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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

#411

Post by satvikpendem »

smeej wrote: post #410
satvikpendem wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, how detailed are your models you pull out to observe? Are the models static? It's like you have your very own mind-linked AR setup.

They're as detailed as my attention to them. If my eyes stay open, I can add details to the model. It's not like taking a photograph I can look at later, so for example, if there were a playing card on a desk, and all I had consciously noticed was that it was a playing card, not that it was the queen of hearts, I wouldn't be able to close my eyes and then determine what the card was from the model. But it's not stati…

That makes sense, for me I can do everything you talked about, including having them as detailed as my attention to them and doing spacial manipulations, but I simply cannot bring them into the real world so to speak, to superimpose them on my vision. They still exist only in my mind's eye, the plane behind and above my visual plane, as the commenter said above.

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

#412

Post by smeej »

satvikpendem wrote: post #411
smeej wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're as detailed as my attention to them. If my eyes stay open, I can add details to the model. It's not like taking a photograph I can look at later, so for example, if there were a playing card on a desk, and all I had consciously noticed was that it was a playing card, not that it was the queen of hearts, I wouldn't be able to close my eyes and then determine what the card was from the model. But it's not stati…

That makes sense, for me I can do everything you talked about, including having them as detailed as my attention to them and doing spacial manipulations, but I simply cannot bring them into the real world so to speak, to superimpose them on my vision. They still exist only in my mind's eye, the plane behind and above my visual plane, as the commenter said above.

Yeah, I don't have a division between the planes unless I choose to. I can separate them, but it's just as easy to keep them together. I think of them as the "inside" and "outside" planes, the only major distinction between them being that other people can only see things in the outside plane. They're not separated in position unless I want them to be.

For what it's worth, I can also hear them. I carry on conversations with people who aren't physically in the room all the time. For example. (My doc assures me that this is fine as long as I know they're not in the room and I don't trust what they say without verifying!) It's extremely useful for bouncing ideas around, even if it's really only an elaborate way of thinking about something by myself in several ways. I find it intuitively easier to discuss something with another person than just to sit and think about it.

I will say it's not much of a tactile sense, though. I can use my hands to manipulate things if I want, but I don't feel them nearly as clearly as I can see and hear them. I guess I also just don't do this as often, because how something physically feels isn't usually terribly important to me. Same reason I look at and listen to a lot more things for information in the outside plane than I touch.

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

#413

Post by acjohnson55 »

e38383 wrote: post #292
acjohnson55 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I think my tendency to visualize makes me a slow reader. I can suppress it with effort, but typically my pace slows down to let me imagine observing the story.

I don't think that's part of "visualization" itself. I don't visualize a scene, but I still can take a long time if it's interesting or has a lot of detail. I remember reading the Lord of the Rings books and it has really long descriptions of the scenery and sometime it took me a very long time to read it, just so I can get all the details. In other parts I read over it as fast as I could to get on with the story. I…

Perhaps, but for me, it's more like having to slow down to let the scene play out in my mind. But that's really interesting to hear about your experience.

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

#414

Post by averageRoyalty »

Kiro wrote: post #274
lesuorac wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way I remember somebody's name. Do you picture name tags on people? It just comes out of nothing in my head.

I always see a face together with the name, yes. The name is mostly audible but I also visualize the text in a white font.

That's entirely alien to me. I cannot picture faces nor text in my head.

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

#415

Post by krapp »

averageRoyalty wrote: post #414
Kiro wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always see a face together with the name, yes. The name is mostly audible but I also visualize the text in a white font.

That's entirely alien to me. I cannot picture faces nor text in my head.

One of the ways I make myself relax and fall asleep is visualizing a countdown from 1000 to 0. Actually visualizing the shapes of the numbers, to occupy that part of my brain, and then mentally saying the numbers as well.

I'm absolutely terrible with faces and names, though, but I think that's mostly due to poor social conditioning.

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

#416

Post by BigParm »

jackjeff wrote: post #206
BigParm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you dream? Dreams are generally heavy on mental imagery.

Not OP. I don’t recall any dreams since childhood. If I had not experienced a few myself, I would have a hard time understanding what a dream even is. And my 10 or so dreams only had abstract images. Defo not like a movie or reality where you can “see” things, people, objects. I don’t recall much about them anyway except being slightly mildly freaked out at the time for experiencing something which was not “real”.

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