The Money Mustache Community
Other => Off Topic => Topic started by: lifejoy on July 09, 2016, 10:09:14 AM
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http://sapir.psych.wisc.edu/~lupyan/blake_ross_aphantasia.pdf
Trippiest article I've read in a long time. Definitely a must-read!!
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Not so much blind in my mind, as insane in the membrane.
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I have this! I only realised recently that other people are different to me. I didnt know the name for it though.
I was only discussing this the other day with friends who all seemed to think I was crazy
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Wild. Mental visualization really enriches my life. How interesting that there are those that don't have that.
Thanks for the interesting read!
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I am like that as well. I'll know what someone looks like, but can't "see" them. I really thought that everyone else was using a figure of speech when they said they could "visualize" something, until I saw something on FB about it. Blew my mind.
Take a camera with you when you want to know what something looks like.
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I've always been able to visualize things well. I can completely rearrange a room's furniture and I used to visually do math by "seeing" the numbers until someone asked why I had crazy eyes. I remember the moment when I learned most people can't do that. Learning people can't visualize as well as I can helped me learn how to communicate better.
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I've always been able to visualize things well. I can completely rearrange a room's furniture and I used to visually do math by "seeing" the numbers until someone asked why I had crazy eyes. I remember the moment when I learned most people can't do that. Learning people can't visualize as well as I can helped me learn how to communicate better.
In what ways has this realization affected the way you communicate? I'm always looking for new and better ways to get through to people :)
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I've always been able to visualize things well. I can completely rearrange a room's furniture and I used to visually do math by "seeing" the numbers until someone asked why I had crazy eyes. I remember the moment when I learned most people can't do that. Learning people can't visualize as well as I can helped me learn how to communicate better.
In what ways has this realization affected the way you communicate? I'm always looking for new and better ways to get through to people :)
Things like describing a thing/situation or giving directions I now try to talk it through their blank perspective instead of my visual perspective. I also tend to look off to the side during conversations because I am "seeing" whatever I'm talking about, so I try to remember that eye contact is important.
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I once went to a beginner's art class. 10 of us used the same materials, had the same instruction, the same still life or life model to paint, were in the same room at the same time. Every picture produced was so different from all the others, and so individual. We all saw and interpreted and reproduced the world around us so differently it struck me as astonishing that we manage to communicate with each other at all.
Which is not quite the same point as the article, but maybe related.
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I have aphantasia as well.
I, too, only realized maybe 5ish years ago (in my mid-20s) that my brain was different than most in not being able to visualize.
Aphantasia became a popular pop-psychology topic a year or two ago. Googling aphantasia you can see lots of articles on it from 2015 and 2016 (BBC, NYT, etc.)
I am getting better at "picturing" things through hacks I've developed.
But if I close my eyes, I can't conjure up an image of, say, an apple. Or a clock. Or my mother's face. Or anything, really. But try to close your eyes and picture your best friend. I guess most people can. That seems weird to me.
One other thing I discovered a few years ago (several years after finding out not everyone pictures things) that's different about my brain, that I'm curious to hear from other people with aphantasia: I don't have a "voice" inside my head.
Just like I always thought people "picturing" things was a metaphor (and you don't actually "see" it in your mind, though apparently most people do), I thought the voice in your head was a metaphor.
I don't have the internal monologue/running dialogue/whatever you want to call it.
The thing that meditation is supposed to help quiet? I didn't get that, because most of the time my mind is quiet, naturally, unless I'm purposefully thinking something.
Can anyone else with aphantasia confirm if they do or don't have an inner monologue/dialogue? I'm curious if the two are related, or if my brain is weird in two distinct ways.
EDIT: Just read the article linked in the OP, which I had opened in a background tab, and is apparently someone's facebook post. They have an inner monologue. So apparently not all people with aphantasia are missing that. Anyone else with a data point for me? Mine is somewhat different from theirs though. I do picture things in dreams, because when I wake up, I have the data about it, even though I can no longer picture it. And I have had songs "stuck" in my head, and they haven't. But going through their mind is "All narration, all the time." (direct quote.) I don't have narration at all. So some of the aspects are different, but the core not picturing stuff is the same.
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My wife is like that. She does not picture anything in her head. And she rarely has an inner monologue. We'll be sitting chilling out and I'll ask what she is thinking about. She very often says nothing... as in, seriously not one thing, which blows my mind.
There is never been a minute in my entire life that I thought of nothing. My mind is always busy with an inner monologue, visualization, daydreaming, whatever. I can't think of a second of my life that I was thinking of nothing.
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Thanks for sharing, I never knew people were so different.
Not exactly related, but as someone who can visualise pretty much anything in my head while I'm awake, I no longer recall my dreams. No memory and no visualisations when I wake up (an exception occurs about once a year).
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I have aphantasia as well.
One other thing I discovered a few years ago (several years after finding out not everyone pictures things) that's different about my brain, that I'm curious to hear from other people with aphantasia: I don't have a "voice" inside my head.
Just like I always thought people "picturing" things was a metaphor (and you don't actually "see" it in your mind, though apparently most people do), I thought the voice in your head was a metaphor.
I don't have the internal monologue/running dialogue/whatever you want to call it.
The thing that meditation is supposed to help quiet? I didn't get that, because most of the time my mind is quiet, naturally, unless I'm purposefully thinking something.
Can anyone else with aphantasia confirm if they do or don't have an inner monologue/dialogue? I'm curious if the two are related, or if my brain is weird in two distinct ways.
EDIT: Just read the article linked in the OP, which I had opened in a background tab, and is apparently someone's facebook post. They have an inner monologue. So apparently not all people with aphantasia are missing that. Anyone else with a data point for me? Mine is somewhat different from theirs though. I do picture things in dreams, because when I wake up, I have the data about it, even though I can no longer picture it. And I have had songs "stuck" in my head, and they haven't. But going through their mind is "All narration, all the time." (direct quote.) I don't have narration at all. So some of the aspects are different, but the core not picturing stuff is the same.
I have an inner monolog and aphantasia. Infact i wish i could turn my inner monologue off. Though i think mine is more to do with my anxiety as its pretty much a constant voice in my head telling me things are going to go wrong. Not a running log of whats happening.
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My wife is like that. She does not picture anything in her head. And she rarely has an inner monologue. We'll be sitting chilling out and I'll ask what she is thinking about. She very often says nothing... as in, seriously not one thing, which blows my mind.
Okay, so far count: 2-2
Me, PFHC wife: Aphantasia with no inner monologue
FB author from OP, nnls: Aphantasia with inner monologue
Very small sample size, but possibly somewhat correlated, since I feel both are rare, and so even finding someone else within that early of a sample size it seems unlikely to have the overlap if they aren't correlated (due to multiplying the odds, finding someone like that this early would be extremely unlikely).
Thanks for the anecdotes! :)
And yeah, nnls, my wife (who doesn't have aphantasia, and does have the inner monologue, so quite normal in both respects), is often jealous of my lack of inner monologue. Hers is often critical, I guess.
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Yes i find mone distracts me from real life as I am too busy trying to not listen to the horrible things it is saying.
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Yes i find mone distracts me from real life as I am too busy trying to not listen to the horrible things it is saying.
Ugh, that's unfortunate! I don't think hers is that bad, more like replaying old conversations.
Definitely look into meditation though, I've heard it's quite helpful for that. And some positive self-talk, and confidence booster stuff could help as well.
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I don't have the internal monologue/running dialogue/whatever you want to call it.
The thing that meditation is supposed to help quiet? I didn't get that, because most of the time my mind is quiet, naturally, unless I'm purposefully thinking something.
Not to sound rude, but how do you think? Do you have to write things down when weighing two decisions?
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I don't have the internal monologue/running dialogue/whatever you want to call it.
The thing that meditation is supposed to help quiet? I didn't get that, because most of the time my mind is quiet, naturally, unless I'm purposefully thinking something.
Not to sound rude, but how do you think? Do you have to write things down when weighing two decisions?
No, I can purposefully create lines of thoughts. It just doesn't "wander."
I describe it like a train track.
I set my thoughts on a track, and it goes until it hits the conclusion. I might, along the way, see a side track split off, and switch to that, run to the end of that, then go back to the main track until that end. But it's purposeful.
And at the end, my mind is blank, unless I purposefully set it thinking about another thing.
I don't typically have random thoughts out of the blue, unless they're triggered by something. Often I set myself triggers to have thoughts occur. But from what I understand from discussions from my wife, she might see a cat and think "oh, there's a cat.. i had a cat when i was a kid.. i also had a horse*.. wow, it's been a long time since I rode a horse..or a motorcycle.. i like riding motorcycles.. i wonder where my motorcycle helmet is, is it in the back of the closet? man we need to clean out the closet" and then she'd say out loud to me something about needing to clean out the closet, and I ask what made her think of that.. and sometimes she can trace it back to seeing the cat, other times she has no idea. But it's like a running dialogue like that?
*This is a made-up example.. she didn't have a horse, just trying to illustrate a point.
That's as best as I understand.
I would never get there that way. I'd see a cat, and go "a cat" and then my mind goes back to blank. Perhaps if I set a trigger in my mind around the cat, I might go "a cat. oh, i need to feed it" and my mind would go back to blank, and I'd go feed it.
So I think thoughts, but it's mostly extemporaneously, and then it stops.
I can recall things, and put them together on the fly, but it's not a running dialogue. It's a set of thoughts that then stops.
Also when it is thoughts, it's not a "voice". It's more like a list of facts. Which is also how I "see" things, since I don't visualize them.
I also don't sub-vocalize when I read, for example. I realize others don't do this, but they train it out of themselves? I've never done it. The words just are in my head, but not auditorily. They're just.. there. I don't know how to describe it.
But I have no "voice" in my head. The fact that you do is really, really weird to me. MUCH weirder than the visualizing thing. :)
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Interesting topic.
I have never really had much of an internal monologue. On the rare occasions I notice it, my internal monologue tends to be simple, enthusiastic, and repetitive.
I also have a limited ability to visualize things. While I can visualize memories and fantasies, unlike the Author, my mental images tend to be blurry, poorly defined, and difficult to maintain. I think this is largely a result of excessive reading and writing. For me, it is easier to capture memories in words, rather than pictures.
Like the author, I tend to filter out sensory descriptions in stories and focus primarily on plot development. I do not tend to remember descriptions about character's appearance, unless it relates to the plot or another character's reaction. And I generally forget about the image until the author brings it up again (e.g., Harry Potter's scar, the shape of his wand, etc.).
When I wrote my own fiction, I deliberately refrained from providing character descriptions that had no bearing on the plot or other character's reactions. This was apparently off-putting for some of my readers. I had initially thought that people who needed the additional detail would automatically fill in the missing details in their mental picture, but apparently some readers apparently struggled to create a sufficiently detailed image of the character without the additional character description, which negatively impacted their reading experiences.
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Wow, really fascinating, thanks Lifejoy.
