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People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

dailyneuron.com

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Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#31

Post by Swizec »

For anyone who doesn’t believe this is real, I recommend reading Thinking In Pictures. It’s a great book.

Explains 3 types of thinking that people use in their day-to-day: Linear verbal, schematic conceptual, and photo realistic.

It’s all a spectrum so you likely use all 3 to an extent.

Most people think linearly and sort of describe things in their mind that they’re trying to imagine. It’s a picture but not really.

Engineering types most commonly are strong in conceptual thinking. You can imagine complex systems and how they connect but it’s hard to describe and linearize this into words. You have to translate. Again it’s sort of an imagined picture but not really.

Then there is photo realistic where you see the thing in your mind. Almost as if you were seeing it for realzies with your eyes. Common with visual artists and some types of autism. Linearizing into words is almost impossible.

The book talks about the extreme opposite of aphantasia but it builds a good way of understanding these different qualia imo

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#32

Post by wongarsu »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #4

I still think this is fundamentally about how difficult it is to describe qualia.

Aphantasia is a real thing. As are probably many other differences in how our brains work. But the difficulty of describing qualia is likely why we are so unaware of them. And why even the "known" ones remained largely obscure until the age of social media

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#33

Post by fwlr »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #4

I still think this is fundamentally about how difficult it is to describe qualia.

Aphantasiacs seem to be able to describe visual qualia as adequately as anyone else when the visual stimuli are currently present. But we do see descriptions differ between aphantasia and baseline in two cases: when the visual stimuli is recalled from memory, and when the visual stimuli is imagined. If it was about the difficulty of describing qualia, I don’t think we would see a difference between “visual stimuli present” and “visual stimuli recalled or imagined”.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#35

Post by smusamashah »

misthop wrote: post #8
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does you mother look like?

She's 5 ft tall, sharp features, curly white hair. i can remember imagery facts, but have not visual memory

But if you only remember facts, can someone else pretend to be that person you remember with those facts?

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#36

Post by tekla »

misthop wrote: post #19
JoshTriplett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it apply to audio as well? If you think of a song you know well, do you feel like you "hear" the music in your head, as though playing back an audio file? If you think of a movie scene you've seen, what is that like? Can you recount what was in it, even if you can't "picture" it? Or does this also prevent you from recalling the details of the scene?

I'm a musician, but don't "hear" music in my head. I have an extensive memory of lyrics, and can guess the next notes of a song, but I use my inner monologue to sing or hum it in my head, I don't hear it. I can recall the visuals of a movie scene similar to how I can tell you how my office is organized. It is a spatial memory of where things are and aligned with each other. I don't replay the scene in any sense of th…

I'm pretty sure this is the default. Who literally hears music when thinking of it.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#38

Post by _ink_ »

The article is only about the absence of mental images, but the same is true for all other senses as well. People might be able to recall or imagine images, sounds, smells, tastes, feels while being awake or not. And it can be in all permutations, tho, vision affected seems to be quite common.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#39

Post by vidarh »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #10
misthop wrote: post #3

Aphantasiac here, happy to discuss or answer any questions

Does it apply to audio as well? If you think of a song you know well, do you feel like you "hear" the music in your head, as though playing back an audio file? If you think of a movie scene you've seen, what is that like? Can you recount what was in it, even if you can't "picture" it? Or does this also prevent you from recalling the details of the scene?

People's ability to "hear" music ranges from nothing at all to being able to "play back" close to what they heard. For my part, I have aphantasia, I can't hear the sound I heard, but I can "play it back" in my own voice (which is distinctly less pleasing).

As for movie scenes, I rarely tend to remember specific scenes - I tend to remember concepts and dialogue - but when I do remember a scene, I can often describe it in detail, and I can sketch out scenes, be it from movies or real life, that I remember well with a lot of spatial detail.

I suspect I probably do remember less of visuals than people without aphantasia because I don't really get much value from it, but I definitely can.

Re: People who can't picture anything are rewriting the science of imagination

#40

Post by misthop »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #27
misthop wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a musician, but don't "hear" music in my head. I have an extensive memory of lyrics, and can guess the next notes of a song, but I use my inner monologue to sing or hum it in my head, I don't hear it. I can recall the visuals of a movie scene similar to how I can tell you how my office is organized. It is a spatial memory of where things are and aligned with each other. I don't replay the scene in any sense of th…

> I use my inner monologue to sing or hum it in my head, I don't hear it Wdym? I think that the inner monologue is "hearing it", with a varying degree of vividness between people, of course.

Some people hear orchestral swells when, say, reading a book that mentions them. I don't have that. I have an inner monologue that can sing. I forget the term but as I understand it there are people who don't have an inner monologue. I think many of those would still be able to have "sound" imagery
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