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People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

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Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#71

Post by ajkjk »

One question I like to ask in conversations about aphantasia: when you do relatively complex arithmetic in your head (for instance, compute 47 * 68 real quick), do you visually perform the gradeschool multiplication algorithm? Or something else?

I've surveyed a lot of people on this - probably forty or so in person, plus another 100 or so in a poll on reddit once - and there's a pretty clear trend: people who perform the visual algorithm tend to be 'not math people', and are less accurate and less confident in their answer, or not even willing to try.

I'm aphantasiac and I can do a calculation like that fairly quickly and accurately, without any special practice. I basically use my verbal memory to store and recall cached computations instead of any visualization. My theory is that the visual brain is not really designed for storing precise information so much as the gestalt of an image, so it does less well on precise numeric details.

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#72

Post by abathur »

JshWright wrote: post #16
silveroriole wrote: post #9

Makes sense. I’d like to see an experiment done with reading comprehension as well as real memories. When I read something, I hear and see it. I’m reading it out loud in my mind and I either have instant visual associations with certain words (e.g. when I read the word aphantasia I think of the hippo from Fantasia, when I see the word tea I instantly ‘see’ a teacup) or I visualise the scene (like where they have the…

I do not see/hear/smell/taste anything with my "mind". Speaking from my own personal experience, my reading comprehension doesn't seem to suffer at all, and the speed at which I read seems to be much faster than average (for instance, if my wife and I are reading the same page of text, I'm done long before she is).

I don't think it's so much comprehension that suffers. I comprehend, but...

I have no strong concept of the sensory world of the text. I have a very, very vague impression of what a character looks like. I'm prone to forget explicit features that the author bothered describing because there's no durable image to factor them into.

I notice some people have strong reactions to casting calls in movie adaptations of novels. This objection is foreign to me; I had no strong image for it to conflict with.

I am more likely to find a turn of phrase beautiful for the words and sounds, than to have any sense that the thing it describes is beautiful.

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#73

Post by falsaberN1 »

xthestreams wrote: post #59
falsaberN1 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. Dreams always were a very interesting topic to me, so I like to hear stuff like this. For me that's usually kinda how it goes. My dreams are usually rather mundane, borderline formulaic, although at times I can recognize places from my past that are altered (a little or a lot), or it's cleaner/with different materials or stuff like that. A thing that amuses me and seems to be uncommon, at least fr…

I guess you are well aware of the concept of lucid dreaming?

Yes, it seems pretty close to what I get by default, although I don't particularly pursue it (I hear it makes for lower quality sleep, and being narcoleptic I can't afford any lower quality, heh).

I do have a certain degree of autonomy while in the dreams. I usually do what I want to do and go where I want to go, even if the results aren't exactly logical at times. I particularly like to admire certain architectural elements that are slightly off or non-euclidean. Most of the weirdness comes from stuff that is slightly off, houses with too many rooms, places with too many floors or unusual layouts or lighting, or stuff like a 1:1 recreation of a real street but it leads to different or entirely new places. My brain seems to put a lot of emphasis in stuff like structure and lighting. I wonder what that says about me as a person.

Not gonna lie, I enjoy the stuff a lot. Only problem is that it's too random and can range from incredible to ridiculously mundane and normal, so I don't quite take dream exploring as a thing. If the opportunity presents itself I'll milk it for all it's worth though, both from enjoying the dream and from whatever creative material I can take for myself.

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#74

Post by gretch »

ajkjk wrote: post #71

One question I like to ask in conversations about aphantasia: when you do relatively complex arithmetic in your head (for instance, compute 47 * 68 real quick), do you visually perform the gradeschool multiplication algorithm? Or something else? I've surveyed a lot of people on this - probably forty or so in person, plus another 100 or so in a poll on reddit once - and there's a pretty clear trend: people who perform…

FOIL it :)

40 * 60 + 40 * 8 + 60 * 7 + 7 * 8

Basically a bunch of single digit multiplies followed by stacking zeroes

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#75

Post by falsaberN1 »

jpindar wrote: post #69
falsaberN1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never heard of aphantasia before but having read a bit about it, doesn't seem to be the same thing. When I "see" things mentally it's not like it "takes over" my visual input, nor it has weight in the real world. The image seems to be "nowhere", like when dreaming. Closing my eyes doesn't really make the image clearer by itself, it's more like there's no visual input to interrupt my visualization and that's what ma…

It's as if the image from your memory/imagination appears on a different monitor than the signal from your eyes.

Yeah, it's like some sort of internal framebuffer. I'd kinda equate it to some sort of SVG-like format where you define a series of objects and your mind "displays" it as best as it can, with more processing on whatever you are focusing currently.

