101–110 of 416 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think entirely in words, no images. No sounds. Just concepts that are mapped to words. It blows my mind some people actually see images when they think
You can't think of what a STOP sign looks like? Or your country's flag?
I still have a hard time believing this is actually real. I also don't see how you actually could do many jobs with this condition. At least I couldn't imagine doing any job I ever head without the ability to manipulate visual information in my head.
It's real and I have it. I was astonished when I discovered other people see pictures in their head. It doesn't restrict my creative thinking but I am a spatial thinker. When I solve an imaginary logic problem such as advancing the hands on a clock I can't see the before and after states but I can infer their positions by the directions they must point and then read the new time from that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think entirely in words, no images. No sounds. Just concepts that are mapped to words. It blows my mind some people actually see images when they think
You can't think of what a STOP sign looks like? Or your country's flag?
"think of" is far too ambiguous here to really meaningfully drill into the differences of _how_ people think about things. I know that a stop sign is a red octagon (with a white boundary) with the word "STOP" in the center. I could draw you a plausible picture of one without issue. Thinking about it just involves no imagery.
Information you might rely on visualization for, I don't (because I can't). I couldn't tell you with any confidence what my family that just visited this afternoon was wearing (something I assume is easier for people who would remember it visually), but I can recall what happened - in what order, where, who said what, etc. - throughout their visit.
What frustrates me about things like that, there seem to be no proper tests for that. Shouldn't there be an easy test for Aphantasia, for example, that doesn't ask me things like "do you have a mind's eye" (what does that even mean?). Such a test should not ask the test subjects to self-diagnose themselves, but it should objectively test abilities and put them on a scale. Anything else really is not that helpful.
I have taken just such a test where spatial rotations, IIRC including multi-step ones, were a component, and I scored close to 99th percentile on every section except that one... where I scored 1st percentile. If that's not a strong sign of aphantasia I don't know what is!
Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia. SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes . Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for…
This explains why I lose every argument with my wife about things that happened in the past.
Every time I’m reading about Aphantasia, I’m confused again that people really see stuff in their head. I have basically the same as the person in the article. So, if you want to know anything, AMA. I’m also trying to respond to a few questions which are already asked.
Based on the article and the comments here, it sounds like the way you remember things must be missing a lot of details. I'm speculating here because I just saw a movie today at a theater and I can playback scenes in my mind. I can certainly describe a scene with words but that's clearly very limiting. At the very least, I don't have words to map to all the colors my eyes can detect. Do you think that's accurate? Tha…
> Do you think that's accurate?
I don't think someone with aphantasia (of which I am one!) is really capable of assessing this - which details our memories have routinely omitted is an unknown unknown until we're explicitly made conscious of the gap.
With regard to your example of a movie, I think you may be overweighting the importance of visualization in recalling narratives (and details within them). Fiction books (for adults, anyways) generally lack visuals, yet readers across the entire visualization spectrum[0] can engage with them and recall/discuss scenes, plot points, etc. Absorbing the narrative of a movie isn't so far off from that. I just took my kid to see Inside Out 2 earlier this week, and have a pretty clear recollection (sans whatever gaps I'm incapable of being aware of) of all of it.
[0] I think, but am not sure, that it strengthens my point here to note that people who visualize the story as they read it are nearly certainly visualizing it _differently_, but that almost never poses a problem for engaging with others about it.
Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia. SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes . Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for…
correct - it’s like playing an extremely low resolution “replay” of that moment in time.sometimes the frames skip but it’s still visible to me.
Alert: if you were happy to learn about aphantasia, you might also be happy to learn about SDAM (severely deficient autobiographical memory), which I think is correlated with aphantasia. SDAM is when you know facts about your life, but can’t walk through any or almost any episodes . Apparently normal people can actually re-live episodes from their past, step by step or.. idk. Somehow. And I don’t know what I had for…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on the article and the comments here, it sounds like the way you remember things must be missing a lot of details. I'm speculating here because I just saw a movie today at a theater and I can playback scenes in my mind. I can certainly describe a scene with words but that's clearly very limiting. At the very least, I don't have words to map to all the colors my eyes can detect. Do you think that's accurate? Tha…
> it sounds like the way you remember things must be missing a lot of details. > Do you think that's accurate? I don't think someone with aphantasia (of which I am one!) is really capable of assessing this - which details our memories have routinely omitted is an unknown unknown until we're explicitly made conscious of the gap. With regard to your example of a movie, I think you may be overweighting the importance of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see things in my minds eye. It's not a thing for me
You have no idea what a very simple object or shape, like a Christian cross or a McDonald's logo, looks like without having one in your sight?
Ed Catmull, former head of Pixar, also has aphantasia[0] and had the staff take the only real diagnostic that exists (the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire[1]) and found that, on average, the animators had less ability to visualize than the production managers. Obviously they varied significantly - the article mentions one that could play the entire movie in their mind - but lack of mental imagery clearly does not preclude professional level artistry.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47830256 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_Qu...