Live data from Hacker News

Aphantasia: A life without mental images

bbc.com

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#31

How clear are the pictures normal people can visualize. Is it like seeing but with your eyes closed? Because what I can do is nothing like seeing. Visual memory doesnt appear like a vision. Just a vague memory. Can people actually see memories. I'm really missing out if so.

For myself, visualizing isn't exactly 'seeing'. It's just sight-like, in that the same general information about shape, color, arrangement, etc. can be pulled up, with effort. Closing the eyes isn't strictly necessary, but helps avoid the distraction of actual sight.

It's very sensitive to attention/intention: asked to visualize a person, I'll mostly imagine the face and general build – not even picking specific clothes – unless that person is very associated with some outfit. But if I think more about some specific prompt – say, "what were they wearing at some recent event", or "think about their hairline" – I can call up (or pick) reasonable details.

I suppose you could say it's no more vivid than it needs to be, and with concentration it becomes more vivid/detailed, but never quite like the solidity of a photograph. (Well, maybe while deeply concentrating with eyes closed, or half-asleep, or actually dreaming, there can be moments of seeming realism...)

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#32
post #21

How clear are the pictures normal people can visualize. Is it like seeing but with your eyes closed? Because what I can do is nothing like seeing. Visual memory doesnt appear like a vision. Just a vague memory. Can people actually see memories. I'm really missing out if so.

I'm baffled as well. I had no idea people could do that. I thought that was called hallucination. I can remember images, I can't see them. I think I'm missing the point somewhere.

Can you draw things from memory, and get the general shapes and colors right?

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#33
So many people these days seem to be writing about something "begging the question", whereas I am partial to reserving that idiom for a very specific logical fallacy, and simply saying that something "raises the question" in all other cases. Alas, language evolves with popular usage, and this may be a dying distinction.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#34
post #33

So many people these days seem to be writing about something "begging the question", whereas I am partial to reserving that idiom for a very specific logical fallacy, and simply saying that something "raises the question" in all other cases. Alas, language evolves with popular usage, and this may be a dying distinction.

Yes it's a dead distinction in all but a very narrow area of discussion, even then in which it should be stated more plainly.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#35
This is fascinating. I took the quiz and had to select "No image at all" for all the questions. I always knew I had trouble picturing things, but never realized others didn't also have a hard time. Strangely, I can play back songs in my head nearly perfectly, almost as if I was listening to them.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#36

Wow, I finally have a word to describe my mental experience. To others, I've described the vividness of my memory as like a wireframe. I can feel spatial relationships but I don't see them like a picture in my head. There are occasions that I can see color in my minds eye, but it's mostly greyscale.

Woah, I always thought that what you've described was the universal experience of mental visualization. A combination of wireframes / blueprints / spatial relationships.

When I think of my living room I can very clearly place where the couch is, its three dimensional form, what's next to it, the colour of the couch. However, when I recall these things in my head it's almost like I recall a "couch" object with a certain "couch" shape and a "blue" colour, as if they are semantic tags attached to my memory of the couch. For the life of me, I can't "see" the couch in the minds-eye. However, I could probably draw it by iterating over my memory of its properties.

Crazy.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#37

But this year scientists have described a condition, aphantasia, in which some people are unable to visualise mental images. This year? Galton (famously) published on this in 1883!

Background: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#38

This is fascinating. I took the quiz and had to select "No image at all" for all the questions. I always knew I had trouble picturing things, but never realized others didn't also have a hard time. Strangely, I can play back songs in my head nearly perfectly, almost as if I was listening to them.

ME TOO!!! I also think almost purely in voices, sometimes my own, sometimes things others say (and I always remember the way they said it). I can play back songs I heard 10+ years ago with no problem. Some of us just think audio instead of video :) I didn't know there were others who thought like that!

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you dream?

Rarely, if ever, and never as images. If your dreams are like movies, mine are like stumbling through a dark house.

A lot of my dreams I recall mostly as sensations, eg, I'll recall the sensation of being scared, but not any particular stimuli causing me to be scared.

Re: Aphantasia: A life without mental images

#40
Is there a more objective test than telling someone to visualize something and then asking, "Well, could you visualize it?"? For instance, are there visual tasks a person with or without aphantasia objectively could not perform?

Like a psych 101 student, I immediately think I have a touch of any vaguely described mental condition, but I also know I probably don't.

Post reply on HN