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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

aphantasia.com

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#41

Post by Noaidi »

tpoacher wrote: post #9
Artgor wrote: post #2

You know, I have learnt that I have aphantasia several years ago and it opened my eyes to many things. I have thought that people say a lot of things metaphorically. - Imagine a beach when meditating - If you are nervous about giving a presentation, imaging that the audience is naked - Count sheep in order to fall asleep fast - Undressing someone with your eyes - Visualising what is happening in the book you are read…

Same. This, and also the fact that it is also very highly associated with SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory) -- which I also have. And also, reasonably associated with ADHD -- which I also have, but only recently realised and assessed for at the tender age of 46. The SDAM is particularly useful to be aware of, otherwise you go crazy trying to understand why you remember how much your local pizza cost b…

Aphant and SDAM are linked with many neurological disorders. I have Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type and OCD.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9614338/

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#42

Post by cassianoleal »

randomImmigrant wrote: post #17
drakonka wrote: post #15

When people talk about seeing something in your mind's eye, do they mean a virtual image actually appears _as if_ you are seeing it in place of the real world or the blackness of your eyelids? Like do they somehow replace the picture from the eyes to the brain with whatever they are trying to visualize in a sort of hallucination? Or do they still 'see' the blacks of their eyelids or the world around them while visual…

For me the image in front of my eyes is not gone. I’m just not going to remember any details about it because my focus is inwards, on what my minds eye is showing me.

Right, but the question is - do you see actual images with this "mind's eye", or is it more of a sensation, a logical understanding of what you're imagining but with no real imagery?

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#43

Post by physicalecon »

LoganDark wrote: post #33
Noaidi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still have memory, it is just not visual. I forget what they call it, I think it is structural memory. But yes, we certainly laugh. It is only visual memory loss, not memory loss. The only test they have somewhat developed is a pupil test. When you tell someone with Aphantasia to imagine an apple their pupils do not change. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220420092150.h...

Aphantasia is about the mind's eye, not visual memory. Many people with aphantasia can still remember visual/spatial details of memories, they just can't see them. Not sure if those had to be recorded at the time of the memory or if they can be derived later, though. Based on some cursory research, it's not particularly uncommon for aphantasics to build a habit of intentionally making spatial observations in the mome…

If you take something like the “draw a bike” test, I have to wonder if the “normal” folks have any visual memory.

It’s always been curious to me that there’s this idea that people can “see” anything they wish, but then do not know what common objects look like. Whereas I’d wager any aphantastic would nail that particular test.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#44

Post by vidarh »

audidude wrote: post #5
Artgor wrote: post #2

You know, I have learnt that I have aphantasia several years ago and it opened my eyes to many things. I have thought that people say a lot of things metaphorically. - Imagine a beach when meditating - If you are nervous about giving a presentation, imaging that the audience is naked - Count sheep in order to fall asleep fast - Undressing someone with your eyes - Visualising what is happening in the book you are read…

I didn't understand flashbacks in movies until about a decade ago when I realized I had it. What a corny and lazy story-telling-tool I'd tell myself.

I still find it a lazy story-telling tool, even in writing. It feels like an admission you can't find ways to weave the disclosure into the "present day" of the story in a natural way. Though, the notion that others can imagine these things if described to them makes it at least somewhat more understandable.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#45

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

christophilus wrote: post #16
drakonka wrote: post #15

When people talk about seeing something in your mind's eye, do they mean a virtual image actually appears _as if_ you are seeing it in place of the real world or the blackness of your eyelids? Like do they somehow replace the picture from the eyes to the brain with whatever they are trying to visualize in a sort of hallucination? Or do they still 'see' the blacks of their eyelids or the world around them while visual…

I don’t see anything, but I also wonder if this is semantics, and we are all describing the same phenomena with different language.

Yeah, I think I have aphantasia as I definitely don't see anything, but after reading a lot about it I still haven't totally ruled out that it's simply a big semantic misunderstanding with people that describe things in a different way.

All the easily accessible aphantasia tests (such as the one in this link) seem to rely on subjectively deciding whether you "see" or not. But this "seeing" seems to be a metaphor (even people who claim to be non-aphantasiacs will concede that it's not literally like seeing), so how do I know that other people aren't having essentially the same internal experience but choosing different words to describe it?

