, by sea life.  These associations are distracting, but not as bad as some. In grade school, I had a teacher named "Mr. Kenis"...I'll leave that one to your imagination...

When socializing is already a challenge, and you need all the focus you can muster - how do you keep your attention "on task" when you are involuntarily bombarded with bizarre images such as these?  How do you explain to someone, without insulting them, that you're having trouble focusing on the conversation because their name makes you envision them as a gorilla-man? As an adult, I now know that you don't.  You just deal as well and as subtly as you can, with the challenges posed by your individual oddities of thought.  

As a child, I was not so wise. My Aspergian tendency to blurt these things lost me friends.  Like when I told a friend that her arm "looked dead,"  because the way she held it triggered another of my associations with the concept of  "dead."   Or when I told another friend, that her tendency to bob her head back and forth made me think of the sound, "Groot, groot."  I didn't expect these things to hurt their feelings.  I now realize they surely did.

I still can't explain where many of my associations came from, but I do know they can add to the distance between me and others. So, while associative thought can be beneficial for creativity, at times, it's not all it's cracked up to be.  It generates its share of problems, too.