I sometimes sub-vocalise while I'm reading, but more often I don't. I generally don't have a strong visual mental image of characters that I am reading about though, unless I concentrate quite hard - by which I mean that I can conjure up images of my favourite characters right now, but reading a book is not like watching a video on the inside of my eyelids - I don't see the characters acting out the story.
I also have the inner monologue, very similar to how ARS describes his wife's. Plus I also sometimes 'hear voices' which I can identify as other people's. These are usually people I've just spent time with, and generally people who I find it difficult to be around, my Mum, a friend who I had a difficult relationship with. These are sometimes easily audible, sometimes it's hard to make out what they are saying - but it's generally critical. I usually interpret it as a sign that I'm over-stimulated and stressed. I've heard that hearing voices is OK, so long as you are aware that the voices are coming from the inside of your head. It's when you think they are coming from outside your head that it's a problem... eek, I hope so.
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ARS - just curious, but how are you at small talk or casual conversation? My DH is best at conversation that has a "track" so to speak, but would find it difficult to talk in the "cat to horse to motorcycle" style that some people think in. My thought process is closer to your wife's.
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I like my inner monologue "voice in my head" because I use it to tell myself positive things (usually) or to reframe things with extreme optimism. It is the story I tell myself, the lens through which I see the world, and I know I can use it to make sure I'm seeing through rose-coloured glasses :)
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This is all fascinating.
I have Aphantasia with no inner monologue, but I have music constantly running in my head.
If I'm reading something and come upon the word "tomorrow", my music changes to "the sun will come out tomorrow" and stays until something else triggers a change. I have several standbys, including my 50 year old high school fight song, for when nothing else comes up. I don't do whole songs, just the same phrase, over, and over, and over.
A few years ago my parents and I all discovered that we have the same problem recognizing people. We had all been hiding it, but when one admitted it the others did too. We have to know someone really well to recognize them right away. There are three or four blonde women I see frequently on TV that I can't tell apart. Martha Stewart, and Diane Sawyer, at least two more are news people.
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ARS - just curious, but how are you at small talk or casual conversation? My DH is best at conversation that has a "track" so to speak, but would find it difficult to talk in the "cat to horse to motorcycle" style that some people think in. My thought process is closer to your wife's.
It's something I've had to work at, but I think that's more related to my being an introvert than the way I think.
I have certain "go tos" and stuff, triggers like I described above. But I'm very bad at spontaneously generating, and so there can be awkward pauses as I struggle to generate something to talk about.
But again, I think that's somewhat common, and more related to my personality than type of thinking. Of course, I could be wrong, I find that out all the time. :)
A few years ago my parents and I all discovered that we have the same problem recognizing people. We had all been hiding it, but when one admitted it the others did too. We have to know someone really well to recognize them right away. There are three or four blonde women I see frequently on TV that I can't tell apart. Martha Stewart, and Diane Sawyer, at least two more are news people.
I think that's a totally separate thing than aphantasia. I have no problem recognizing people (I'm great with faces--terrible with names), nor did the FB author.
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I sometimes sub-vocalise while I'm reading, but more often I don't. I generally don't have a strong visual mental image of characters that I am reading about though, unless I concentrate quite hard - by which I mean that I can conjure up images of my favourite characters right now, but reading a book is not like watching a video on the inside of my eyelids - I don't see the characters acting out the story.
Perhaps this is why some people enjoy reading more than others. When I read, its like the words fade away to a movie. I don't notice anything but what I am picturing happen. Actually, I would describe all my visualizing like a movie where they can add special effects and have images swirl around them.
This whole thread is so fascinating.
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I always knew some people had the ability to picture things in their mind, but I didn't realize that not being able to picture things was so rare. I close my eyes and just see nothing. I know what something looks like, but I have no ability to picture it. I figured lots of people were like that, and like the author, that people often used "picture this" as a metaphor.
I have trouble "remembering" things happening in my past, but I do know that they happened. And if I've seen a photo of an event, I'm much more likely to recall details of it, as I can't really replay it in my head. I do occasionally dream pictures though, but I don't often remember it.
ARS, I do have a running monologue in the way you describe your wife's, in that I can think from one thing to the next and then mention something that seems completely unrelated.
I tend to skim books that I'm reading and sort of fly by the details, since I also can't really "picture" the scene they're setting, which Blake describes in the article.
Thanks for sharing it!
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Interesting topic. I definitely have a very active inner voice-especially if I am troubled by something or trying to work out a solution, etc. My inner voice can be critical too. I did not realize that some people did not or could not picture something. I actually can't even imagine having an empty mind. I have used meditation to quiet my mind.
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My wife is like that. She does not picture anything in her head. And she rarely has an inner monologue. We'll be sitting chilling out and I'll ask what she is thinking about. She very often says nothing... as in, seriously not one thing, which blows my mind.
Okay, so far count: 2-2
Me, PFHC wife: Aphantasia with no inner monologue
FB author from OP, nnls: Aphantasia with inner monologue
So, I talked in depth with the old lady, and I need to remove her from the aphantasia list. She can picture things in her mind. Just not things she hasn't seen before. I.e. she can't fabricate something that she has never seen.
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This is a bizarre concept to me, especially as an introvert. I spend most of my free time living inside my head, which would be far more boring if I couldn't picture things, or have internal conversations. Or does that make me a wee bit crazy?! My inner monologue begins before I am fully awake in the morning and I often drop off to sleep listening to her too. I can control it, determine not to listen, etc..but it took me a long time to learn how. When I'm totally alone, such as in the car, it just comes right out loud.
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I imagine this made for a very boring puberty.
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This is all fascinating.
I have Aphantasia with no inner monologue, but I have music constantly running in my head.
If I'm reading something and come upon the word "tomorrow", my music changes to "the sun will come out tomorrow" and stays until something else triggers a change. I have several standbys, including my 50 year old high school fight song, for when nothing else comes up. I don't do whole songs, just the same phrase, over, and over, and over.
A few years ago my parents and I all discovered that we have the same problem recognizing people. We had all been hiding it, but when one admitted it the others did too. We have to know someone really well to recognize them right away. There are three or four blonde women I see frequently on TV that I can't tell apart. Martha Stewart, and Diane Sawyer, at least two more are news people.
I have often thought that the reason people have music/TV constantly running is because they don't want to listen to themselves think. Music is literally an escape from the self.
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My wife is like that. She does not picture anything in her head. And she rarely has an inner monologue. We'll be sitting chilling out and I'll ask what she is thinking about. She very often says nothing... as in, seriously not one thing, which blows my mind.
Okay, so far count: 2-2
Me, PFHC wife: Aphantasia with no inner monologue
FB author from OP, nnls: Aphantasia with inner monologue
So, I talked in depth with the old lady, and I need to remove her from the aphantasia list. She can picture things in her mind. Just not things she hasn't seen before. I.e. she can't fabricate something that she has never seen.
Darn! Thanks for checking though! :)
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I've noticed this topic since it began. Finally clicked over and I'm blown away by this conversation . So much food for thought. I am a "cat-horse-motorcycle" processor, with lightning-fast speed. Sometimes when I am really tired, I come up with some really silly-sounding comments. They are completely illogical to others (poor DH!), but make total sense to me. Tired now, so I better come back later, lol.
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I've noticed this topic since it began. Finally clicked over and I'm blown away by this conversation . So much food for thought. I am a "cat-horse-motorcycle" processor, with lightning-fast speed. Sometimes when I am really tired, I come up with some really silly-sounding comments. They are completely illogical to others (poor DH!), but make total sense to me. Tired now, so I better come back later, lol.
This is the way my mind works, as well, DianeC. I find I often have to explain the jumps in conversation I make. It all makes sense once its explained, but the looks of confusion I get first off are pretty comical. :)
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Perhaps this is why some people enjoy reading more than others. When I read, its like the words fade away to a movie. I don't notice anything but what I am picturing happen. Actually, I would describe all my visualizing like a movie where they can add special effects and have images swirl around them.
This is how I read. The words almost disappear and, as you said, a movie takes their place.
How fascinating anything else would be... Mr. arebelspy, do you just process the words for their meaning alone?
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I've noticed this topic since it began. Finally clicked over and I'm blown away by this conversation . So much food for thought. I am a "cat-horse-motorcycle" processor, with lightning-fast speed. Sometimes when I am really tired, I come up with some really silly-sounding comments. They are completely illogical to others (poor DH!), but make total sense to me. Tired now, so I better come back later, lol.
I also have this problem, and will jump between topics too quickly for other people. Or if I am writting things down my brain works quicker than I can write so I skip words which used to be an issue when I was at school writting essays. Now with typing its not so much of a problem as I can generally type quicker than I write.
My mum also has a habit of jumping between conversations and then picking up old conversations hours or days later. I having grown up with her can generally follow or pick up what she is talking about but other people not so much.
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This is how I read. The words almost disappear and, as you said, a movie takes their place.
How fascinating anything else would be... Mr. arebelspy, do you just process the words for their meaning alone?
Yes.
EDIT: The wife, for example, will be disappointed in a movie if the characters don't look like she pictured them. I have no picture in my head. At best I have a list of facts of their description, if I bothered to note it, but if they don't match up (as long as it's not an important characteristic), I may not even notice, as I probably don't "pull up" this list of facts when watching. I imagine others with aphantasia though may pull up their list more readily though, if they have the inner monologue.
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Perhaps this is why some people enjoy reading more than others. When I read, its like the words fade away to a movie. I don't notice anything but what I am picturing happen. Actually, I would describe all my visualizing like a movie where they can add special effects and have images swirl around them.
This is how I read. The words almost disappear and, as you said, a movie takes their place.
How fascinating anything else would be... Mr. arebelspy, do you just process the words for their meaning alone?
I really enjoy reading, will usually choose to read over watching a movie or tv. But I dont visualise it at all.
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No, I can purposefully create lines of thoughts. It just doesn't "wander."
I describe it like a train track.
I set my thoughts on a track, and it goes until it hits the conclusion. I might, along the way, see a side track split off, and switch to that, run to the end of that, then go back to the main track until that end. But it's purposeful.
And at the end, my mind is blank, unless I purposefully set it thinking about another thing.
I don't typically have random thoughts out of the blue, unless they're triggered by something. Often I set myself triggers to have thoughts occur. But from what I understand from discussions from my wife, she might see a cat and think "oh, there's a cat.. i had a cat when i was a kid.. i also had a horse*.. wow, it's been a long time since I rode a horse..or a motorcycle.. i like riding motorcycles.. i wonder where my motorcycle helmet is, is it in the back of the closet? man we need to clean out the closet" and then she'd say out loud to me something about needing to clean out the closet, and I ask what made her think of that.. and sometimes she can trace it back to seeing the cat, other times she has no idea. But it's like a running dialogue like that?
*This is a made-up example.. she didn't have a horse, just trying to illustrate a point.
That's as best as I understand.
I would never get there that way. I'd see a cat, and go "a cat" and then my mind goes back to blank. Perhaps if I set a trigger in my mind around the cat, I might go "a cat. oh, i need to feed it" and my mind would go back to blank, and I'd go feed it.
So I think thoughts, but it's mostly extemporaneously, and then it stops.
