But actually it feels more something like:
class Apple { public: string color; string shape; string taste; string recipes[]; };I know what an apple is, I know stuff about it and what properties it has, but it produces no picture (nor code btw…) in my head.
Same here. I know what things should look like and everything but theres no actual picture there, just an abstract concept.
Your recipes are a local string!? Are you storing duplicate recipes for apple pie in your Apple class and your sugar, flour, butter, salt, water, cinnamon, and lemon classes?
This is everything I haven’t seen before. If I am running a table top game like D&D my monsters are literally a list of traits and regurgitated descriptions with no visual details in my own mind. This works out pretty well somehow.
5 here. I explain it to people as a relational database.
We appear to be many. Perhaps some of us should revive the !aphantasia@lemmy.world community at some point?
Solid 1. Reading a book is like watching a movie to me.
My boyfriend used to say that he would never read a book more than once, because he already thoroughly pictured the whole thing. But when watching a movie, he would catch new things on every rewatch. I never understood until now.
I can watch a movie in my head on demand. I thought this was something everyone can do!
Unfortunately doesnt work for movies I haven’t seen ;)
Same. And when I think back about an old book I read, I remember the visuals rather than the words.
I couldn’t tell you the names of all the characters in a book I read 10 years ago, but I can describe the ‘scenes’. All the places they went to, things they saw, and the things I saw them do.
I can rotate a cow in my mind.
are lighting and physics applied
they are now
Are the physics more like Half Life, Boneworks, or Minecraft?
Whichever one I want
Call me when you can rotate a cow with your mind.
For free?!
Often, a cow in my head doesn’t even have legs when not necessary… It often give me headache if I give it a head, colors and legs at the same time
So can I, but I’m not seeing the cow, it’s more like thinking of the process to make it in a 3D modelling program. 🤷♂️
It’d be a parametric cow, too. With sliders, and dropdown lists, and probably a few checkboxes.
Question: when you picture something in your head, do you actually see it clearly, as if it’s right in front of you?
I don’t. My girlfriend claims that she does. I can imagine things on a level 2 or 3, but it’s just a thought in my head, not a detailed image manifesting in front of me.
I’m a 2 on this scale. I can “see” the image. But it’s not like it’s in the world in front of me. It’s not like 3D goggles have drawn a virtual object on the table in front of me. If I’m picturing a football, I’m not just imagining the football; the picture in my mind is of the lawn, and trees, and sun, and whole environment where I am standing looking down at a football.
When I picture something, I can see it clearly, it’s in my mind’s eye. I see it, but it has it’s own environment. It’s like my eyes are outputting the actual primary PC desktop, and my mind’s eye is a separate virtual desktop in a different area, but running off the same processor. For people who haven’t experienced this, I would describe it like dreaming. In a dream you’re seeing things, but not with your eyes. It’s like a dream scene, but my eyes are open and I’m getting visual input too.
I often zone out, or miss parts of what people are saying because I can easily start concentrating on my mental imagery. I find online video meetings incredibly difficult to keep up with because I can easily end up re-living some other fun activity I did recently and concentrating on that instead. I have a bunch of fidget toys on my desk to get me through these online meetings (if I focus on the fidget toys, then my mind doesn’t go to its secondary virtual desktop).
No, I see things in an internal space that doesn’t exist physically.
It’s difficult for me to intentionally do; if I’m just thinking it happens naturally but trying to force it to happen so I can study it is difficult. But it’s not like I hallucinate objects into the room with me. Like, I’m looking at a table across the room, and I’m imagining a pepsi can sitting on it. My mind re-creates the image of the table with the pepsi can on it.
Something I think I’m noticing: My “mind’s eye” doesn’t have peripheral vision, I get a fairly narrow field of view that’s about like my central vision. I don’t imagine in widescreen.
The way I would describe this would be to make another comparison to thinking in general. Do you have an internal narrator, or have songs get stuck in your head? If you do, you are thinking with your “mind’s ear,” so to speak. If you are at all familiar with this concept, even if you can’t imagine absolutely anything you want to hear, it’s a great analog for what it’s like to use your “mind’s eye.” In the same way you don’t literally hear what you think, you don’t actually see what you think either. You just use those parts of the brain to create the sensation and experience it in some way. It doesn’t overtake your primary vision and literally activate photon receptors in your eyes, but it can distract you from that sensory information since you’re using that area of the brain.
Really I am interested in how literal your girlfriend is there, because if that’s not a miscommunication, that just sounds like on-demand hallucination. I could clearly imagine something in front of me. I could manipulate it, I could imagine any of my senses to interact with the object, but at no point does it appear to literally exist in the world as if it’s a hallucination. That would be an insane ability to have, and I don’t think that’s what people generally mean when they use their “mind’s eye.”
No, I see it as though it’s on another “layer” entirely. Also, when I’m focussing on one layer, the other ~80% slips away from my perception.
I’ve always thought this was really hard to describe. I think I’m a 1. The idea of fully picturing something is such a natural thing, but I also don’t know what level of vivid people actually mean.
When I picture the apple, I could easily write a detailed paragraph about what it looks like. I could even easily picture an environment for it that just sort of comes into frame (always on an apple orchard, during the afternoon).
I can easily even put myself in that space mentally.
I’ve just never thought about this being something other people can’t naturally and quickly do that when I saw this question, I assumed people were describing actually fully fooling their senses into the thing physically appearing before them.
I picture it like another monitor or render layer that I can flip to, manipulate, and test in to work out concepts.
I’m convinced that most cases of aphantasia are just a result of the difficulty in commutating the experience of visualizing something.
