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Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

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Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#201

Post by gojomo »

There was a digression in another thread about this a little over a year ago, which was where I first learned of people-without-mental-imagery:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9280134

Notably, ~gwillen there pointed out Francis Galton's 1880 study of the matter – where he started with the idea that mental imagery was a hoax, as he himself did not experience it. His surveys convinced him that it was instead common, and that only ~3% of people lack it entirely – very close to the 2% estimate Ross passes along from a 2009 study.

So: still surprising people, but known for quite a while.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#202

Post by crb3 »

_Adam wrote: post #186
crb3 wrote: post #169

I'm so much the other way that it's scary, because it's a vulnerability, one I didn't know about until it happened. Musical/artistic family, multi-talented all around me. I'd keep my suburban-bicycled paper-route from getting boring by playing back in my head music I'd heard and liked. Stumbled into hardware, then software, as something I could do and do well and get paid to do it. Whatever it was I was doing -- song…

I'm sorry to hear you went through that. Did your abilities return once the course of antibiotics was completed?

Yep, it was just the fever that knocked it out.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#203

Post by mc808 »

I think either most people are exaggerating about their ability to visualize or I have this impediment to a degree. My mental "images" are extremely faint, distant, wavering, ghost-like. Any parts I'm not focused on immediately poof away. Definitely can't conjure up a whole scene and explore it. But at least it's something.

The reason I think people may be exaggerating is because there are very few people with the artistic or mechanical aptitude that I would have if I could produce stable and detailed mental images at will. Also, police sketches.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#204

Post by theemathas »

I have a problem that sounds similar to this. But instead of visualizing, I have problems remembering events. I usually remember events "out of order", perhaps like recording 30-second videos and storing them randomly ordered. For example, if someone asks me if I have breakfast this morning, I might recall a certain breakfast, and then struggle trying to figure out whether that was today's breakfast or yesterday's. This becomes very frustrating when people ask me "What did you do today?"

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#206

Post by leadingthenet »

nkurz wrote: post #106
kaoD wrote: post #3

> If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves. Yes, with great detail. > If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing. Yup (and it's spinning for some reason!) > And mom’s face? Of course. Not at all! I've always been intrigued about this. I have a very rich "mind's eye", but always struggle with drawing faces in my mind. My experience with imagining faces: I get th…

Have you tried the "Famous Faces" test? http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff_intro.php There's lots more information about Face Blindness (prosopagnosia) on the http://faceblind.org site.

I do seem to have the same problem that he does, but I've passed that test without a hitch. Once I actually see a person I can recognise it, but actually picturing it in my mind is extremely difficult.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#207

Post by teamonkey »

kazagistar wrote: post #128
Orthanc wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine an image in my head (sort of) but I can't not think in words. It's hard for me to even understand what people mean when they say they are thinking but they don't have an internal monologue going on in their head. Brains are weird.

Do you know more then one language? I grew up bilingual from a young age, and I suspect that has something to do with the disconnect between ideas and words. The simplest proof I have for the fact that I don't think in words is that I quite often forget a word, and can't complete a sentence. I know exactly what I want to express and have thought it through in my mind, but I can't tell it to someone else because I don…

I'm not fluent in any language apart from English and your description fits me exactly. I temporarily forget words, meaning I need to circle around and find another way to describe a concept.

I have a feeling that forgetting words isn't particularly unusual even for native speakers though.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#208

Post by teamonkey »

Hupriene wrote: post #113
kaoD wrote: post #3

> If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves. Yes, with great detail. > If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing. Yup (and it's spinning for some reason!) > And mom’s face? Of course. Not at all! I've always been intrigued about this. I have a very rich "mind's eye", but always struggle with drawing faces in my mind. My experience with imagining faces: I get th…

Try this: Imagine an image split vertically down the middle. The left side of the image is solid black. The right side is the right half of your mom's face. Does that make it easier? It does for me.

> Imagine an image

Lost me there :(

If I think hard I can almost see the face of someone but it's fuzzy and just out of my reach. Then for the briefest moment it's sharp, then disappears completely.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#209

Post by stordoff »

Orthanc wrote: post #125
kazagistar wrote: post #120

I'm... halfway. When I try, I can generate images, but I only do so occasionally. Most of the time, my thinking is exactly like the author describes. Facts, ideas, connections, hunches, intuitions, etc. The images are kinda like a serialization of this, no more: they have exactly the data I put into them, and not really any more "detail". But what really blew my mind was when I realized that people think with words.…

I can imagine an image in my head (sort of) but I can't not think in words. It's hard for me to even understand what people mean when they say they are thinking but they don't have an internal monologue going on in their head. Brains are weird.

There's kind of two layers to how I think - if I'm actively thinking about something (such as writing this post, or imagine a specific event/occurrence), then it is a very defined internal monologue, and is essentially how I would speak about the topic.

If its a more passive thing (such as pondering something whilst actually working on something else), or my language 'skills' for lack of a better word are doing something else (e.g. listening to music with lyrics), then the thoughts are more abstract ideas and images, and the monologue only returns when I come to some sort of conclusion. It's interesting to note that this happens more frequently when I've been using languages other than English.

Brains definitely are weird.

Re: Aphantasia: How It Feels to Be Blind in Your Mind

#210

Post by stordoff »

ijhnv wrote: post #192
kazagistar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know more then one language? I grew up bilingual from a young age, and I suspect that has something to do with the disconnect between ideas and words. The simplest proof I have for the fact that I don't think in words is that I quite often forget a word, and can't complete a sentence. I know exactly what I want to express and have thought it through in my mind, but I can't tell it to someone else because I don…

Exactly. I also grew up to be bilingual from a young age, and I didn't learn my second language in a way an adult would, by connecting foreign words with the words you already know from your first language, but in a way a toddler would, just by listening to it and maybe some reading. After I began to think in English (my second language), I found that I wasn't speaking my first language anymore, I was just translatin…

> I didn't learn my second language in a way an adult would, by connecting foreign words with the words you already know from your first language

Mildly off-topic, but I never realised until recently how much of a difference this can make. I've used French numbers far more, and for far longer, than I have Japanese numbers [0], but learning that way still results in me going "8 - that's eight, so its huit". Because I learnt the Japanese numbers through usage and without the deliberate English comparison, I go straight to "8 - hachi" without the intermediate step.

It's also weird to me that I can count backwards (say 10 to 1) far easier in Japanese than in French, probably for similar reasons.

[0] Note I'm a long way from fluent in either. I studied French at school, and have picked up a very small amount of Japanese through usage.

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