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#76

Post by oh_sigh »

gretch wrote: post #74
ajkjk wrote: post #71

One question I like to ask in conversations about aphantasia: when you do relatively complex arithmetic in your head (for instance, compute 47 * 68 real quick), do you visually perform the gradeschool multiplication algorithm? Or something else? I've surveyed a lot of people on this - probably forty or so in person, plus another 100 or so in a poll on reddit once - and there's a pretty clear trend: people who perform…

FOIL it :) 40 * 60 + 40 * 8 + 60 * 7 + 7 * 8 Basically a bunch of single digit multiplies followed by stacking zeroes

Or 47x68= (50-3)x(70-2)=50x70 - 50x2 - 3x70 + 3x2

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#77

Post by jjk166 »

cortic wrote: post #61
jjk166 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at your computer screen. Really take it in. Where is the banner? Where is the exit button? What is the color of your underwear? Perhaps you will remember what color underwear you put on this morning, perhaps you will check, but it would be pretty weird if your underwear's color was constantly on your mind. Nevertheless, I doubt you would argue that your underwear did not have color while you weren't thinking of…

I think you are cheating a bit, first the instruction was to picture a pirate, not a bit of one. Second, the exercises purpose is to demonstrate that missing information in an image is obvious whereas missing information in a mental image is not. And the point is that picturing something to many feels the same as looking at a picture, but in actual fact that feeling is an illusion. >my perception of my visual thought…

Okay, here's an experiment less subject to philosophical interpretation:

Picture Jack Sparrow (assuming you feel like you have a good memory of pirates of the carribean). In particular, picture his sparrow tatoo. Write down what color it is. Then look online at an image of it [0]. Is the color the one you wrote down that you pictured? Repeat this again for any image you feel like you remember. If your mind were simply making you think that you were picturing things correctly, what you write down should rarely match reality. On the other hand, if you are actually storing visual information, your memory should pretty regularly be correct. Not everyone actually does store data visually, it really could go either way.

With regards to your comment, the instruction was to picture a pirate, not a pirate's shirt. If you look at a photograph of someone, do you become instantly aware of all information contained within it with perfect detail? If so you must be great at where's waldo. For the rest of us, we perceive a gross overview at first and to identify any details we must focus in. But the fact that we don't know where waldo is before we look for him does not mean our brains are retroactively placing him into the picture.

[0] http://www.jacksparrowcostuming.com/tatoo.htm

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#78

Post by akersten »

ajkjk wrote: post #71

One question I like to ask in conversations about aphantasia: when you do relatively complex arithmetic in your head (for instance, compute 47 * 68 real quick), do you visually perform the gradeschool multiplication algorithm? Or something else? I've surveyed a lot of people on this - probably forty or so in person, plus another 100 or so in a poll on reddit once - and there's a pretty clear trend: people who perform…

That's an interesting question! I don't have aphantasia, and can visualize things pretty vividly - but I also resorted to "verbal memory" to do that calculation.

I foiled it like the other comment says (maybe somewhat of a visualization, since I "visualized" it as 40x60 + 40x8 + ...), and I remember the running sum by "saying" it to myself inside my head.

I performed each multiplication (grade-school multiplication memory lookup table, not actually doing the visual algorithm) and added the right number of 10's place zeros, then added it to the running sum. For this addition step actually, I do visualize as stacking the two numbers and carrying if needed. Then I "say" the result to myself and remember it for the next multiplication.

I will say that my first reaction to seeing "calculate 47x68 real quick" was reluctance and it was not an easy task to do mentally, but it was mechanically straightforward.

Re: People who can't see things in their mind could have memory trouble too: study

#79

Post by jjk166 »

plutonorm wrote: post #60
jjk166 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I can't draw anything very well, but I can see in my mind a photo-realistic image indistinguishable from what I am perceiving in real time. No matter to what degree I interrogate it, I find no discrepancies with the real world. Everything I revisit is exactly as I remember it. I can read text in my dreams. I can make arbitrary changes to whatever I visualize and project them onto the real world as if my eyes wer…

Ok I kinda believe you. But I do not understand why you wouldn't be able to draw perfectly. Why can you not simply overlay what you see with you're minds eye over the real world? I do this when I am drawing, that's why I'm not a bad drawer. And it's also how I know the limitations of my visualisation. As I learn to draw, say, faces better, the detail and accuracy of my visualisation improves.

I can't draw what I see with my mind very well for the same reason I can't draw what I see with my eyes very well: my hands are terrible. I do enjoy drawing, but it sucks to be painfully aware of how different what I produce is from what I intended to produce. Where I am not limited by my dexterity, such as with computer aided design, I can perfectly recreate what I envision.
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