To me, “seeing” something in my mind’s eye isn’t really similar to actual visual perception. I can imagine an apple and rotate it in my mind but I would describe this as more of an exercise in understanding what that would look like. I can “see” the stem, the striations of color, the shape, the imperfections move as the apple rotates. However, I do not actually visually perceive the apple as if it were a physical object reflecting photons into my eyes, stimulating my retina and causing the conscious perception of the apple. I think this is likely true for others.
If people could actually visually perceive or mentally project whatever they’re imagining into their actual vision, then I believe people would be much better at drawing. You could just imagine this vivid image on the paper and essentially trace it.
I’ve heard the counter argument that this isn’t the way drawing works. I still think that most people draw poorly because of the way that your mind’s eye works, and not because of the way that drawing works. When they put pencil to paper, the truth about the inadequacy of their visual concept becomes apparent. Their mind was tricking them into thinking they held a complex visual idea but really, it was a vague conception.
I’m convinced that holding something in your mind’s is far closer to “understanding” than it is to “seeing”.
I can “see” the stem, the striations of color, the shape, the imperfections move as the apple rotates
I have aphantasia, and I can’t do this.
I always thought aphantasia was a thing you either had entirely, or not. I thought it ought to be a scale but I never heard anyone say it was until today. I’m a 4.
There was an interesting comment when this image was posted to reddit 6 years ago.
quadraspididilis
I’d call myself a 3, but I don’t find the twitter illustration very accurate. The apple isn’t low resolution like in the drawing, but it is insubstantial. Like hold your hand a couple of inches in front of one eye and then try to read this; you can still see your hand, but it’s mostly see-through because your brain is mostly ignoring that eye. My experience of picturing the apple is like that, but the apple is in focus. Also, I have a hard time holding the image for more than a second.
This is me, but with a very faint ghost hand. I also can’t hold it still. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I become a 5. Sometimes if I have an edible I can hold on to images longer.
I feel like i understand so much more now about myself and others. This is why I struggle to make art that isn’t just copying something. This is why I struggle with role-playing games.
For most of my life, I assumed ‘Close your eyes and picture x’ to be a turn of phrase, not something you actually do.
Full on 5. There is no picturing. I can imagine things, I can reason things, but picturing, no, none, nothing.
I’m a 1 on this scale, I can picture things in my mind very vividly, and the idea some people can’t is fascinating and a little scary to me.
I find recalling a picture and a smell are the same in my mind I can describe it, but there is no visual.
That’s a very good explanation.
I believe mine has changed over the years, possibly from underuse, but the struggle to hold onto images is real. I can create an image in my head and it can be rather detailed even… but if it’s more than a single item, I can’t hold details well for more than a part of it at a time… like having tunnel vision almost. Whatever im focusing on only… and it takes increasing focus to hold it and not lose it.
Solidly 5 (no visual dreams either or much of any sense memory in general) and I thought “picture this” and similar sayings or instruction was figure of speech until aphantasia as a word became popular…less than a decade ago? idk I learned of it during covid I think.
4 1/2. I can “plot” various shapes, etc. but it isn’t visual, it’s spacial information. It’s like an un-rendered cad file. Also, the more I concentrate on a detail, the less I perceive of the whole.
Same here.
Love your description, I’m like this too ! Can’t have more than a detail at a time in the head: Either a color or a general shape or a specific detail; but no detail & overall view at the same time
Between a 4 and a 5. I also have no inner monologue, just thoughts in the form of impulses and instincts
Maybe you mean anendophasia? Aphantasia is someone who either can’t or find it hard to imagine. I have anendophasia and have little or no inner monologue. Unlike those with inner monologues, I tend to imagine what I will do instead of speaking in my mind what I will do.
Ooh yea I think I have both Aphantasia and Anendophasia (I also find it hard to imagine all distinctive visual characteristics of an object at a time)
Do you find yourself talking out loud yourself more because of that?
Nope
2 when I don’t think about it, 1 with some effort.
- I cant picture my own partners face in my head.
Can you picture other stuff? Anything that’s not human faces? Prosopagnosia is real, and I have it too.
Not really, at least not as an “image”. I have a concept of what an apple looks like, I just can’t image it in my mind.
Yup, that’s full-on aphantasia!
The tricky part, and I guess its true for many conditions, is that I can’t imagine any other way for things to be.
Also, nothing like the movie :D
Having sat down and read some more, I dont think I have prosopagnosia. I can’t picture her face, but I can recognise/remember people by their faces.
It sounds pretty tough to live with, have you always had it?
Yeah. It got worse after my second stroke.
On the other hand, every time I see my wife, is the first time.
But if I can articulate details about a person in language, I can remember that language. It’s got a poor accuracy rate, but is better than nothing. Usually it’s just remembering clothing, style, and hair.
1 i can make a 3d model with full detail color reflections and picture it at any angle
Saaame. It’s neat to be able to do. On the flip side though, I have ludicrously vivid dreams, and I can feel all senses (especially pain) in my dreams.
i have very vivid dreqms to but i dont feel pain and dont need glasses etc
I guess when it comes to visualizing things, the apple I’d see would be between a 1 and a 2.
But to me when I try to fully imagine an apple, I also imagine how I can feel the texture of its skin, the weight of it in my hand, the taste and sensation when taking a bite out of it, the smell of the juice, the stickiness of my fingers afterwards, etc.
Or is this also included in the scale? Because then I guess it’s a 1.I’m a 5 on this scale. I was 50 years old when I discovered aphasia. When discussing this with my father I realised he has eidetic memory. This prompted me to think back and I remembered that used to see pictures in my head but it changed when I had traumatic head injury at 7 years old.
I am a 5 now and I think I used to be a 1, have had multiple head injuries as well…
A complete 5 for both me and my partner, but her daughter has 1 to the point of “watching movies in her head” when she’s bored. Her uncle is the exact same way, at least as a child.
