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Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

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Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#141

Post by aezart »

dcanelhas wrote: post #63

I find it harder to conjure up the sensory experience of scents and flavors, is that something other people can do instinctively? Is there an equivalent to perfect pitch smelling out there?

I would say taste and touch are my strongest recall senses. I can still remember the experience of my favorite sandwich at a local sandwich shop, discontinued around 2009.

For the apple test, while I can visualize the image of one, it's much easier to imagine the sensations associated with biting into one. The taste, the texture against my teeth, the stickiness of the juices, etc.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#143

Post by torgoguys »

andrewla wrote: post #120

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…

I suspect being able to visualize something feels so natural to you you have a hard time imagining it could be otherwise. However, for folks like me it just doesn't happen.

When I dream I see the dreams just fine (so I think I understand what it is to have a minds eye) but can't reproduce any remotely similar thing while awake. Imagining sounds works fine and occurs not in my "real" hearing (so I get the distinction you're talking about with visual imagination) but with vision there's basically nothing for me.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#144

Post by D-Machine »

andrewla wrote: post #134
D-Machine wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes, this is utterly trivial for me, but then I am hyperphantasic by any measure or definition. It is also common to read people telling others to explicitly do this kind of superimposition (or "projection") in e…

I mean, I can look at a blank wall, and if you say "superimpose a red circle in the middle of the wall" I can very easily imagine that wall with a red circle on it. But I can't "see" it in the sense that you can see the afterimage of the apple on the blank screen. Are you saying you can see in a way indistinguishable from normal vision an imagined object in your field of vision?

The projected image is not typically indistinguishable from normal vision, namely in that there will be an "ephemerality" to the image. Some examples of this ephemerality:

- the projected image usually has a translucency, i.e. it doesn't also block what is behind where it would be physically if it were really there

- the projected image requires sustained concentration and mental effort to maintain detail, and if you let any aspect of your mind wander or stray from the task, the translucency increases, it may pop out of the visual field, or lose details

- the projected image (say, an apple) doesn't have full details at every particular point, i.e. if I focus on where the stem would be, that detail intensifies, but the surrounding areas become more ephemeral; with a real apple, this happens somewhat depending on the focal point too, but not nearly as much

- the projected image can be made less ephemeral and more rich and stable with the use of pscychedelics (e.g. psilocybin) or quasi-psychedelics (e.g. cannabis)

So, yes, you can "see" it in reality, but not, in most cases, to the degree that you "see" a real apple. Often the ephemerality really does manifest in a way extremely similar to how an afterimage persists, but this isn't always the case.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#145

Post by vehemenz »

D-Machine wrote: post #113
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.

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.

I have doubts about aphantasia as a legitimate phenomenon, but whether it is or it isn't, it seems likely that many of the positive reports are a result of a misunderstanding, semantic or otherwise.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#146

Post by jhedwards »

andrewla wrote: post #120

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…

They absolutely exist. I have a VERY strong minds eye and can invent and watch movies if I want to. Once I was driving while my friend described a post-apocalyptic landscape. I was seeing that landscape and not the road. Suddenly (some part of my brain was still paying attention, thankfully) the road rushed back to me and I saw that the cars in front of me had stopped. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident.

As possibly a tradeoff for this intense visual imagination, I have dyscalculia: I am unable to do more than simple calculations in my mind, and the more math I do the more my mind "closes up" and I feel a kind of pain and visceral frustration. There was nothing more frustrating growing up than people telling me I just needed to be patient or try harder, when nothing I did had any effect on my math ability.

As an adult I have worked around that disability by learning the fields of math that don't involve lots of numbers (discrete math is fine, algorithms are fine), and by learning non-numerical strategies for breaking down problems into smaller, more manageable calculations.

People are different, we have different cognitive abilities. Just like some people are blind or deaf, some people lack a visual imagination, an internal narrative, or the ability to manipulate numbers. I think this cognitive diversity is really quite fascinating.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#147

Post by [deleted] »

athorax wrote: post #66
cassianoleal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I see actual images, but at least for me its not anywhere near the same as actually looking at something. Its sort of like watching a low fidelity movie for me and I can't really "focus" in on specific details of what I'm visualizing. I think there is definitely a spectrum.

[deleted]

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#148

Post by scruple »

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…

I have the same experience. I'm 45 now, still can't visualize in my mind (and I have weak dream recall). I think there are categories here. Some people are really gifted and can visualize anything on-demand and interact with those visualizations in very interesting ways. That blows my mind, seriously. My wife is like this. Other people exist in a gradient between people like us with no visualization and the people who have absolute control. Those people can sort of acquire and train the skill and over time will improve, mostly organically, too, I think. Those people will tell people like us that we are not trying hard enough. If only we would tried harder, we, too, could acquire and develop this skill. But as you know, people like us cannot simply acquire or develop this skill. We are missing some prerequisite.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#149

Post by jacobsimon »

jawns wrote: post #126
ludicrousdispla wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I like this analogy. I have an internal voice, but "hearing" this voice is very different from hearing a voice spoken out loud and registered with my ears. Likewise, when I'm visualizing a pretzel, the way I am "seeing" it is more of an internal, mental process than when I see things by processing the light hitting my eyes.

Yet other people claim to not have an internal monologue (including my wife and brother) and say they don’t hear anything when they think to themselves, and don’t really even “think” in words for that matter. So this comparison is also tricky because not everyone agrees on either of them. I have a weak visualization ability and strong internal monologue, I’m not sure if they’re correlated in some way or not.

Re: Aphantasia Beginner's Guide

#150

Post by dooglius »

perrygeo wrote: post #55
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 thought "count sheep" just meant "please just go the f*k to sleep, kid". Literally counting sheep was too absurd. At the risk of sounding obvious, there are no sheep. No amount of trying to conjure pictures of sheep would work. I was very confused by this as a kid. Later in life, the realization moment came when I was watching a TV show, a police procedural where the witnesses described the suspect. Police were abl…

I thought the point of counting sheep was to do something boring and repetitive that puts your brain into a relaxed state
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