I can recall things, and put them together on the fly, but it's not a running dialogue. It's a set of thoughts that then stops.
Also when it is thoughts, it's not a "voice". It's more like a list of facts. Which is also how I "see" things, since I don't visualize them.
I also don't sub-vocalize when I read, for example. I realize others don't do this, but they train it out of themselves? I've never done it. The words just are in my head, but not auditorily. They're just.. there. I don't know how to describe it.
But I have no "voice" in my head. The fact that you do is really, really weird to me. MUCH weirder than the visualizing thing. :)
It makes me wonder what your fluid intelligence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence) is like.
I'm an engineer and have always rated high in fluid intelligence. I'm a highly intuitive fluid thinker (which is a cool, but frustrating combination). I believe my high fluid intelligence comes from being able to visualize a problem in its entirety. Basically, my thinking works completely opposite of yours. There is no linearity. I am able to "picture" the problem, all aspects of it at once. But, I do not focus on it. My mind goes into a fluid state, constantly shifting (as I write this I have a mental image of what I am attempting to describe... it is so strange to realize you will not get anything) like a pot of pasta at a roiling boil. Often quickly, a solution pops into my conscious. Near as I can tell, solutions are derived by my subconscious accumulating micro data points and fitting them together until a complete picture is developed. When a solution comes to the front, I test it against the data I have gathered. If it matches, it is set aside as possible, and my mind returns to the boiling pot. Eventually I have to turn the process off because my subconscious is an infinitely creative beast and it will keep spitting out solutions well past the point of reason.
Its a pretty cool process and I am glad my mind works like it does. It moves fast and is able to handle complex problems, which I am endlessly thankful for. But, as I mentioned, it can be frustrating. Both because I'm either correct or spectacularly wrong, at about an even rate, and because (if correct) it is difficult to explain how I came to the solution. As I have gotten older, I am learning to mine my subconscious to discover where the micro data points came from and to drive the process into the conscious using confirmed macro data points. This is proving very helpful as a vast majority of my fellow engineers do not think like I do. Most have high crystallized intelligence and make decisions based upon sensing, not intuition...
Which leads me to wondering how your intuition is. Seems that your thoughts are so rigidly logical, that you may have a hard time connecting small, seemingly inconsequential data points into something cohesive. Where are you on the intuitive vs sensing scale?
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Or if I am writing things down my brain works quicker than I can write so I skip words which used to be an issue when I was at school writing essays. Now with typing its not so much of a problem as I can generally type quicker than I write.
Ditto, except my mind still outpaces my typing.
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Or if I am writing things down my brain works quicker than I can write so I skip words which used to be an issue when I was at school writing essays. Now with typing its not so much of a problem as I can generally type quicker than I write.
Ditto, except my mind still outpaces my typing.
I can type pretty quickly most of the time, though sometimes my mind goes a bit too quick.
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Or if I am writing things down my brain works quicker than I can write so I skip words which used to be an issue when I was at school writing essays. Now with typing its not so much of a problem as I can generally type quicker than I write.
Ditto, except my mind still outpaces my typing.
I can type pretty quickly most of the time, though sometimes my mind goes a bit too quick.
Yeah. Not so much for me. I'm a five finger typer. Two on the left hand, three on the right. Ya... they don't teach that in school. :)
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Lack of inner monologue doesn't mean I don't think quickly. On the contrary, I tend to have answers instantly, perhaps because of that.
I just asked my wife "How many people have you met in your life smarter than I am?", she thought about it for a bit and said "Maybbee... 5?"
Intelligence is not a problem for me.. emotions can be.
I imagine most of the people on here are the same though, I'd bet many of us were in the upper end of everything we've ever done, finishing in the 99th percentile in all tests, etc.
Inner monologue, or being able to picture things, doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, from what I can tell.
EDIT: This post seemed somewhat braggy, but I don't really know how to word it otherwise to address your question. My intent with it was not to toot my own horn.
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Lack of inner monologue doesn't mean I don't think quickly. On the contrary, I tend to have answers instantly, perhaps because of that.
I just asked my wife "How many people have you met in your life smarter than I am?", she thought about it for a bit and said "Maybbee... 5?"
Intelligence is not a problem for me.. emotions can be.
I imagine most of the people on here are the same though, I'd bet many of us were in the upper end of everything we've ever done, finishing in the 99th percentile in all tests, etc.
Inner monologue, or being able to picture things, doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, from what I can tell.
EDIT: This post seemed somewhat braggy, but I don't really know how to word it otherwise to address your question. My intent with it was not to toot my own horn.
I hear ya.
I didn't intend to infer you weren't intelligent. It's apparent you are a high functioning individual. I was asking about your fluid intelligence, which is just a part of your total intelligence.
Check out https://iqpro.org/ (https://iqpro.org/) and take the test in the middle of the page to see how you do. Don't bother paying for the result at the end, obviously, but take it and see how you think you did. These type of tests were where I always did very well, and it seems it is because of my ability to visualize the answers. I wonder if someone with aphantasia, like yourself, may find them challenging.
By the way, Luminosity (a pay site) tests, and supposedly, improves your fluid intelligence. It is largely visual and requires you to hold an image in your head for increasingly long times as the games progress.
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I lol'd at being called a "high functioning individual"... makes me sound like I have autism or something.
I think my fluid intelligence is high. As far as that test, I did the whole thing. It was simple pattern recognition. There were about four I had to think about, and one I guessed on.
Things that trouble me more are spacial things where I have to rearrange in my head.
Like word jumbles. That's quite difficult for me, because I can't visualize the letters and "scramble" them around. Or if I play scrabble.. I manually continually move the tiles around. My wife sits and stares at her board, maybe occasionally moves a tile or two around, but I'm constantly flipping things and moving tiles.
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This is really interesting to me. Thanks for posting!
I... think I have this? because I identified with nearly everything in the article. Particularly the example of closing my eyes and visualizing a red triangle - I visualize it but I don't actually see it. Which when I write, sounds crazy. It's almost like I am looking at an area, seeing nothing, but then am constructing a "this is a triangle. a triangle has 3 sides. it's red, so it's red" type of explanation in my head.
Thinking of other things, I basically take the facts I can know about them and sort of put them into a "picture" as they come into my mind. Or maybe this is what "visualizing" actually is? For me, when I try to visualize something, it's almost as if there is a pen that is making a picture but only as I think of the relevant information/facts composing it.
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Whenever I try to picture something in my head it is constructed of legos. I'm not sure if I'm actually picturing the thing, or if 7 year old me just saw it once, and put together the instructions for how to build it out of legos, and adult me just follows the instructions very carefully.
I definitely have an inner monologue. I notice it most when I am reading. Sometimes I can't make out the story I'm reading because of all the other shit in my head competing for attention.
It's like having a screaming baby, a toddler, a pre-teen, a teen, and a senior citizen all trying to get my attention while I'm trying to do something, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
But sometimes the monologue stops. Particularly if I am very engaged. In many ways this is how I judge how good something is. Really excellent food, great books, fun activities can silence the monologue. If I can't drown out the other thoughts, then the book isn't all that good, and so I'll set it down.
I think of it like an operating system. There are a bunch of programs running in the background. There's the "don't shit your pants" program and the "keep your finger out of your nose" program and the "mouth closed while chewing" program, and most of the time these programs leak into my consciousness, unless that consciousness is fully engaged in something.
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Every so often something arrives in my life as a colossal revelation which breaks apart everything I thought I knew about how other people experience the world and it takes me days to get over it. I remember as a child the horror and fascination of it really coming home to me that French people think in their heads in French. I feel like my world has shattered and I will have to work out how to stick it back together. Other people are just SO complicated and weird!
I have a very extroverted (for lack of a better descriptor) friend and we both had a moment of revelation a while ago. I realised that he really does just say things as soon as they pop into his head without considering them first, and so I should not view his words as weighty or consequential because he doesn't. He realised that when he asks a question and I don't answer immediately, it's just because I'm thinking and want to be sure of my answer (positive or negative!), and not because I'm trying to make up a nice way to tell him his idea is terrible. It was earth-shattering for each of us, and he still teases me: "Just thinking?" "Yep, just thinking!"
I find it hard to picture things in my head unless I am alone, and then I generally find it easy and pleasant. I think this is because I am one of life's monotaskers and easily overwhelmed by sensory input, particularly from people. I enjoy trying out different pictures in my head, like different outfits or things we might have for dinner. However, I cannot picture faces very well at all. You'd think I'd know what my husband looks like but he's been away for a few days and now I cannot picture him at all. I could describe his appearance in factual terms (brown hair, glasses, etc) but I cannot summon up a mental picture at all. And when I dream, I don't dream faces. I might be dreaming about being at work with some colleagues but it's like my dream focus is about a foot below their heads so while I know they have faces, all I really get a proper sense of are their bodies and clothes.
All this is so... strange. Trying to imagine what it must be like to have someone else's imagination. Like trying to feel what it must be like to have someone else's feelings. Like a fundamental inter-human epistemic distance.
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The strangest part for me to read was the part about not being able to hear music in your head. Learning a piece of music without being able to hear it in your head first would be incredibly difficult.
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You'd think I'd know what my husband looks like but he's been away for a few days and now I cannot picture him at all. I could describe his appearance in factual terms (brown hair, glasses, etc) but I cannot summon up a mental picture at all. And when I dream, I don't dream faces. I might be dreaming about being at work with some colleagues but it's like my dream focus is about a foot below their heads so while I know they have faces, all I really get a proper sense of are their bodies and clothes.
Whoa, that's hard for me to imagine (haha). I was aware of antaphasia and prosopagnosia, but it seems bizarre to be able to form mental images at will, and to be able to recognize people by their faces, but to be unable to form mental images of familiar people's faces. I can form a mental image of practically any acquaintance without any effort. Even people from the arbitrarily distant past. Like first-grade classmates that I haven't seen or spoken to since. It's hard for me to even think of someone as an acquaintance without having a mental image of their face to go with it. It's a bit unsettling to imagine what it might be like to be suddenly placed into someone else's mind.
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The strangest part for me to read was the part about not being able to hear music in your head. Learning a piece of music without being able to hear it in your head first would be incredibly difficult.
I would imagine that unusually talented musicians, and especially composers, have a particularly strong "mind's ear." To be able to imagine something you've never heard clearly and vividly enough to reproduce it in the physical world. And that talented visual artists have an unusually vivid "mind's eye"; otherwise they'd just have to be casting about with paint or whatever and hoping that what happens in front of their physical eyes turns out to be nice-looking? They wouldn't be trying to bring to life something that is in their heads.
Every so often something arrives in my life as a colossal revelation which breaks apart everything I thought I knew about how other people experience the world and it takes me days to get over it. I remember as a child the horror and fascination of it really coming home to me that French people think in their heads in French. I feel like my world has shattered and I will have to work out how to stick it back together. Other people are just SO complicated and weird!