It also doesn't help that it doesn't seem to have any bearing on cognitive ability, or ability to perform tasks that one could effectively measure. I have never felt like I can't do something because I have aphantasia. I have seen people mentioning difficulty on problems where you need to mentally rotate a cube, but I can do that just fine - it's just that I don't "see" or "picture" the cube, but I still have the concept in my mind of the cube being in a certain orientation and that suffices to solve the task.

I have read that there are some tests for aphantasia that don't ultimately depend on introspection and vocabulary (e.g. pupils reacting to imagining something bright or dark, see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35356890/) but I haven't found anything that I can do at home to be sure that I'm really aphantasiac and not just pessimistic about describing "inner images". If anyone knows such a test that one can do at home, I would be very interested.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#46

Post by boutell »

On the one hand: we are all great classifiers, great recognizers. To the point where we mistakenly think we can also reproduce things. But we usually can't reproduce them verbatim, visually or verbally.

Yes, drawing itself requires expertise. But if you truly have a great capacity for visualization, you should be able to produce at least a really dodgy drawing of the thing without looking at it. Something more directly recognizable than a stick figure. If you can't, then maybe your capacity for visualization is a story your brain tells itself, related to your capacity for recognition.

On the other hand: I cannot tell you the eye color of people I've known all my life unless I've gone out of my way to memorize it as a textual fact. And I assume most people lack that limitation.

(My capacity for visual memory is not zero, and my color perception is excellent. But my visual memory works way, way better in the very short term.)

I do think it can be trained a bit. I've been doing more visual projects lately, and spending a lot of time with my very visually-oriented partner. Just now, I spontaneously visualized one of our chipped yellow cereal bowls on the counter. That's a newer memory of course.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#47

Post by [deleted] »

_dwt wrote: post #30
christophilus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see anything, but I also wonder if this is semantics, and we are all describing the same phenomena with different language.

I'm very convinced this is what's going on. Qualia are super hard to convey with language! If I had to guess these self-reported instruments are also measuring, indirectly, conscientiousness (do I _really_ see it? it'd be wrong to lie on a survey!) as well as neuroticism (oh God what does that mean? do I _really_ see it? do other people _really_ see it? am I broken?).

[deleted]

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#48

Post by LoganDark »

physicalecon wrote: post #43
LoganDark wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aphantasia is about the mind's eye, not visual memory. Many people with aphantasia can still remember visual/spatial details of memories, they just can't see them. Not sure if those had to be recorded at the time of the memory or if they can be derived later, though. Based on some cursory research, it's not particularly uncommon for aphantasics to build a habit of intentionally making spatial observations in the mome…

If you take something like the “draw a bike” test, I have to wonder if the “normal” folks have any visual memory. It’s always been curious to me that there’s this idea that people can “see” anything they wish, but then do not know what common objects look like. Whereas I’d wager any aphantastic would nail that particular test.

When I (not aphantasic) see something like a bike, I see characteristics of it but I don't imprint the entire bike as a whole. Which means that, were I to draw one, I'd have to re-derive aspects of the bike that I didn't bother to memorize, because they haven't been important to my understanding of bikes. My visualization of the bike would be less precise in the areas that I haven't memorized, like in the precise layout of the frame or location of the seat/pedals or proportions or etc. I assume that someone more familiar with bikes, who has memorized more details of a bike, would be better than I am at drawing a bike.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#49

Post by stephen_g »

audidude wrote: post #32
christophilus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. Interesting. I’m the same. Are those flashbacks actually a real thing people experience? I had also assumed it was just movie gimmicks.

They are real for some. I have Aphantasia but my wife has Hyperphantasia so we compare notes often. Each of us are at the edge of the spectrum.

Oh that's interesting. I feel like my visual recall/imagination is probably slightly below average but that I have incredibly unusually vivid auditory imagination and recall. I’ll have to read into hyperphantasia, I wonder if having one strong sense but average or below average in others is common or unusual?

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#50

Post by Noaidi »

_dwt wrote: post #30
christophilus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see anything, but I also wonder if this is semantics, and we are all describing the same phenomena with different language.

I'm very convinced this is what's going on. Qualia are super hard to convey with language! If I had to guess these self-reported instruments are also measuring, indirectly, conscientiousness (do I _really_ see it? it'd be wrong to lie on a survey!) as well as neuroticism (oh God what does that mean? do I _really_ see it? do other people _really_ see it? am I broken?).

It is Qualia only until they can measure it. Which they can now. Blaming everything you do not understand on neuroticism? Might as well go back to dunking witches.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220420092150.h...

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