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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

#171

Post by listenallyall »

trescenzi wrote: post #153
listenallyall wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Forget the Mona Lisa, maybe you've never seen it even in a book. Do you know what the shape of your country (like from a map) looks like? Of course you do, and it's not because you went around and did your own border survey, it's because you've seen the shape on maps thousands of times, and you can picture it in your head.

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

#172

Post by simion314 »

rbetts wrote: post #30
MoSattler wrote: post #20

I am curious: do people with aphantasia dream?

I have aphantasia. I don't see / imagine imagery either awake or asleep. So I don't know that my dreaming experience is particularly different from my waking experience in this way.

I am curious how is solving geometry problems for you, can you imagine slicing some geometric body with a plane and what it results? or given some geometric figure and an instruction to build some lines can you see the result without drawing it on paper ?

Fro me it feels that imagining things uses completely different brain part, because for me it does not feel or look like stuff in my dreams or what eyes can see, imagining things feel different,the scenes feel to me unclear, disappear fast , I do not have the ability to lock the image or rewind like in a video. Remembering a recent scene has a lot more details and colors then some old memory.

For geometry stuff is the same, I can't say I see it but somehow I have an animation my head on how I can transform the geometric stuff, but it is not vivid and it is not like a clear video, feels like is a different part of the brain that does this not the optic part.

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

#173

Post by dumbo-octopus »

canjobear wrote: post #116
auggierose wrote: post #97

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.

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…

For the test to be meaningful, it should still produce accurate results when the subject is pretending to have the condition (the SAT wouldn’t be helpful if you could ace it by acting as if you know the all answers!)

Consider a turing test of sorts: I want to convince you I am phantastic, you are tasked with determining whether I am faking it. Could such a test be realized?

Consider, for example, the “draw a bicycle” phenomenon. Many alleged phantists are wholly unable to correctly render a bicycle onto paper, and furthermore they are often unable to self-evaluate that their renders are bogus. Many aphants on the other hand have no issue depicting a well formed bicycle onto a paper, and furthermore would be able to identify faulty ones.

Of course this test does not have perfect recall/accuracy, it’s just an example of how the results can be counterintuitive.

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

neongreen wrote: post #88

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…

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by canjobear »

auggierose wrote: post #155
canjobear wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The point isn’t to rigorously define “visualize” or “imagine”—we will probably never be able to do this. The point is to use a verbal prompt to elicit a mental experience and then to try to probe that experience.

> 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?

That’s just it: when I imagine a triangle, it is a definite image with a definite color. The visual details like color come automatically for me. I cannot imagine it in the more abstract way you are describing. If it’s a wireframe, the wireframe is gray. It’s always a full, colorful, 3d scene, perhaps vague but definitely with visual detail.

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

#176

Post by albert_e »

Can people with Aphantasia still have visual dreams -- where imagery is more real and vivid and more involuntary than willed .... than what they can 'see' when awake and conscious and are trying to muster up an image on purpose with closed eyes ?

I tried visualizing some images now -- and it seems harder than I expected, seems harder with eyes closed (makes eveyrthing feel too dark and low contrast). But I think my dreams are more vivid than that.

Also I relized that when actively trying to imagine things, the "resolution" or sharpness/focus of the mental picture is very narrow -- I can only imagine the "details" of texture/surface of things when focussing attention on a very small and narrow field of "vision".

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

#177

Post by Daub »

margalabargala wrote: post #161
Daub wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". As someone who paints landscapes, I have a huge amount of trouble with this prompt. I am trying to construct something that is topographically feasible and artistically agreeable. I can imagine walking through a wood, but not alongside one. I know (of course) that it is possible to walk along…

What part of the world do you live in? Areas of the American west, with mountains above treeline and meadows, can have exactly this topography. Example: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.051055,-121.796685,3a,75y,30...

I live in urban Vietnam. However, my visual imagination is derived heavily from paintings, particularly those of the romantic era (eg the Hudson river school). The promt suggest something very asymmetrical, which is anathema to the romantic schema (they avoid asymmetry but also too much symmetry). Not saying it's impossible for me to get there, just very difficult.

I guess the larger point is that vusualisation is as much fiction as it is recal.

By the way, I love the gmap link image, but I don't see it as an effective responce to the hint. I see it instead as a classic vista (I.e framed window-form).

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

#178

Post by jumploops »

albert_e wrote: post #176

Can people with Aphantasia still have visual dreams -- where imagery is more real and vivid and more involuntary than willed .... than what they can 'see' when awake and conscious and are trying to muster up an image on purpose with closed eyes ? I tried visualizing some images now -- and it seems harder than I expected, seems harder with eyes closed (makes eveyrthing feel too dark and low contrast). But I think my d…

Yes, I have aphantasia and also have visual dreams.

I always figured daydreaming was just a metaphor, and had no idea most people could use visual faculties outside of an actual dream state!

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

#179

Post by jumploops »

neongreen wrote: post #88

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…

Whelp… TIL… again

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

#180

Post by georgewinters »

jumploops wrote: post #178
albert_e wrote: post #176

Can people with Aphantasia still have visual dreams -- where imagery is more real and vivid and more involuntary than willed .... than what they can 'see' when awake and conscious and are trying to muster up an image on purpose with closed eyes ? I tried visualizing some images now -- and it seems harder than I expected, seems harder with eyes closed (makes eveyrthing feel too dark and low contrast). But I think my d…

Yes, I have aphantasia and also have visual dreams. I always figured daydreaming was just a metaphor, and had no idea most people could use visual faculties outside of an actual dream state!

Agreed. I'm exactly the same. I also thought daydreaming was a metaphor.
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