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I don't really have an inner monologue in English, at least when I'm doing my most natural, zoned-out thinking. I think in linear sentences only when reading someone else's words/imagining a conversation with another person (perhaps an "inner dialogue"?), or when I'm doing very deliberate thinking that does not come naturally (like thinking through a complicated math-related concept). My "easy" thinking is more a combination of physical and emotional feelings, non-language-based impressions, and visualizations. I think about needing to go to the store by noticing I'm hungry, flashing back to an image of my empty fridge, recalling the smell/taste of a particular dish that sounds good, and having a little bit of a restless feeling in my legs and body as I subconsciously get ready to leave the apartment. I don't think, in English, "Self, you are hungry and out of food. Let's go to the store."
As a result, I often think in ways that are non-linear, jump around, and are often difficult to explain to others without spending some time "translating" them into English. It's actually kind of similar to the experience discussed up thread, about how you can "lose yourself" in a book and not even really notice the individual words in front of your eyes and instead live in an immersive movie for awhile (that's how I read fiction, too). I "lose myself" in the immersive experience inside and outside of my brain.
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Fascinating. Strangely, I cannot make up my mind if I have this condition or not...
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Fascinating. Strangely, I cannot make up my mind if I have this condition or not...
Interesting. What makes you say you can't decide?
It seems like something you'd know. Close your eyes. Can you picture the face of, say, your best friend, or your partner, or mother? Can you picture an analogue clock with the hands pointing at 12:00? Can you picture a red apple, like the one Snow White bit?
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I love this topic. Here's my data points for the interested:
I can visualize a red triangle or a green apple, but I have a hard time visualizing faces beyond the caricature level. For example, unless I just looked at a picture of her, I have a hard time visualizing my wife. I can imagine dimples, or a certain kind of nose. Colors become muted the more complicated that object that I am trying to visualize is. I also don't really have childhood memories. I could count on both hands the total number of memories I have from childhood, and most of what I have is secondhand knowledge from parents or older relatives relating the stories back to me.
Inner voice can be turned on or off mostly at will, but sometimes it can run away on its own if I'm not actively controlling it. If I forget to turn my car radio on when I leave work, sometimes I'll find myself at the gym 12 minutes later having thought about an endless string of different things. But if I do turn on the radio, my mind will remain relatively blank as I focus on the music. I can also actively keep my mind blank without tv/radio, it's just more difficult.
In conversation my mind can rapidly jump from topic to topic extremely fast, using each topic as a springboard to another one, like the cat, horse, motorcycle, closet example. This too can be turned off at will. It's fun tracing back 5 or 20 steps when my wife asks how I thought about something seemingly at-random. This makes me bad at telling stories, which grow like a shrub in my mind: a single starting point with several paths, which continuously split into more paths. When trying to tell a story to someone I try to move upwards through all the paths simultaneously, but it typically ends in disaster.
I can generate music in my head if I want to and actually 'hear' it, but often only a few parts. The more instruments/voices I try and add in my head the harder it gets. And the voices and instruments actually sound like themselves, not just doots; the timbre is correct, trumpets sound different than strings which sound different than voices. A single word, phrase, or sound can trigger a song to start playing in my head. Once they arrive, songs are VERY difficult to get out of my head and I usually just let them play until something else takes over.
When reading I tend to skip over details and I don't actually visualize the scene in my head; that's too much work and I'm more interested in plot than the color of someone's eyes or hair. However, when reading series books like ASOIAF where details actually matter, I'll just note "brown eyes", "blue hair", etc. I think it goes back to not being able to generate faces very well.
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Fascinating. Strangely, I cannot make up my mind if I have this condition or not...
Interesting. What makes you say you can't decide?
It seems like something you'd know. Close your eyes. Can you picture the face of, say, your best friend, or your partner, or mother? Can you picture an analogue clock with the hands pointing at 12:00? Can you picture a red apple, like the one Snow White bit?
I guess I just never realized that when people "picture" things they are actually seeing them in their mind. For me, if someone says to "picture" a paperclip, I have to think about all of the features I know about a paperclip and I can kind of "see" it, but it's more a combination of facts. I just tried "picturing" my wife, and in my mind it's more like, "well I know that she has brown hair, and that looks like this, and I know she has brown eyes that look like this, and I can recall what she looks like in a picture", but I don't actually 'see' her...
The strange thing is that I'm a fairly good design engineer, and have invented many things, but I'm not sure if I actually "see" them ahead of time or just think about them. I do know that I can take things apart and spin them around in my mind as well as do "mental experiments" on the objects so I do know that I have that creative ability, but I'm not sure if I'm getting the sensation of "seeing" them as is apparently normal. This is really starting to trip me out...
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That sounds like aphantasia to me.
Here's the crazy thing: People actually SEE it in their mind. Like a real picture of it. You always assumed people were like you, and not really seeing it, but I guess that's just a small percent of us, and most actually are seeing it.
Although my wife told me (and it was in a podcast I listened to a small part of, about aphantasia) that their picture isn't quite life-like..I guess there's some element in it that makes it seem not real, even though they're seeing a picture in their mind? She (and the podcast) said it's hard to describe, but people who picture things should know what I mean?
It is very strange.
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Well, if I do have it, which would be the epiphany of the year for me... it should be noted that I do have a very active internal dialog.
I wonder, how can I draw something if I'm not able to picture it in my mind?
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I... might have this? Is it one of those you-have-it-or-you-don't things, or is there a spectrum of severity?
I visualize... but I don't see it in front of my eyes. Does that make sense? Like when I close my eyes, all I see is dark. When somebody says blue triangle, I don't actually see the blue triangle, but I think OF how it would look if it existed. This sounds dumb. I can't even describe it. It's more like an afterimage, like when you've been looking at something for a long time and close your eyes. Or maybe like seeing an image made of smoke--it's there for a split second, but then dissipates? Or maybe it's in my peripheral vision... or like having a second monitor you never really look at? And I feel like I have to recall individual details to bring them into "focus"? I'm not even sure if "see" is the right verb... it's really more somewhere between see and feel. This is so hard to describe.
I have awful spatial reasoning skills--I might have been a geologist if it weren't for my inability to handle maps. And very bad pattern recognition. Trigonometry was a nightmare. I could not see how to get from point A to point B in proofs. I literally had a tutor say there was nothing they could do to help me since I couldn't see the patterns. Logic puzzles are nightmarish. Sudoku ain't happening. Even word-based puzzles are extremely difficult.
I do have issues with long-term memory. Most of my memories have that smoke/afterimage/peripheral quality to them--but I can recall details that I don't actually "see" when I visualize. I have one or two memories that are very vivid (like when I fell in the pool as a toddler), but they still don't actually overlay my vision.
I don't think I visualize when I read. Or if I do it's that second monitor situation. I mostly just zone out and lose myself in the narrative--I don't see the individual words anymore, but I'm not really sure what I see instead. I do definitely prefer action and dialogue over descriptions.
I do know I have a very persistent internal monologue. It just goes and goes and goes. It can be useful sometimes. My problem solving process usually involves going off and doing something else while my subconscious figures out a solution. But mostly it's distracting, overanalytical, and often abusive. And it keeps me up at night. Reading shuts it up if I get engrossed (otherwise it constantly revises the sentences as I read them). TV helps and video games shut it off almost completely. The problem is if I do anything for a long time before bed, it keeps me up instead--almost like it took the place of my internal dialogue.
ETA: Is it possible to hallucinate if you have aphantasia? I just recalled that I have very vivid hypnopompic hallucinations several nights a week. Like I'll open my eyes and see spiders climbing on the wall, and even reach out to try to catch them. Or I'll see somebody standing by my bed, which results in me diving off the other side in panic. I have no idea whether a hallucination counts as a visualization in this context.
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I wonder, how can I draw something if I'm not able to picture it in my mind?
How can you describe something if you can't see it?
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I... might have this? Is it one of those you-have-it-or-you-don't things, or is there a spectrum of severity?
I visualize... but I don't see it in front of my eyes. Does that make sense? Like when I close my eyes, all I see is dark.
When I visualise things, if I had to point to where the picture is I would point to my head, not in front of my eyes. I have very good spatial reasoning when it comes to things smaller than my head (rotating cubes, that kind of thing) but very bad when it comes to big things (directions, comparing the size of a car to the gap in front of me that I'm about to drive through). So when I am imagining anything, I always have to shrink it to fit into my head, so it's always dolls' house-sized. If you ask me to imagine an elephant and then ask me how big it is, I'd say about three inches tall, because that's how big an elephant I can fit into my head.
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You'd think I'd know what my husband looks like but he's been away for a few days and now I cannot picture him at all. I could describe his appearance in factual terms (brown hair, glasses, etc) but I cannot summon up a mental picture at all. And when I dream, I don't dream faces. I might be dreaming about being at work with some colleagues but it's like my dream focus is about a foot below their heads so while I know they have faces, all I really get a proper sense of are their bodies and clothes.
Whoa, that's hard for me to imagine (haha). I was aware of antaphasia and prosopagnosia, but it seems bizarre to be able to form mental images at will, and to be able to recognize people by their faces, but to be unable to form mental images of familiar people's faces. I can form a mental image of practically any acquaintance without any effort. Even people from the arbitrarily distant past. Like first-grade classmates that I haven't seen or spoken to since. It's hard for me to even think of someone as an acquaintance without having a mental image of their face to go with it. It's a bit unsettling to imagine what it might be like to be suddenly placed into someone else's mind.
I decided not to write this originally, because I don't want to pathologise everything, but I do also find it hard to recognise people. It gets easier as I get to know them, but I think that's because I can remember more facts about what they look like (dark hair, shoulder length, wears eyeliner...) and I start to remember their clothes so I can look for "that scarf" or if I'm choosing between two people who both have blonde hair and beards I can remember that I also need to look for someone who dresses really casually. I have a friend who normally has a beard but has shaved it off and grown it back a few times in the past few months and every single time he switches I have trouble recognising him again. It's not that I CAN'T recognise people, I'm just hesitant about it. I'm never totally sure that I've got the right person until they confirm it by approaching me. I wonder if it's because I don't see faces in enough detail somehow. I am constantly thinking that random people in the street look like people I know, and sometimes I'll mention it to my husband and he'll say, "What?? That guy looks nothing like him!" And I'll say, "But they both have dark hair and glasses and are both tall and slim!" Because that's the minimal level of detail I require to decide that two people look alike.
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As a former competitive athlete I would use "visualization" as a tool but this wouldn't involve vivid images. My rational being, you don't actually see yourself completing a skill, you feel yourself doing it. So when I would visualize it would be how fast, how many steps, what does the body position feel like, twist how many time, arms open when, landing feels like what.
This same visualization applies to my current life. i.e. if someone asked me to visualize a beach I would feel texture of the sand, the warmth of the sun, and the sound of the waves. If there was any visual component it would not be an image I formed in my mind, but a projection of an image (hope that makes sense).
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But if I do turn on the radio, my mind will remain relatively blank as I focus on the music. I can also actively keep my mind blank without tv/radio, it's just more difficult.
What a fun topic.
