Here's the best way I can explain how I "think" because it is mostly passive, but sometimes, I am actively thinking.

If I'm asked a hard question, like what city I'd most like to visit, I kind of have to look up cities and cross reference them with ones I've noted that I want to visit, or have visited and liked enough to go back, then actually read the list, and figure out which one, but each time I read a city, I might have a, this would be great in summer or winter or they have a cool festival in June. Which leads to additional question I have to ask. Which I think about roughly the same speed I speak, maybe a word or two faster.

My wife is the complete opposite. She can put together a sentence in an instant in "parallel" so when she says it, she though it already, but not as a sentence.

Human brains all work so crazily weird, and we are only just now started to realize all the nuances.