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Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

theguardian.com

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Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#151

Post by fromMars »

constantcrying wrote: post #24
FeistySkink wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a conceptual model of how things relate in space. Something like a class diagram or a DB schema. It doesn't need to be visual.

This seems totally contradictory to me.

There is a lot of evidence that aphants score higher on spatial reasoning tests than those with vivid visual recall and are over represented in fields like math and science.

These two skill sets appear to be divergent, i.e., people are either good at visualizing and recalling fine details or they are good at manipulating/reasoning about spatial objects.

Personally, I have always excelled at the latter and have a strong sense of direction and have scored well on tests that require one to manipulate/rotate objects in my brain.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#152

Post by canjobear »

auggierose wrote: post #123
canjobear wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re looking for objective measures, aphantasia correlates inversely with objective measures of visual memory. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7856239/ But you can also imagine tests based on introspection which are better than just straight up asking how vivid your mental imagery is. For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it? For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. It has no c…

The article uses the VVIQ test (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire), taken on the Internet, to select aphantasiac participants. I cannot take research like that seriously. > For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it? > For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. If you are not an aphantasiac, how do you know what meaning this question has for one? I am pretty sure aphantasiacs can "imagine" a…

If I say "imagine a triangle" and ask you what color it is, why would it have a color if there is no image there? I didn't ask you to imagine a red triangle. Only a triangle. The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#153

Post by trescenzi »

listenallyall wrote: post #135
trescenzi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing visual. There’s word association: painting, woman, brown hair, Louvre, Da Vinci and so on. Also potentially emotional response too, I’ve never seen it so I don’t have anything like that. The best example of this, and why I’m absolutely certain it’s real and there’s not just a miscommunication, is the joke “don’t think of a pink elephant”. Until I learned of aphantasia I always thought it was super dum…

I think you believe that "normal" people have some magic hi-res virtual movie projector that superimposes crystal clear visions inside their heads. No, it's all just memories and concepts. Their response to thinking about the Mona Lisa is the same as yours. You know which way she faces, don't you?

Nope I didn’t realize she was facing a particular direction. I’d consider that a lack of knowledge. But if I did again it would just be words.

I don’t believe that people have a high res magical image. I believe there’s something that feels like visual stimulation which is used as a reference for information. I don’t have anything that seems remotely visual.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#155

Post by auggierose »

canjobear wrote: post #152
auggierose wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article uses the VVIQ test (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire), taken on the Internet, to select aphantasiac participants. I cannot take research like that seriously. > For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it? > For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. If you are not an aphantasiac, how do you know what meaning this question has for one? I am pretty sure aphantasiacs can "imagine" a…

If I say "imagine a triangle" and ask you what color it is, why would it have a color if there is no image there? I didn't ask you to imagine a red triangle. Only a triangle. The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.

I understand your reasoning, but it is not very logical. It depends on what you mean by "imagine a triangle". A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside? So if your triangle doesn't have a color, it might be because you are more accurate in your imagination, not because you have no triangle imagination.

So without a proper way of defining things like "imagine" or "mental picture" first, tests like yours or like VVIQ are not well-defined. Now, maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I have aphantasia. Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I am a logician and mathematician, and I am very peculiar about "meaning". Maybe even both. Without a doubt though, VVIQ is not an objective test, because its elements are not properly defined.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#156

Post by taughtology »

canjobear wrote: post #152
auggierose wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article uses the VVIQ test (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire), taken on the Internet, to select aphantasiac participants. I cannot take research like that seriously. > For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it? > For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. If you are not an aphantasiac, how do you know what meaning this question has for one? I am pretty sure aphantasiacs can "imagine" a…

If I say "imagine a triangle" and ask you what color it is, why would it have a color if there is no image there? I didn't ask you to imagine a red triangle. Only a triangle. The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.

> The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.

This does not follow. I can imagine a red triangle without visualizing one.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#157

Post by TeaBrain »

menotyou wrote: post #70
tjpnz wrote: post #29

How do you know if you have it?

Quick test: Try to imagine the following and then answer the questions beneath. Imagine a table with a ball on it. A person is approaching the table, pushes the ball gently, and the balls starts to roll. Questions: (1) What color has the ball? (2) Is the person male or female? (3) What material is the table made of? (4) When you answered questions (1)-(3), did you know the answer beforehand, or did you think about wh…

I don't think this is a very reliable test, and it even verges on misleading, as there is a degree of complexity that may lead people who do not have aphantasia to believe that they do have the condition. I think this line of thinking with your "test" has been what has led some people in the comments to say that they believe that the condition may just be a result of miscommunication on what mental visualization entails, since they believe that those who claim to have aphantasia believe that they have the condition due to not meeting a threshold of visualization.

However, it appears that for people who actually have the condition, visualization never gets to any specificity. One could be unable to answer a single one of the questions on your test, yet that does not necessarily mean they have aphantasia, as aphantasia is not the lack of detail in visualization, but the lack of any visualization at all. Some people who have aphantasia have attested in these comments that they cannot picture anything in their minds at all. Many of them attest that they don't even visualize when dreaming.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#158

Post by margalabargala »

LouisSayers wrote: post #146
majiy wrote: post #31

If somebody told me "image you are walking a winding path. To your right there is a wood, to your left there is a mountain". The image I see in my mind is basically an empty paper, with an arrow pointing to the left labeled "mountain", an arrow to the right labeled "wood", and an arrow to the middle labeled "path". Maybe, maybe the mountain is represented with two lines /\ and the path is a winding line ~~~ but that…

For me, I can imagine the feeling of being on a windy path, spatially aware of the paths the forest, the mountains - even a stream, but in terms of "seeing" it's more like walking into your bedroom in the dark and knowing where the bed is. I also can vividly "hear" music, not really voices, but I can put a track on in my head almost as if listening to the radio. For people that can't do this, it might sound great - a…

> For me, I can imagine the feeling of being on a windy path, spatially aware of the paths the forest, the mountains - even a stream, but in terms of "seeing" it's more like walking into your bedroom in the dark and knowing where the bed is.

I can imagine this, but if someone just says "you're walking down a winding path", I visualize something much more like the original parent. It takes nonzero effort to bother to mentally render a scene like that, so it doesn't just happen when someone says something; I have to actively want to be imagining it. I don't have some scene ready-to-go that I can drop myself into.

The above changes if a specific place is named, somewhere I've been. Then I'll generate some scene based on my memory.

Your second two paragraphs could have been written by me.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#159

Post by instakill »

majiy wrote: post #31

If somebody told me "image you are walking a winding path. To your right there is a wood, to your left there is a mountain". The image I see in my mind is basically an empty paper, with an arrow pointing to the left labeled "mountain", an arrow to the right labeled "wood", and an arrow to the middle labeled "path". Maybe, maybe the mountain is represented with two lines /\ and the path is a winding line ~~~ but that…

exactly all of this for me. and I've just learned about SDAM which kinda really resonates as well.

Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind

#160

Post by [deleted] »

khazhoux wrote: post #134
gnz11 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also the same as the person in the article. Pure speculation on my part, but I am convinced that it’s the people who can fully visualize things that are the outliers and not the other way around.

> but I am convinced that it’s the people who can fully visualize things that are the outliers and not the other way around Most people can't draw (at all) and I think that supports your point. Example: https://twistedsifter.com/2016/04/artist-asks-people-to-draw...

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