I have not ever, at any point, been able to keep my mind blank. Even after 5 years of fairly consistent meditation practice, I still can't make my mind empty. I am able to dismiss the thoughts as they come, but I have not ever had a millisecond of a completely empty mind.
I can generate music in my head if I want to and actually 'hear' it, but often only a few parts. The more instruments/voices I try and add in my head the harder it gets. And the voices and instruments actually sound like themselves, not just doots; the timbre is correct, trumpets sound different than strings which sound different than voices. A single word, phrase, or sound can trigger a song to start playing in my head. Once they arrive, songs are VERY difficult to get out of my head and I usually just let them play until something else takes over.
Fascinating. So, you can "visualize" the music. How cool!
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I... might have this? Is it one of those you-have-it-or-you-don't things, or is there a spectrum of severity?
I visualize... but I don't see it in front of my eyes. Does that make sense? Like when I close my eyes, all I see is dark. When somebody says blue triangle, I don't actually see the blue triangle, but I think OF how it would look if it existed. This sounds dumb. I can't even describe it. It's more like an afterimage, like when you've been looking at something for a long time and close your eyes... or like having a second monitor you never really look at? And I feel like I have to recall individual details to bring them into "focus"? I'm not even sure if "see" is the right verb... it's really more somewhere between see and feel. This is so hard to describe.
Sounds normal to me as this is exactly how I would describe what my visualization is like.
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I... might have this? Is it one of those you-have-it-or-you-don't things, or is there a spectrum of severity?
I visualize... but I don't see it in front of my eyes. Does that make sense? Like when I close my eyes, all I see is dark. When somebody says blue triangle, I don't actually see the blue triangle, but I think OF how it would look if it existed. This sounds dumb. I can't even describe it. It's more like an afterimage, like when you've been looking at something for a long time and close your eyes... or like having a second monitor you never really look at? And I feel like I have to recall individual details to bring them into "focus"? I'm not even sure if "see" is the right verb... it's really more somewhere between see and feel. This is so hard to describe.
Sounds normal to me as this is exactly how I would describe what my visualization is like.
Same here. I think this is the norm. I can see a picture in my mind, but if I look at it too closely... well, my brain is not good at looking at things closely. Often, just a flash of an image will suffice. Details can be a bit hazy. But if you can close your eyes and "see" an image in your mind's eye... I think that counts.
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Love this discussion!
I'm also going back and forth on whether or not I have this - I definitely do not "see" images, and I rarely dream (and no images then, just feelings/memories maybe?). But when I try to visualize something, like a description in a book, I have some sense of it - somewhere back in the back of my head, behind my eyes (not in front, like normal sight), but there is no visual component at all. It is a frustrating thing to describe - it iS there, I can access the info (like color, shape, etc.), but it is not visible.
I need to draw diagrams to work thru math problems well. I need to write down a word if asked to spell it. I want to see things to figure out how they work. I can't draw, but I can copy - what I mean is that I can do simple diagrams, or cartoon level figures, but I have no idea how to make shadows and depth, for example. And I can't get a sketch right on the first try - I have to try something, see how it looks, adjust it, look again. So overall, it seems I need to attempt to create some physical, visual image from whatever is in my brain, and then use or manipulate that physical image.
Regarding running inner dialog: mine goes non-stop. As someone else said, I live inside my head. Books I read create characters I want to have discussions with. Math problems beg to be solved, or explored. Music lyrics meander, with softer background music. My train of thought follows rabbit trails every which way - sometimes I've been surprised at how I started on one topic and reached another (like ARS's wife) and tried to follow it back thru the steps. Five minutes of seemingly logical individual leaps led me thru 15 topics, it seemed like. My DH says I am the worst at relating a tale - I can't work thru it in a straight line, I have so many side details to add that are part of the story, and wander off exploring those, too. MY mind thinks those are all important parts of the "interesting story", so I have to include them for him, too.
I wake up in the morning with thoughts already running thru my head. I find they are often answers to a former day's issues. Seems to be a version of the old adage to "sleep on it". Some completely new viewpoint will be there, or an option I hadn't thought of before.
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Interesting topic. My husband informed me that not everyone has a really voice in their head when they read words a few weeks ago. He thoroughly enjoyed my reaction. Mind. Blown. He had a pretty good idea that I did it before he told me. It makes me a slower reader, I have to take more time than he does if I want to be thorough, because I can either read each word aloud in my head, or I can read a sentence/paragraph at a time and will miss information. Books become movies and I can't remember the seeing the words, terrible at quoting, but I can remember what happened in the movie. It does mean I miss detail that can make for entertaining re-reading.
I can imagine all the sensations of something (look feel smell etc) if I take the time for it, and build something complex, but often I miss information that I'm not "focusing" on.
I sometimes have a highly distracted monologue, but it's not constant. The worse my anxiety disorder at the time, the worse it is, but I can also have a pleasant wandering mind.
It's lovely to read about how others minds think. I can't access the original article now but will later.
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I... might have this? Is it one of those you-have-it-or-you-don't things, or is there a spectrum of severity?
I visualize... but I don't see it in front of my eyes. Does that make sense? Like when I close my eyes, all I see is dark. When somebody says blue triangle, I don't actually see the blue triangle, but I think OF how it would look if it existed. This sounds dumb. I can't even describe it. It's more like an afterimage, like when you've been looking at something for a long time and close your eyes... or like having a second monitor you never really look at? And I feel like I have to recall individual details to bring them into "focus"? I'm not even sure if "see" is the right verb... it's really more somewhere between see and feel. This is so hard to describe.
Sounds normal to me as this is exactly how I would describe what my visualization is like.
Same here. I think this is the norm. I can see a picture in my mind, but if I look at it too closely... well, my brain is not good at looking at things closely. Often, just a flash of an image will suffice. Details can be a bit hazy. But if you can close your eyes and "see" an image in your mind's eye... I think that counts.
Yes, I'll also chime in and say that this is normal. I would characterize my ability to visualize things as above average, based on conversations with other people - probably well above average. But it still doesn't look like a picture from real life, and if I'm focusing too hard on trying to see things in my mind, rather than just being lost in thought - well, the image disappears. My mental imagery is far more vivid when I'm not consciously aware of it.
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I... might have this? Is it one of those you-have-it-or-you-don't things, or is there a spectrum of severity?
I visualize... but I don't see it in front of my eyes. Does that make sense? Like when I close my eyes, all I see is dark. When somebody says blue triangle, I don't actually see the blue triangle, but I think OF how it would look if it existed. This sounds dumb. I can't even describe it. It's more like an afterimage, like when you've been looking at something for a long time and close your eyes... or like having a second monitor you never really look at? And I feel like I have to recall individual details to bring them into "focus"? I'm not even sure if "see" is the right verb... it's really more somewhere between see and feel. This is so hard to describe.
Sounds normal to me as this is exactly how I would describe what my visualization is like.
Same here. I think this is the norm. I can see a picture in my mind, but if I look at it too closely... well, my brain is not good at looking at things closely. Often, just a flash of an image will suffice. Details can be a bit hazy. But if you can close your eyes and "see" an image in your mind's eye... I think that counts.
Yes, I'll also chime in and say that this is normal. I would characterize my ability to visualize things as above average, based on conversations with other people - probably well above average. But it still doesn't look like a picture from real life, and if I'm focusing too hard on trying to see things in my mind, rather than just being lost in thought - well, the image disappears. My mental imagery is far more vivid when I'm not consciously aware of it.
This is how I visualize as well. It's very hard to describe the sense of visualizing something to someone who can't do it. At least for me it's nothing like looking at a picture, it's much more fluid.
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Interesting discussion. Well, in addition to not "seeing" images in my mind, I also do not have an inner monologue. I can "speak" in my mind, but it is a conscious effort to do so. I also don't have a "movie" or a "voice" in my mind while reading, nor do I "see" the characters.
My memory isn't great either - I'll know something happened, but it's like I read a fact out of a book, not I actually experienced it. I think it's partially why I don't care much about travelling - I won't "remember" it anyway, so why bother?
Sorry, I totally lost the quote about the two people, one who says whatever's in their mind and other who thinks first. I don't think this is the same realm. To me, it really sounds like the person who blurts out whatever is in their head just never learned to pause before speaking, a skill that is not easy to learn, but one which is very valuable to have. It can be learned - I did! Though I still manage to put my foot in my mouth regularly, as you'll sometimes see on the forum.
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My memory isn't great either - I'll know something happened, but it's like I read a fact out of a book, not I actually experienced it. I think it's partially why I don't care much about travelling - I won't "remember" it anyway, so why bother?
I wonder how much connection the ability to visualize has with experiential memory. My wife has always been incredulous that I can remember things from the very distant past. I have a few clear memories from when I was two years old, and many from when I was three. (It's easy for me to ascertain my age in early memories based on what house we were living in). I remember a family trip to Colorado when I was five in such vivid detail, it feels like it was last week.
My wife has no real memories from before elementary school. She says she only remembers photographs when she thinks of her early childhood, not actual memories. She has a grandfather who died when she was six, and they were apparently very close - but she doesn't have a single memory of him, aside from photographs. But I've come to realize that my wife has far more trouble visualizing than I do. Last night, she even admitted that she has trouble picturing my face when we're apart. She can picture her parents, but the mental images are - again - of photographs, not real-life memories. Bizarre, but it would explain why I'm able to hang on to first-person memories better than she does. I don't mean that she has a poor memory though: appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, grocery lists, etc.: she's ten times better at that kind of stuff than I am.
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My memory isn't great either - I'll know something happened, but it's like I read a fact out of a book, not I actually experienced it. I think it's partially why I don't care much about travelling - I won't "remember" it anyway, so why bother?
I wonder how much connection the ability to visualize has with experiential memory. My wife has always been incredulous that I can remember things from the very distant past. I have a few clear memories from when I was two years old, and many from when I was three. (It's easy for me to ascertain my age in early memories based on what house we were living in). I remember a family trip to Colorado when I was five in such vivid detail, it feels like it was last week.
My wife has no real memories from before elementary school. She says she only remembers photographs when she thinks of her early childhood, not actual memories. She has a grandfather who died when she was six, and they were apparently very close - but she doesn't have a single memory of him, aside from photographs. But I've come to realize that my wife has far more trouble visualizing than I do. Last night, she even admitted that she has trouble picturing my face when we're apart. She can picture her parents, but the mental images are - again - of photographs, not real-life memories. Bizarre, but it would explain why I'm able to hang on to first-person memories better than she does. I don't mean that she has a poor memory though: appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, grocery lists, etc.: she's ten times better at that kind of stuff than I am.
Whoa, I have this too. Very few memories of childhood, most vivid ones are old photographs or stories that someone has told me happened to me, which aren't actually real since I'm not remembering them myself.
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This is a really interesting topic that finally gave me a reason to stop lurking and actually register for the forum.
I haven't had any direct exposure to this term in the past, so I was reading through the original article and the replies here very much like the article author. Just wanted to add my own thinking experiences into the pool here since the huge variety in how we think is fascinating.
