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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

#81
post #17

Without even digging into the paper, let's be clear. They didn't find "they have memory trouble." They found, "they have trouble recalling sensations." > "Our data also showed that individuals with aphantasia not only report being unable to visualise, but also report comparatively reduced imagery, on average, in all other sensory modalities, including auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, taste, olfactory and emotion," the…

> "they have trouble recalling sensations."

On plus side, almost everytime I eat sushi it's the best sushi ever.

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

#82
post #17

Without even digging into the paper, let's be clear. They didn't find "they have memory trouble." They found, "they have trouble recalling sensations." > "Our data also showed that individuals with aphantasia not only report being unable to visualise, but also report comparatively reduced imagery, on average, in all other sensory modalities, including auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, taste, olfactory and emotion," the…

I think there's some accidental synecdoche here.

At least for those of us endowed with the gift/curse of forming memories as life rushes by, they can appear to be composed of details our senses perceived around us enmeshed with details about how our wetware experienced that moment. Sometimes, we even have false memories of things that didn't happen, or that happened differently than we remember.

There's a separate world of practice where people develop mnemonic devices (spaced repetition, narratives, memorable nonsense phrases, memory palaces, songs/rhyme/prosody, hand gestures) to help memorize things better than we could do by accident, or just by thinking "remember X".

I would guess most people who are able to form memories can find a mnemonic device that works for them when they need to remember things. The very idea of a "memory palace", however, is so absolutely foreign to my experience of the world that I don't think I could have invented it on my own. Once someone describes it, I have an abstract understanding that the ability to arrange things in visual space could be a powerful mnemonic. I can, after all, remember at least a few things about many thousands of physical places I've been at some point in my life, even though I can't really picture any of them vividly. But, as a mnemonic, it's useless to me--I can't conjure it.

My partner can remember things like what shirt she was wearing when we went to a specific restaurant a decade ago. I have abstract knowledge that we have been to that place, but I couldn't tell you anything else about it. For her, memories like this are a springboard into conjuring many other details about the event. Sometimes her recall injects enough context to jog my own. Sometimes it's all lost in the fog.

Whether you are "good" or "bad" at memorizing things in an intentional way, unless you have infinite time to creative narrative mnemonics as life rushes by, I suspect aphantasia impacts your ability to recall daily life.

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

#83
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…

I'm also aphantasia and never considered that people would do blackboard math visibly in their head. I, like you, use verbal memory to store numbers. But I've never been particularly good at doing math in my head. At the same time, I can map 47*68 into a rectangle and either add and subtract slivers to get the right answer, all without seeing it.

Something else which blew my mind, people who use image search preferentially to everything. Ironically the only time I use image search (unless I'm trying to find an image) is when I want a graph or tabular data.

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

#84
post #17

Without even digging into the paper, let's be clear. They didn't find "they have memory trouble." They found, "they have trouble recalling sensations." > "Our data also showed that individuals with aphantasia not only report being unable to visualise, but also report comparatively reduced imagery, on average, in all other sensory modalities, including auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, taste, olfactory and emotion," the…

Interesting, I on the other hand remember things “geographically”. It’s like I have precise GPS locations in my head attached to memories. In order to recall something, I usually try to remember where the memory “happened”, once I figure out the associated location - there comes the vivid memory as well.

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

#85
post #17

Without even digging into the paper, let's be clear. They didn't find "they have memory trouble." They found, "they have trouble recalling sensations." > "Our data also showed that individuals with aphantasia not only report being unable to visualise, but also report comparatively reduced imagery, on average, in all other sensory modalities, including auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, taste, olfactory and emotion," the…

Much what I was about to comment.

My mother passed away some 35-odd years away, and it really took me by surprise when I found out my little sister could visualise her and describe her from memory. I, on the other hand, could m and can recognise photos of her, but when describing her soul resort to learned facts: she was very pretty, slim, had brown hair and eyes, etc., etc.

Where the story turns, though, is how I remember things, as opposed to my academic (research professor) and artistic (painter/sculptor, and thus extremely visually oriented) wife. She continually misplaces her keys or glasses, for example. I have learnt to notice items, like them them amongst other things, and link them narritively (glasses on lounge table, keys on dishwasher, mask on sink…) and can then recall that without any real effort at a later stage.

It also fascinates her that I can read something like a programming manual like a story book and recall enough of it afterwards to put it into practice using the same manual only as a reference afterwards.

Horses for courses, I suppose.

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

#86
post #17

Without even digging into the paper, let's be clear. They didn't find "they have memory trouble." They found, "they have trouble recalling sensations." > "Our data also showed that individuals with aphantasia not only report being unable to visualise, but also report comparatively reduced imagery, on average, in all other sensory modalities, including auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, taste, olfactory and emotion," the…

I assume I have aphantasia, since I've never been able to "visualize" in the way that other people seem to be able to.

It seems to be strictly limited to visual imagery however. I remember lyrics / poems / quotes better than most people I know and I do pretty well on those wine-training smell tests. I can easily hear music in my head.

I've never really thought of it as a disadvantage, I assumed that I just had a different kind of imagination.

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

#87
post #74
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

My mental method is not quite FOIL, for what it's worth. I distribute over one of the numbers -- so 47 * 68 = 47 * 60 + 47 * 8, and then compute the compute those (2400 + 420 = 2820). Then I grab additional terms: 2820 + 40 * 8 = 3140. 3140 + 7 * 8 = 3196

Among other things this scales better to larger numbers. I use it because it's more 'linear' -- I only need to remember one accumulated number at a time.

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

#88
post #18

How would you test such a condition? When I paint (bloody amateur) I certainly can imagine a generic tree or house or something specific like my house or my garden tree. The latter takes more form of an image, but it is still quite abstract. It is not really a picture, it is a memory and quite fleeting. But if I would see a real picture, I would go to the doc. What do you mean they cannot conjure an image. If you ask…

I can draw you a dog, but if you ask me to picture a ball on a table, i do not picture anything specific. It is just the abstract idea of a ball on the table. It does not have colour, substance, space, nothing.

Same, at first, but if I try I can conjure a vague / unspecific mental image (the harder I mentally try, the clearer the image gets, but it never gets anywhere near perfectly clear). For example:

Are you able to take a table in your house and then imagine a soccer ball on it? Or do you still come up blank with just the concept and absolutely no mental imagery?

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

#90
post #84
post #17

Without even digging into the paper, let's be clear. They didn't find "they have memory trouble." They found, "they have trouble recalling sensations." > "Our data also showed that individuals with aphantasia not only report being unable to visualise, but also report comparatively reduced imagery, on average, in all other sensory modalities, including auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, taste, olfactory and emotion," the…

Interesting, I on the other hand remember things “geographically”. It’s like I have precise GPS locations in my head attached to memories. In order to recall something, I usually try to remember where the memory “happened”, once I figure out the associated location - there comes the vivid memory as well.

Do you get the music or conversation too? Or vice-versa, from a song or topic back to a spot?
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