In second year university I took a difficult 3d calculus class. I struggled for weeks until I suddenly developed the capability to visualize and manipulate 3D objects with axes, rulers and protractors in my mind. It like instantly leveled me up. Before that I had only done 2D math.
Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
311–320 of 416 posts
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#312What 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.
Speaking from experience as an aphantasic person, I think it is definitely possible to test objectively. For instance certain IQ tests will test the subject's ability to identify what a pictured object would look like if it were rotated in a certain way. I have taken just such a test where spatial rotations, IIRC including multi-step ones, were a component, and I scored close to 99th percentile on every section excep…
Can you read text when a book is upside down?
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#313I find it easier to believe that this is a failure of communication.
Believe whatever you want, but visualization ability is like every other aspect of human experience: it exists on a spectrum
I can only visualize involuntarily as I'm drifting off to sleep, so I know what it is and what it's like. But I can't consciously do it, never have been able to, even with decades of deliberate practice.
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you think you've gained or stated with this remark. "Mind's eye" and "visualization" refer to actual experiences. Those of us with aphantasia (no exceptions that I've encountered so far) did not realize these words referred to actual experiences.
Define "actual experiences". Normal people can not imagine an object like a red apple and actually see it, same as if one existed right in front of them. They can "visualize" it (just like you, it sounds), as in they can think of what it looks like, they would recognize one, they can even imagine broader scenes involving this apple (like an entire grocery aisle) but there is no "actual experience." You couldn't walk…
> Define "actual experiences".
People without aphantasia literally count sheep to go to sleep.
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#315Earlier 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.
How do you navigate via memory without some degree of mental visualisation? I’m convinced many aphantasia folk are just heavily overrating what other people are describing as visualisation, as if it’s some kind of minority report style interface that appears before you and is perceived by the eye. It’s simply being able to reconstruct physical entities as mental models. Again, without being able to do that it just se…
> How do you navigate via memory without some degree of mental visualisation?
How do people who are physically blind from birth navigate without mental visualization?
> I’m convinced many aphantasia folk are just heavily overrating what other people are describing as visualisation
I find the utter disbelief expressed by people who don't have aphantasia exhausting. It would be similar to encountering someone who has been deaf from birth and trying to convince them that they're not really deaf, they just don't understand what it means when other people say that they hear things. They could also hear things if they just try harder.
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#316I don't see anything. I feel like we're talking past each other. I am skeptical that "visualize an apple" to some people gets them the mental equivalent of a Blender model where they get a 360 degree view of the image and from there they are able to apply arbitrary transformations. I can "replay" songs in my head with pretty good fidelity to the original if I remember enough of it, but I think that's fairly common.
I can confirm it's basically a blender model in my head I can ~arbitrarily transform at will. Worth noting it's not just visual, I can 'touch' the surface of the imagined object(s) or whack two together and 'hear' what that sounds like.
OK maybe I'm just jealous. I've only asked my siblings about this but none of them see anything either.
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#317I got aphantasia from Covid, apparently it's an extremely rare side effect - so rare I've only found a handful of people on the entire internet who've experienced it. So I happen to know how it is to live both with and without the ability to visualize, I used to be extremely good at visualizing. Most major impact (apart from the loss of ability to daydream) is that my memory is worse, as my memory was very much based…
I'm pretty sure you can regain the ability. Covid damages the brain, and the brain "forgets" how to do certain things (like smell or visualise or focus), but brains are incredibly powerful and flexible, and can re-learn these things. I myself have long covid and lost a lot of sensing ability, but have been able to improve my senses of smell and touch by training with promising results. Here are some techniques people…
I was aphantasiac(?) most of my life and I self discovered similar techniques to what they discussed in the Reddit while learning multivariate calculus. I was trying so hard to visualize the integrations and using the “fuzz” I see when I close my eyes to infer the shapes then one day I could actually see them in my minds eye. I never applied the technique to other things because I didn’t have the same motivation to practice that induced my first breakthrough but I am pretty confident the technique works. The plasticity of the brain is remarkable and it’ll adapt to what you need it to do if you work at it.
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#318There seems to be a higher-than-average incidence of Aphantasia in tech folks, at least as self-reported. Our visual cortex is a huge part of our brain and in the absence of visual input can be "rewired" to other purposes. Theory: I have no evidence for this but its plausible that our obsession with solving hard, abstract logic puzzles all day (and night) somehow hijacks part of our visual cortex. Effectively reprogr…
In my case, I seem to have enhanced spatial reasoning when thinking about objects, rather than something visual. For example, if I’m asked to think of an apple, I don’t see an apple (with no color etc.), but I can “feel” an apple in the sense that I can abstractly reason about the 3D space of an apple. Again, there’s nothing visual about it. It’s almost as if I’m blind, and can form and reason about an apple as if I…
Now that you mention this, removing color from the exercise and focusing on the spatial features made the exercise incredibly easy. Trying to visualize color seems to be more difficult.
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#319I don't see anything. I feel like we're talking past each other. I am skeptical that "visualize an apple" to some people gets them the mental equivalent of a Blender model where they get a 360 degree view of the image and from there they are able to apply arbitrary transformations. I can "replay" songs in my head with pretty good fidelity to the original if I remember enough of it, but I think that's fairly common.
I can confirm it's basically a blender model in my head I can ~arbitrarily transform at will. Worth noting it's not just visual, I can 'touch' the surface of the imagined object(s) or whack two together and 'hear' what that sounds like.
Yeah I am in this camp as well. I can also do things like, after the apples are smashed together I can see heir bruises, rotate them, make 2 more bruises, etc. while keeping the bruises in their same spots.
It’s actually really annoying because when I’m stuck on a problem I essentially solve the whole thing in my head. I just see all the issues with possible solutions and back them out.
I wonder if it drives my boss nuts because I can go a whole day basically committing nothing, and then bang out the solution very quickly.
I actually have been actively trying to “just start writing, see what pops out” and it isn’t coming very naturally, which is kind of obnoxious.
Re: Aphantasia: I can not picture things in my mind
#320I've sometimes wondered if I could have aphantasia or perhaps be low enough on the visual imagery spectrum to have some of the practical effects of aphantasia. When I try to visualize an object, I can in some sense visualize it but it feels very indistinct. It's like I can't see the object as a whole only the specific details I focus on. For example, I have a friend who wears circular glasses and has a handlebar must…
that's basically what I experience. When I learned that many artists picture their entire drawing in detail, and then put it down on page roughly as they imagine it, I couldn't even imagine that.
I wonder where you learned that. To my knowledge, there are only very few artists who work that way.
Source: can draw pretty well myself, do not use this method.