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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

#131

Post by di4na »

smabie wrote: post #119
yencabulator wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dreams are very spatial, contain movement, indistinct dialogue, and sometimes an "emphatic" sensation of feelings of the characters present. There's pretty much no color, no exact shape, clothing detail etc. No surface has any pattern, really. But I know extremely clearly how 3 people in my dream were positioned relative to each other and the room.

How about doing math in your head? If I couldn't visualize the actual numbers I don't think I could do it at all.

Same, tbh i can't really. Usually maths end up on a whiteboard or paper.

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

#132

Post by cercatrova »

ip26 wrote: post #116
cercatrova wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is what the experience of most people is like without aphantasia. I can even, for like a second, see a fully formed picture in my mind, like a scene from a sci-fi movie, or anything else, really, although it can disappear if I don't focus on the exact details. I can see everything, the shapes, the layout, colors, all of it. It really is like playing a movie in your mind.

Picture a soccer ball in your mind. Can you now count the black hexagons in view, or do you have to decide how many there are first? (Ok, now did you notice that they aren't actually hexagons, they are pentagons?)

Sure, I can count them. I can make them hexagons or pentagons at will when I think about them. It does take some time however to remember what a soccer ball actually looks like but after that I can see every details of it.

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

#133

Post by throw1234651234 »

abathur wrote: post #82
arkades wrote: 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 wo…

I think a huge part of mnemonic devices is that it's "just" active memorization - something a lot of people do. Iirc, when researched, people using these tricks did not do any better than people using flashcards and repetition. Thought that might be different for memory competition with people memorizing a 1000 places of pi, a carddeck, etc.

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

#134

Post by jjk166 »

plutonorm wrote: post #113
jjk166 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you can't trace a picture using tracing paper?

Not photo-realistically, no. Fine motor control and visualization are different skills. I can probably keep a pencil point to within .5mm of where I want, but that still produces a very crude final result.

It would be absurd to conclude that just because a physicist isn't a champion at billiards that he can't think in terms of vectors, or that someone with a speech impediment can't process words clearly in their mind. That someone who can see an image clearly should be able to perfectly reproduce it does not logically follow.

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

#135

Post by JshWright »

nalllar wrote: post #115
3f34f34f wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people and journalists who speak about aphantasia are exaggerating or misleading others. If you actually are able to imagine an picture with your eyes open and have it cover the real world, that's called hallucinating. Some people can visualise things stronger than others, some cannot at all, but let's not pretend like actual visualisation (hallucinating) is the norm or that more than a few people on ear…

It's incredibly easy to "typical mind" and expect that the normal inner experience of being human is the same for everyone else as it is for you. There's a wide variance in visual imagery. I know people who can vividly imagine things with their eyes open, find it easy, almost automatic, others who have to try, and some who can't at all. Similarly there are wide variances in how people think: some think very visually,…

What sort of "training"?

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

#136

Post by m3kw9 »

cercatrova wrote: post #107
m3kw9 wrote: post #89

I’m not getting how someone can close their eyes and a high res picture shows up like the image on your desktop background? Is that even possible?

Yes, that is what the experience of most people is like without aphantasia. I can even, for like a second, see a fully formed picture in my mind, like a scene from a sci-fi movie, or anything else, really, although it can disappear if I don't focus on the exact details. I can see everything, the shapes, the layout, colors, all of it. It really is like playing a movie in your mind.

How do I know how detailed you are experiencing a mental picture? Can you imagine a detailed map and follow a street from one place to another in precise detail? Or is it an approximation

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

#137

Post by cercatrova »

m3kw9 wrote: post #136
cercatrova wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is what the experience of most people is like without aphantasia. I can even, for like a second, see a fully formed picture in my mind, like a scene from a sci-fi movie, or anything else, really, although it can disappear if I don't focus on the exact details. I can see everything, the shapes, the layout, colors, all of it. It really is like playing a movie in your mind.

How do I know how detailed you are experiencing a mental picture? Can you imagine a detailed map and follow a street from one place to another in precise detail? Or is it an approximation

Yes, it's pretty accurate. Interestingly, this can be used as a memory technique, the method of loci, also known as the memory palace. You imagine a path such as from your house to the grocery store, and you place items on that path to remember them. For example, a large fish cresting out of the sidewalk might remind you to buy fish at the grocer.

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

#138

Post by gnramires »

3f34f34f wrote: post #20
raxxorrax wrote: post #5

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 think most people and journalists who speak about aphantasia are exaggerating or misleading others. If you actually are able to imagine an picture with your eyes open and have it cover the real world, that's called hallucinating. Some people can visualise things stronger than others, some cannot at all, but let's not pretend like actual visualisation (hallucinating) is the norm or that more than a few people on ear…

Think of what you see (with you eyes) as a stage, space, or, in computing terms, a buffer or something like that. What I imagine in my head does not compete for space in this buffer that much -- it's like in a different stage, a different space. I know something I imagine lies in imagination-space not in eye-vision-space. Those two spaces are probably merged somewhere[0] so they can use similar recognition and abstraction engines in the brain, but this information of what comes from which one is maintained (like you can distinguish between senses, between the auditory stage and the visual stage without thinking).

[0]: I believe this explains how, while I can do all this visualization, it's difficult to simultaneously "grasp" both spaces -- it's like both are there, but when I switch to mind space the visual one goes to the background and I can't process it too much.

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

#139

Post by gnramires »

silveroriole wrote: post #13
greenonions wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and there are no real limits to this. I can picture a Rubik's cube dominating the Manhattan skyline. I can also picture abstract images with no connection to the real world, that have emotions associated with them. I believe my wife cannot make images, and the differences between us that result are pretty wild. I'm dramatically better with directions and maps because she can't make a mental model of the map and…

Oh, the map thing is interesting. I can visualise pretty well but I can’t move around smoothly in my visualisations. I can only warp around like in VR games. Most of what I visualise is more like a 2d film/photo than a full 3D scene. Like your wife, I can’t figure out maps or 3D spaces (I spend a lot of time in 3d games wandering around lost) - despite me being able to form images. Maybe some of us only have 1d/2d im…

I also don't see smooth movement without extraordinary effort and simple objects, and it seems I'm just increasing the framerate. Although funnily I can imagine body and hand movements (which are smooth) in detail, and I don't feel the framerate limitation at all; I can get a 'intuitive feeling' for each kind of movement that way. So it seems like my kinetic-proprioception has a lot more temporal capability.

In terms of 3D imagery, I can visualized complex 3D objects and rotate them around, or navigate 3D cave spaces. But it requires significant focus, and the "framerate" is very low, like warping you mentioned. And for years I've spent time before sleeping visualizing things (often in 3D), so I think it's something I developed too (it's fun and I knew it was going to be useful -- when solving problems I very often resort to visualizations).

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

#140

Post by Izkata »

c3534l wrote: post #123

I came to the realization that not everyone feels emotions the same way. In therapy, I often had people ask me to try to describe my emotions in terms of bodily images and ask me to justify how I know I'm sad or angry or whatever. It always seemed like such an absurd waste of time, but apparently some people don't actually feel emotions, they infer them from their own behavior. My therapist seemed surprised that the…

> but apparently some people don't actually feel emotions, they infer them from their own behavior. My therapist seemed surprised that the sensation of sadness is an abstract feeling that I experience, like you would feel pain or coldness, and the same goes for all the other emotions you might feel. The idea of getting in touch with your emotions is like getting in touch with a punch in the gut.

That's what that phrase refers to? I've never even heard of that before. "An abstract thing that you feel" has always been what emotions are to me.

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