First off to catch up on things people have brought up already: I can visualize things in my mind, I have an internal voice both when thinking and reading, I do not dream (Or at least haven't remembered a dream ever), and I cannot "visualize" senses other than sight in my mind. But some of those characteristics have caveats.
I visualize memories in my mind very similarly to a friend that was mentioned in the original article, like a Google Image search sorted by most engaging. But while I can "see" my visual memories, I can't create new images and mentally "see" those. "Picture a red triangle" pulls up an actual red triangle (A d4) from my past but "picture a purple elephant" gets nothing. I could mentally walk through the visual memories of my college campus and create a fairly accurate map but I couldn't do the same for my high school, as I was very engaged during my college experience but not at all during high school.
In terms of music I can't "hear" anything but I do very strongly experience the emotions of the song I'm thinking about. But since I can't imagine the song itself, most memories of songs are associated with visual memories. To go back to my college campus example, there's a dirt path that I took from my apartment to campus during my final semester that I associate with Time Stops by Explosions in the Sky. I don't know why that dirt path is associated with that song, as I had heard the song long before I first walked the path. But to this day I can picture that dirt path and feel my way through the uplifting melodic intro and the clashing discord of the middle of the song without actually "hearing" anything.
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I picture things the same way that R...guy does. I thought that is what everyone does. I have terrible spatial ability and I know from my profession that spatial ability is one of the few things that can't be learned. You either have it or you don't. I can not do puzzles, etc. When my oldest was 2 I dumped a 25 piece kids puzzle that interlocked and could not put it together for the life of me. I can't read a map at all or look at a blue print and visualize what a house will look like, etc. Interesting stuff. We once went thru a house where the walls were not up and the realtor was saying here is your kitchen, etc. My DH could see it but I could not.
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I picture things the same way that R...guy does. I thought that is what everyone does. I have terrible spatial ability and I know from my profession that spatial ability is one of the few things that can't be learned. You either have it or you don't. I can not do puzzles, etc. When my oldest was 2 I dumped a 25 piece kids puzzle that interlocked and could not put it together for the life of me. I can't read a map at all or look at a blue print and visualize what a house will look like, etc. Interesting stuff. We once went thru a house where the walls were not up and the realtor was saying here is your kitchen, etc. My DH could see it but I could not.
Sounds very, very familiar. When we do renovations, my wife's favorite phrase is "I can't picture that", whereas mine is "Trust me, it'll look good". She's always pleased with the outcome, but she can never see what I'm envisioning until it's complete :)
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Question for those of you who can't picture things or rate yourself low on the spatial awareness scale.
How do you drive?
I don't mean that to sound incredulous, it's just the most common task I can think of that is mentally accomplished in an overwhelmingly spacial fashion.
If I'm driving on the highway, I've got a mental picture of where all the cars are around me such that I don't need to check my blind spots before shifting lanes unless there's a fuzziness to that mental image that represents uncertainty of a cars position because it's been a while since I saw them in my mirrors. It's not a conscious thought process, but I remember describing it that way when I was learning how to drive and I definitely still notice myself doing it.
Likewise when parking in a crowded parking lot, I'd best describe it as having a third-person mental image of my car (Think racing game perspective) that lets me "see" where my vehicle is in relation to the lines and other cars.
My assumption is that some other mental process takes over for the spatial awareness that I use. I just can't imagine what that other process is.
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WEll depth perception helps people to drive I think more then spatial. I am not the world's best driver either but I don't like to drive. I do need to check to change lanes, etc. I have known people without depth perception that can drive.
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Question for those of you who can't picture things or rate yourself low on the spatial awareness scale.
How do you drive?
I don't mean that to sound incredulous, it's just the most common task I can think of that is mentally accomplished in an overwhelmingly spacial fashion.
If I'm driving on the highway, I've got a mental picture of where all the cars are around me such that I don't need to check my blind spots before shifting lanes unless there's a fuzziness to that mental image that represents uncertainty of a cars position because it's been a while since I saw them in my mirrors. It's not a conscious thought process, but I remember describing it that way when I was learning how to drive and I definitely still notice myself doing it.
Likewise when parking in a crowded parking lot, I'd best describe it as having a third-person mental image of my car (Think racing game perspective) that lets me "see" where my vehicle is in relation to the lines and other cars.
My assumption is that some other mental process takes over for the spatial awareness that I use. I just can't imagine what that other process is.
I feel this way about directions; I have a good sense of direction and can usually suss out where I am and how to get where I'm going, even in an unfamiliar environment, because I have a visual map in my head that I'm always examining and fleshing out. I'd guess that when the original author said he was bad at directions, it was because he lacks this handy map.
Sometimes I think I overvisualize, mapping or giving a picture to concepts that didn't originally come with one. For instance, I realized a few years ago that every time I think about the date or time, I visualize a year as an oval game board, which each day of the year has a little square you move your avatar along. January is at the far right point of the oval, and I move counter-clockwise through time. I have another picture to visualize years/decades/centuries (also like a game board, but a ladder-like line in one direction, to the right.).
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Question for those of you who can't picture things or rate yourself low on the spatial awareness scale.
How do you drive?
I don't mean that to sound incredulous, it's just the most common task I can think of that is mentally accomplished in an overwhelmingly spacial fashion.
If I'm driving on the highway, I've got a mental picture of where all the cars are around me such that I don't need to check my blind spots before shifting lanes unless there's a fuzziness to that mental image that represents uncertainty of a cars position because it's been a while since I saw them in my mirrors. It's not a conscious thought process, but I remember describing it that way when I was learning how to drive and I definitely still notice myself doing it.
Likewise when parking in a crowded parking lot, I'd best describe it as having a third-person mental image of my car (Think racing game perspective) that lets me "see" where my vehicle is in relation to the lines and other cars.
My assumption is that some other mental process takes over for the spatial awareness that I use. I just can't imagine what that other process is.
Extremely cautiously!
When I was learning to drive (passed my test this April) I really struggled with changing lanes. It's interesting to read you talking about your mental image of the cars around you, because I have just realised that is exactly what I did not and could not have. I would look in each mirror but as soon as I wasn't actually looking in any given mirror I couldn't keep in my head what I had seen there. All that was in my head was what I was actually looking at. My instructor worked with me on memorising a sequence of mirror checking and "if...then" steps, like a flow chart. If there is a car in your side mirror, wait five seconds and check again, that kind of thing. I internalised it enough that I could speed through it quickly enough to do it at 50mph, but it was never an 'intuitive' sense of where other cars were, it was always repeatedly running through the sequence.
Parking was hard, especially parallel parking because I would instantly lose any reference point I had as soon as I turned to look at something else. But you can go slowly enough to consciously ask yourself "Where is my back wheel? Which way is the steering wheel? (I had such problems with remembering this...) How close am I to the pavement? Am I straight with the car in front?" Worst comes to worst you can just pause and sort your brain out a bit. Not speeding towards a roundabout at 50mph...
Speaking of roundabouts, I used to get so disoriented on big ones. I totally lacked any sense of a third-person view of my car, so I would forget how far I had got round the roundabout and miss my exit. Everything was happening as I was seeing it. My instructor helped me to stop trying to focus on the big picture of the roundabout and instead to "read the road" - to look at road markings, signs and the behaviour of other cars as I got to them and take it step by step. I imagine people who have good large-scale spatial awareness do that automatically and plug it in to some overview map they have in their head. I have no such map, but my instructor helped me break down and become consciously aware of all the little signals that I imagine you must absorb without thinking. I have all the little data points, but no actual map to plot them onto.
My mother always knows which way is north, and it seemed like magic to me until I asked her one day how she knew. She thought about it and then said that if it was sunny then the time of day and directions of shadows told her without her needing to think about it. If it was cloudy, she knew which of the major streets in our city ran north-south and where she was in relation to them. After she had actually explained it to me, I can now point to north most of the time if needed, but I need to stop and go through the process consciously that my mother did without even noticing.
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Question for those of you who can't picture things or rate yourself low on the spatial awareness scale.
How do you drive?
I don't mean that to sound incredulous, it's just the most common task I can think of that is mentally accomplished in an overwhelmingly spacial fashion.
If I'm driving on the highway, I've got a mental picture of where all the cars are around me such that I don't need to check my blind spots before shifting lanes unless there's a fuzziness to that mental image that represents uncertainty of a cars position because it's been a while since I saw them in my mirrors. It's not a conscious thought process, but I remember describing it that way when I was learning how to drive and I definitely still notice myself doing it.
Likewise when parking in a crowded parking lot, I'd best describe it as having a third-person mental image of my car (Think racing game perspective) that lets me "see" where my vehicle is in relation to the lines and other cars.
My assumption is that some other mental process takes over for the spatial awareness that I use. I just can't imagine what that other process is.
I have very good peripheral vision--or at least I'm more aware of my peripheral vision than I think most people are (both consciously and subconsciously). Rather than building a spacial representation of the traffic around me, I'm constantly reassessing everything in my peripheral vision and revising my knowledge of where other cars are. Lane changes do make me nervous. I can't park straight (except in a diagonal space), and parallel parking is absolutely out of the question. My depth perception is awful as well, but I don't think that's related to spatial awareness.
I can also look at my phone while walking and be fairly confident that I won't walk into anything. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it's pretty rare.
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...My instructor worked with me on memorising a sequence of mirror checking and "if...then" steps, like a flow chart. If there is a car in your side mirror, wait five seconds and check again, that kind of thing...
I have very good peripheral vision...
WEll depth perception helps people to drive I think more then spatial...
I love this topic. Thank you all for answering that tangent.
Looking at the three different answers from three different people I can think to myself "Oh yeah, those make sense." But I was wondering about how non-spatial people perform what in my head is a spatial task for 30 minutes while at work today and came up blank.
We all saw and interpreted and reproduced the world around us so differently it struck me as astonishing that we manage to communicate with each other at all.
+1
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I remember being in kindergarten and wishing that I could hook a colour printer up to my brain so I could print out the cool images I was able to imagine. I can't draw worth a darn, but I can sure think up some neat pictures! I wonder if very artistic people are ever aphantasiacs? (Sp?)
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I remember being in kindergarten and wishing that I could hook a colour printer up to my brain so I could print out the cool images I was able to imagine. I can't draw worth a darn, but I can sure think up some neat pictures! I wonder if very artistic people are ever aphantasiacs? (Sp?)
Gah - I'm so much the same. Great mental images; very dumb hands.
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Question for those of you who can't picture things or rate yourself low on the spatial awareness scale.
How do you drive?
I don't mean that to sound incredulous, it's just the most common task I can think of that is mentally accomplished in an overwhelmingly spacial fashion.
I have not yet found something that I cannot do because I can't picture it.
People often say "But how do you do X without being able to picture it?" But I don't know why you'd have to picture anything to do it.
If I'm driving on the highway, I've got a mental picture of where all the cars are around me
I have a mental list of where the cars are around me, and it updates very quickly.
There's no picture, but I could tell you where they are, factually (i.e. distance based, on which side, etc.). I can describe it, without being able to picture it.
Does that make sense?
