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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#111

Post by jawns »

I've known about aphantasia for a long time, but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue?

When I was in second grade, our teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a pretzel. I closed my eyes and tried to will a pretzel to appear as an image, and I failed miserably. All I saw was darkness and faint squiggles. I didn't understand why so many of my classmates said they could "see" the pretzel with their eyes closed.

Later on, I realized that my mind's eye doesn't actually work like that. It's not like turning on a projector screen against one's closed eyelids and magically seeing things that aren't there. The imagery exists on another plane, such that I can visualize an apple with my eyes open or closed, because what I am "seeing" has nothing to do with my eyes themselves.

Which makes me wonder whether people who think they have aphantasia might not be missing a mind's eye, but rather are unaware of how to active it.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#112

Post by idoubtit »

LordGrey wrote: post #102
sixothree wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a better self-test. Visualize a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball? Now, answer these questions: - What color was the ball? - What gender was the person that pushed the ball? - What did they look like? - What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? - What about the table, what shape…

You might need to take a person's background into account as well. I, for instance, am an avid billiards player. A "ball on a table" naturally makes me think of a billiard ball on a billiards table. A whole host of detail was filled in for me, but all specifically in that context. I could answer some of the answers as if I could visualize, but most of them as someone who could not. n = 1, I know, but sometimes it tak…

Same here. I immediately visualized one of my juggling balls (the hard kind, pastel blue) on my kitchen table, so the scene was clear. But I was focused on the ball, so I only felt someone approaching and saw their hand pushing the ball, which rolled and fell.

I tried to visualise a scene with more unfamiliar objects (a box in the street then a flood wave arrives) and I also built the scene from my own memories. But I'm obviously biased after the first test.

With objects that I've never seen myself (e.g. a handgun), I have a hard time imagining them and placing them in my imaginary scenes.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#113

Post by D-Machine »

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.

Then you are almost certainly aphantasic. "It is all just semantics" has to do some incredible acrobatics to make sense of so much language and reported experiences, and doesn't seem biologically plausible either.

Of course, we can never be sure, but from a theoretical and empirical standpoint "all aphantasia discussion is just semantic confusion" is not useful and a complete non-starter.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#114

Post by asveikau »

I realized I have aphantasia after reading an HN thread about it a few years ago. I talked to my daughter about it and I realized she has it too.

I've tried to explain it to people and they get confused. Just as I get confused about their perception; their imagination sounds to me rather like a psychotic hallucination, to exaggerate slightly. I've had some funny discussions about it.

In the end there doesn't seem to me to be any reason to get hung up on these topics. Everybody's inner world and perception can be different from others. That's fine and not a big deal.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#115

Post by alnwlsn »

For those that have this, how is your auditory imagination? I would not describe my thinking as especially visual, but I can hear things. It's much easier for me to imagine the crunch of someone biting an apple than the image of an apple itself. The effect is quite strong - I can hear music almost as well inside my head as actually listening to it; the sound of instruments, pitches (I don't think it's perfect pitch but it's close), the inflection of someone's voice, etc. I had a lot of trouble learning to read music, because it was a lot easier for me to remember what things were supposed to sound like and just play that than to actually read it.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#116

Post by suusjejwuwiw »

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…

It’s not hallucinating. Drugs of a certain type will do that, but even then you can still visualize at the same time. It’s a different “set of eyeballs”. A third eye.. if you will.

I don’t know if you know how to lucid dream but I find I can visualize inside one while still just seeing the regular scene in front of me. Even “over there” it’s a separate sense.

There is no “really” seeing. There is just “seeing with this sense”, “seeing with that sense”. You can feel with your right and left hand separately, no? It’s not “one thing”.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#117

Post by D-Machine »

jawns wrote: post #111

I've known about aphantasia for a long time, but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? When I was in second grade, our teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a pretzel. I closed my eyes and tried to will a pretzel to appear as an image, and I failed miserably. All I saw was darkness and faint squiggles. I didn't understand why so many of my classmates said they could "see" the pret…

This is interesting and I wonder if it might explain some apparent cases of aphantasia. Also seems relevant to some aphantasics experiencing mental imagery when using psychedelics.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#118

Post by ludicrousdispla »

jawns wrote: post #111

I've known about aphantasia for a long time, but there is one question I keep coming back to: Is it a skill issue? When I was in second grade, our teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a pretzel. I closed my eyes and tried to will a pretzel to appear as an image, and I failed miserably. All I saw was darkness and faint squiggles. I didn't understand why so many of my classmates said they could "see" the pret…

A good analogy for the difference between seeing and visualizing... speaking a statement is to thinking a statement as seeing a thing is to visualizing the thing.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#119

Post by evenhash »

LordGrey wrote: post #100

There is a section titled "What's It Like To Visualize?" that provides instructions for creating a temporary after-image, then claims: > This afterimage illusion, while a product of perception, serves as a bridge to understanding visualization. For those with aphantasia, it's a rare opportunity to "see" what visualization might be like for some visualizers. Is that really what it is like for those of you who can visu…

Sort of. For me it’s more like seeing out of a third eye (while also seeing out of your real eyes). Like how if you put your finger right in front of your face, you can see two images of it at once. With concentration I can ignore what my real eyes are seeing to prioritize the visualization, but the real eyes are constantly pulling my concentration back.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#120

Post by andrewla »

It would take a lot to convince me that aphantasia or phantasia actually exist.

Let's talk very specifically about the afterimage test here. Can anyone confirm that they have this ability, which specifically is to superimpose imagined objects inside your actual field of vision? If the answer to this is yes, then okay, I guess I have aphantasia. But none of the other criteria seems to apply.

I can imagine a song, and "hear" it in my "mind's ear", but I am not confused about whether it is occurring through my ears or just in my brain. I can easily imagine the tones and voices and tell you what the bass line sounds like, etc.

My visual imagination works the same way -- I can't make the object appear in my field of vision any more than I can make sounds appear in my field of hearing, but I can definitely imagine the visual aspects of it. If you tell me to imaging an equilateral triangle, I can put it there in my mind's eye, and if you tell me to attach another equilateral triangle to it I can see the resulting parallelogram. But I can't actually *see* it.

It would take a lot to convince me that phantasia or aphantasia actually exist, and nothing I see on this webpage convinces me.

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