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My memory is mostly visual, although certain scents are also evocative for me. I had a terrible time learning French in elementary school, because the language model in vogue at the time was to hear and repeat. I could not untangle the words. I was told, very emphatically, that I was unable to learn a spoken language, so I studied Latin in high school and college. Then I spent a semester in Vienna, studying German with the Goethe Institut, and picked up the language immediately, because everything they taught was reinforced by the printed page. I went on to become comfortably conversational in German, and have enjoyed some wonderful authors like Thomas Mann. I am still pissed that someone put me in a "can't learn spoken language" box all those years ago. People learn in such different ways.
Another note on the visuals: I can remember names when I have seen them written out, and I actually see the writing as I recall them.
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Question for those of you who can't picture things or rate yourself low on the spatial awareness scale.
How do you drive?
I don't mean that to sound incredulous, it's just the most common task I can think of that is mentally accomplished in an overwhelmingly spacial fashion.
If I'm driving on the highway, I've got a mental picture of where all the cars are around me such that I don't need to check my blind spots before shifting lanes unless there's a fuzziness to that mental image that represents uncertainty of a cars position because it's been a while since I saw them in my mirrors. It's not a conscious thought process, but I remember describing it that way when I was learning how to drive and I definitely still notice myself doing it.
Likewise when parking in a crowded parking lot, I'd best describe it as having a third-person mental image of my car (Think racing game perspective) that lets me "see" where my vehicle is in relation to the lines and other cars.
My assumption is that some other mental process takes over for the spatial awareness that I use. I just can't imagine what that other process is.
Well, this question wasn't technically for me, since I fall into neither of the groups that you specified, but I can say that I don't form a third person mental image of the car or my surroundings for changing lanes, parking, or for any other reason. My mind is always firmly in the driver's seat.
I think the biggest takeaway from this conversation is that people are able to leverage their minds to complete the same tasks, regardless of how their mind is "wired". I sort of think of it like writing computer code for performing a specific task. You can give the same task to 10 engineers, and they'll each come up with a different solution based their strengths and preferences. Some of the solutions will be more efficient, some will be more elegant, some of them might be crude and ugly, but they'll all get the job done.
Interestingly, we're only tackling one single aspect of our minds in this discussion: the ability to form mental images. How many other differences do our minds have that we don't even have the words to discuss? We just implicitly assume that most people's minds work similarly to our own, but I imagine the differences could be startling if we could actually step into each other's minds.
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I can't imagine taking the mental energy to form a 3'rd person view of the traffic around me while I'm driving. I'm far too busy texting or playing Pokemon Go....
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This is seriously blowing my mind. I honestly can't imagine not being able to picture things in my head or hear my own voice inside my head. It would be like losing a part of myself. It is incomprehensible what it must be to live without those two things. I wish I could get my inner voice to shut the hell up most of the time. If anything, I feel that I live the majority of my life inside my brain.
It makes you wonder what other "senses" or thought processes we take for granted that other people have and then judge actions or motivations based on that. Crazy. Maybe what we view as mental illness is just various levels of this type of inner monologue.
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I have not yet found something that I cannot do because I can't picture it.
What about dreaming? I recall you saying before that you don't think you dream and you definitely do not recall them. To me, this sounds closely related to being unable to visualize, since I assume for most of us dreams are made up of images and other senses (sounds, etc.) created by our minds. What do you think?
I wonder if you were observed while sleeping if we would detect REM sleep. If not, what does that mean about the various theories on the need for people to sleep or dream?
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Double-Down: We all have REM sleep (assuming normal non-damaged brain). I also don't make pictures in my head (well, I do get vague Sudoku ghosts ) but I definitely dream visuals - if I wake up during or right after a dream I can remember seeing the visuals like I remember seeing a movie, but they fade so fast and I can't recreate them. But I know what they looked like, just as I can remember what critical movie scenes looked like, I just can't recreate them. And yet in waking life in some ways I am very visual. I can tell a word is spelled wrong because it doesn't look right, I can follow graphs and diagrams with no problems, I taught myself to crochet and master sewing techniques from books (no you-tube when I was learning them). I can pick out dyes and create yarn colours to a plan. I know where the cars are around me and how fast they are moving relative to me.
Sound, on the other hand - I can recreate music and noises and know what a tune should sound like based on the musical notes on a page, I definitely have an inner voice nattering at me. When I read things written by people that I know, I hear their voices as I read. It is as easy or easier to recognize people by voice as by face.
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I also don't make pictures in my head (well, I do get vague Sudoku ghosts ) but I definitely dream visuals - if I wake up during or right after a dream I can remember seeing the visuals like I remember seeing a movie, but they fade so fast and I can't recreate them.
This exactly.
So after I can describe, list form, like I can anything else I've noted, but I can't picture it.
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Question for those of you who can't picture things or rate yourself low on the spatial awareness scale.
How do you drive?
I don't mean that to sound incredulous, it's just the most common task I can think of that is mentally accomplished in an overwhelmingly spacial fashion.
If I'm driving on the highway, I've got a mental picture of where all the cars are around me such that I don't need to check my blind spots before shifting lanes unless there's a fuzziness to that mental image that represents uncertainty of a cars position because it's been a while since I saw them in my mirrors. It's not a conscious thought process, but I remember describing it that way when I was learning how to drive and I definitely still notice myself doing it.
Likewise when parking in a crowded parking lot, I'd best describe it as having a third-person mental image of my car (Think racing game perspective) that lets me "see" where my vehicle is in relation to the lines and other cars.
My assumption is that some other mental process takes over for the spatial awareness that I use. I just can't imagine what that other process is.
Well, this question wasn't technically for me, since I fall into neither of the groups that you specified, but I can say that I don't form a third person mental image of the car or my surroundings for changing lanes, parking, or for any other reason. My mind is always firmly in the driver's seat.
I think the biggest takeaway from this conversation is that people are able to leverage their minds to complete the same tasks, regardless of how their mind is "wired". I sort of think of it like writing computer code for performing a specific task. You can give the same task to 10 engineers, and they'll each come up with a different solution based their strengths and preferences. Some of the solutions will be more efficient, some will be more elegant, some of them might be crude and ugly, but they'll all get the job done.
Interestingly, we're only tackling one single aspect of our minds in this discussion: the ability to form mental images. How many other differences do our minds have that we don't even have the words to discuss? We just implicitly assume that most people's minds work similarly to our own, but I imagine the differences could be startling if we could actually step into each other's minds.
This is an important fact to acknowledge, but it's hard to believe people don't intuitively understand this. Of course people's minds work differently; this is what makes artists and engineers and public speakers and bungie jumpers and MMA fighters and mathematicians and every different skill set out there - sure almost anybody could perform these tasks, but some people are 'wired' to do them better. Adding all the other ways individuals differ if what makes people so wonderful! And makes some of them complete asshats.
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I have not yet found something that I cannot do because I can't picture it.
What about dreaming? I recall you saying before that you don't think you dream and you definitely do not recall them. To me, this sounds closely related to being unable to visualize, since I assume for most of us dreams are made up of images and other senses (sounds, etc.) created by our minds. What do you think?
I wonder if you were observed while sleeping if we would detect REM sleep. If not, what does that mean about the various theories on the need for people to sleep or dream?
I dont dream visual its all black. But there are sounds and i have a feeling of knowing where i am and whats happening but its almost more like someone is telling me what's happening
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So like . . . if you can't visualize anything, does that make it impossible to masturbate without porn?
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The above masturbation question is important but maybe someone with aphantasia can also answer:
The OP's article mentions not being able to remember anything from college. That would seem something different from aphantasia. Or is it? I can turn college memories into mental images if I want but it's not required. I can just list them out.
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I also don't make pictures in my head (well, I do get vague Sudoku ghosts ) but I definitely dream visuals - if I wake up during or right after a dream I can remember seeing the visuals like I remember seeing a movie, but they fade so fast and I can't recreate them.
This exactly.
So after I can describe, list form, like I can anything else I've noted, but I can't picture it.
But my question is do you think your inability to visualize is related to your reported non-dreaming experience? Are all people with this condition unable to dream in images?
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I also don't make pictures in my head (well, I do get vague Sudoku ghosts ) but I definitely dream visuals - if I wake up during or right after a dream I can remember seeing the visuals like I remember seeing a movie, but they fade so fast and I can't recreate them.
This exactly.
So after I can describe, list form, like I can anything else I've noted, but I can't picture it.
But my question is do you think your inability to visualize is related to your reported non-dreaming experience? Are all people with this condition unable to dream in images?
That is the opposite of what we said. Added bolding.
I dream visually, and know it when I wake up, but I can't picture it.
Just like I know after I watch a movie, and close my eyes, that I saw a movie, but I can't picture the movie.
The OP's article mentions not being able to remember anything from college. That would seem something different from aphantasia. Or is it? I can turn college memories into mental images if I want but it's not required. I can just list them out.
I only remember stuff I bothered to note down in memory. So I have very few childhood memories, I have some college memories, but not much.. I just have things I've noted down. If I didn't note it down, I can't recall it later, because I have nothing to "pull up" in those cases. I do note down a lot though.
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This is enlightening. I had so many thoughts on this, so I started this reply as I read through other replies.
When I was younger, I thought in pictures. I had trouble communicating, because I would see the picture, then try to describe it in words. But I would see 100 pictures per second, so my words would always fall behind, and I would even forget what I was saying, because I was concentrating on the pictures. Written communication has always been better for me (even though I'm not a great speller). I always felt I was different in this regard.
I'm not exactly sure when the change happened, maybe it was in high school or maybe it was after my car wreck shortly after I graduated (no signs of head injury), but now I don't really think in pictures anymore. I still sort of have the pictures, but I process them subconsciously, and think more about the ideas. Still no words, but these translate better to words. Although, I feel like it's a slower process, although maybe some of that has to do with aging.
When I was young, given a math problem, I would just "see" the answer. I would have troubles explaining why it was correct. I learned algebra when I was 6 or so. When I actually took the course, I struggled a lot, because even though I had the correct answer, I had troubles showing my work. When I learned to do this, I feel like my brain was rewired, and I could no longer just see the answer, but I could follow the path to the answer, which takes a lot longer. So maybe this started the change with the pictures.
So, I naturally think visually, but I totally understand aphantasia. If you say think of the beach, I might think of sand + salt water + sun + the concept of ocean smell (I don't actually smell it) + sea shells + hammock. I add them one at a time to a concept, but not really an image. The longer I think about it, the more details I add. After a point, if I have a specific memory of a beach, I might pull that out, but it's not something that comes quickly, it might take a few minutes to get to that point. With the beach example, I lived by a beach for two years, less than two years ago, so to say it takes minutes, it seems like eternity, and I usually don't make it there unless I'm alone. Similarly if I think of my mom. I might feel love, but to see her takes time. And it's usually in black and white, or really black and red, you know, what you see when you close your eyes.
When reading, I do see things, not like a movie, more like how I think with flashes of images. I can create an image for someone, but it usually has nothing to do with how the author described that person. I only saw the first Harry Potter before reading the books. So while I had images for some of the characters, I completely created the others. Ginny looked nothing like the movie Ginny, although Umbridge was pretty close. But Rowling was pretty brief in her descriptions, and I liked that. I attempted and failed at reading Lord of the Rings, because of all the details. I never could put them together to create something. Actions and talking are important to me when reading.
I have no inner monologue. I always thought that concept in TV shows was genius! Evidently that's just how most people think. I do sometimes have music going on in my head. I can "speak" in my head.
And for the fluid vs crystal intelligence, mine is super fluid. I'm an engineer, and in college, as a professor would start deriving a proof, I would finish before he would, sometimes dozens of steps ahead. I was very very good at those types of image problems.
Emotions are also a problem for me.
The "I don't know" and the "what are you thinking about - nothing" are definitely me.
I have troubles extrapolating what people look like. Like if I haven't seen a friend since high school, it is likely I won't recognize them. And if I've met you once, I won't remember your name at all, no matter how many times I said it in my head trying to remember it. I'm pretty good at "I know you somehow..."
I know facts about my past, but I have few memories going back more than a few years.
I'm great at directions. I usually have to orient North once at a new location (like if I've driven a hundred miles), but otherwise, it takes me a second to figure out where North is. But I'm horrible at distances. I can get the order of magnitude down, but is that car 100 feet in front of me or 500 feet? I really have no idea.
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Have to come back and finish reading this topic when I have a bit of time. It's fascinating.
This is how I read. The words almost disappear and, as you said, a movie takes their place.
How fascinating anything else would be... Mr. arebelspy, do you just process the words for their meaning alone?
Yes.
EDIT: The wife, for example, will be disappointed in a movie if the characters don't look like she pictured them.
I'm with her. I am still holding out on watching Game of Thrones because I have pictures in my head from the books and I really want to finish the books (if he would just get on with it!) before super-imposing someone else's idea of what it all looks like onto my own.
I've noticed this topic since it began. Finally clicked over and I'm blown away by this conversation . So much food for thought. I am a "cat-horse-motorcycle" processor, with lightning-fast speed. Sometimes when I am really tired, I come up with some really silly-sounding comments. They are completely illogical to others (poor DH!), but make total sense to me. Tired now, so I better come back later, lol.
I also have this problem, and will jump between topics too quickly for other people. Or if I am writting things down my brain works quicker than I can write so I skip words which used to be an issue when I was at school writting essays. Now with typing its not so much of a problem as I can generally type quicker than I write.
My mum also has a habit of jumping between conversations and then picking up old conversations hours or days later. I having grown up with her can generally follow or pick up what she is talking about but other people not so much.
This is me. And funnily (or maybe not) enough my siblings are the only ones I can do this with without getting strange looks. We can have conversations that go off on tangents and an hour or a day later pick up the thread of the original conversation and to anyone else it seems like a totally random comment but we know exactly what we're on about. We all do it. I suspect in part it comes from being part of a big family - you have to cling tenaciously to what you want to say so that you still remember it after everyone else has finished having their say. :)
I sometimes enjoy following my thought process backwards to figure out why I, to use ARS' example, want to clean the closet all of a sudden. Sometimes it happens so quickly it's not quite conscious.
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I sometimes enjoy following my thought process backwards to figure out why I, to use ARS' example, want to clean the closet all of a sudden. Sometimes it happens to quickly it's not quite conscious.
Reminds me of the opening scene in "Murders of the Rue Morgue". Ratiocination, i believe is the term.
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I also don't make pictures in my head (well, I do get vague Sudoku ghosts ) but I definitely dream visuals - if I wake up during or right after a dream I can remember seeing the visuals like I remember seeing a movie, but they fade so fast and I can't recreate them.
This exactly.
So after I can describe, list form, like I can anything else I've noted, but I can't picture it.
But my question is do you think your inability to visualize is related to your reported non-dreaming experience? Are all people with this condition unable to dream in images?
That is the opposite of what we said. Added bolding.
I dream visually, and know it when I wake up, but I can't picture it.
Just like I know after I watch a movie, and close my eyes, that I saw a movie, but I can't picture the movie.
Oh okay, I thought you had said in other threads (about lucid dreaming) that you don't dream at all, not that you just don't remember it or visualize it after the fact. My mistake, thanks for the clarification.
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I also don't make pictures in my head (well, I do get vague Sudoku ghosts ) but I definitely dream visuals - if I wake up during or right after a dream I can remember seeing the visuals like I remember seeing a movie, but they fade so fast and I can't recreate them.
This exactly.
So after I can describe, list form, like I can anything else I've noted, but I can't picture it.
But my question is do you think your inability to visualize is related to your reported non-dreaming experience? Are all people with this condition unable to dream in images?
That is the opposite of what we said. Added bolding.
I dream visually, and know it when I wake up, but I can't picture it.
Just like I know after I watch a movie, and close my eyes, that I saw a movie, but I can't picture the movie.
Oh okay, I thought you had said in other threads (about lucid dreaming) that you don't dream at all, not that you just don't remember it or visualize it after the fact. My mistake, thanks for the clarification.
Ah, gotcha.
Yeah, I can lucid dream, it just doesn't do much for me, so I don't bother.
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This is enlightening. I had so many thoughts on this, so I started this reply as I read through other replies.
When I was younger, I thought in pictures. I had trouble communicating, because I would see the picture, then try to describe it in words. But I would see 100 pictures per second, so my words would always fall behind, and I would even forget what I was saying, because I was concentrating on the pictures. Written communication has always been better for me (even though I'm not a great speller). I always felt I was different in this regard.
I'm not exactly sure when the change happened, maybe it was in high school or maybe it was after my car wreck shortly after I graduated (no signs of head injury), but now I don't really think in pictures anymore. I still sort of have the pictures, but I process them subconsciously, and think more about the ideas. Still no words, but these translate better to words. Although, I feel like it's a slower process, although maybe some of that has to do with aging.
When I was young, given a math problem, I would just "see" the answer. I would have troubles explaining why it was correct. I learned algebra when I was 6 or so. When I actually took the course, I struggled a lot, because even though I had the correct answer, I had troubles showing my work. When I learned to do this, I feel like my brain was rewired, and I could no longer just see the answer, but I could follow the path to the answer, which takes a lot longer. So maybe this started the change with the pictures.
So, I naturally think visually, but I totally understand aphantasia. If you say think of the beach, I might think of sand + salt water + sun + the concept of ocean smell (I don't actually smell it) + sea shells + hammock. I add them one at a time to a concept, but not really an image. The longer I think about it, the more details I add. After a point, if I have a specific memory of a beach, I might pull that out, but it's not something that comes quickly, it might take a few minutes to get to that point. With the beach example, I lived by a beach for two years, less than two years ago, so to say it takes minutes, it seems like eternity, and I usually don't make it there unless I'm alone. Similarly if I think of my mom. I might feel love, but to see her takes time. And it's usually in black and white, or really black and red, you know, what you see when you close your eyes.
When reading, I do see things, not like a movie, more like how I think with flashes of images. I can create an image for someone, but it usually has nothing to do with how the author described that person. I only saw the first Harry Potter before reading the books. So while I had images for some of the characters, I completely created the others. Ginny looked nothing like the movie Ginny, although Umbridge was pretty close. But Rowling was pretty brief in her descriptions, and I liked that. I attempted and failed at reading Lord of the Rings, because of all the details. I never could put them together to create something. Actions and talking are important to me when reading.
I have no inner monologue. I always thought that concept in TV shows was genius! Evidently that's just how most people think. I do sometimes have music going on in my head. I can "speak" in my head.
And for the fluid vs crystal intelligence, mine is super fluid. I'm an engineer, and in college, as a professor would start deriving a proof, I would finish before he would, sometimes dozens of steps ahead. I was very very good at those types of image problems.
Emotions are also a problem for me.
The "I don't know" and the "what are you thinking about - nothing" are definitely me.
I have troubles extrapolating what people look like. Like if I haven't seen a friend since high school, it is likely I won't recognize them. And if I've met you once, I won't remember your name at all, no matter how many times I said it in my head trying to remember it. I'm pretty good at "I know you somehow..."
I know facts about my past, but I have few memories going back more than a few years.
I'm great at directions. I usually have to orient North once at a new location (like if I've driven a hundred miles), but otherwise, it takes me a second to figure out where North is. But I'm horrible at distances. I can get the order of magnitude down, but is that car 100 feet in front of me or 500 feet? I really have no idea.
This is interesting. Most of the people in this thread have said their different way of thinking causes them no issues at all. It's interesting to hear a perspective of someone with a different thought process that is so foreign that it makes communicating and performing some daily functions difficult. Thank you for sharing; I'd love to hear more about it.
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Really fascinating. Going to read the article next. I've dreamed in words before.... As if my mind was reading a novel. Everytime it happens I wake up really excited but I never manage to be able to recall much of it... It fades quickly.
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This is enlightening. I had so many thoughts on this, so I started this reply as I read through other replies.
When I was younger, I thought in pictures. I had trouble communicating, because I would see the picture, then try to describe it in words. But I would see 100 pictures per second, so my words would always fall behind, and I would even forget what I was saying, because I was concentrating on the pictures. Written communication has always been better for me (even though I'm not a great speller). I always felt I was different in this regard.
This is interesting. Most of the people in this thread have said their different way of thinking causes them no issues at all. It's interesting to hear a perspective of someone with a different thought process that is so foreign that it makes communicating and performing some daily functions difficult. Thank you for sharing; I'd love to hear more about it.
Most of my issues can be found on the autism spectrum, so I may be on the functioning side of that. I've never been diagnosed, and I have no visual indicators, but I could see how my mind could function like someone who had it.
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Wow, really fascinating, thanks Lifejoy.
I sometimes sub-vocalise while I'm reading, but more often I don't. I generally don't have a strong visual mental image of characters that I am reading about though, unless I concentrate quite hard - by which I mean that I can conjure up images of my favourite characters right now, but reading a book is not like watching a video on the inside of my eyelids - I don't see the characters acting out the story.
I also have the inner monologue, very similar to how ARS describes his wife's. Plus I also sometimes 'hear voices' which I can identify as other people's. These are usually people I've just spent time with, and generally people who I find it difficult to be around, my Mum, a friend who I had a difficult relationship with. These are sometimes easily audible, sometimes it's hard to make out what they are saying - but it's generally critical. I usually interpret it as a sign that I'm over-stimulated and stressed. I've heard that hearing voices is OK, so long as you are aware that the voices are coming from the inside of your head. It's when you think they are coming from outside your head that it's a problem... eek, I hope so.
What's it like when you are occupied with some repetitive task? Worse or better?
I find that when I am doing something repetitive - mowing grass especially - my mind wanders and ruminates about stuff - usually something I'm conflicted or stressed about. Say, if I had a disagreement with someone (which doesn't happen often thankfully) I can't turn it off easily once it gets rolling. Can exacerbate my stress about that topic. Doesn't happen much otherwise.
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For those who can't visualize spatially - how do you do at athletic games (playing them)? I'm not very good at them so I'm visualizing trajectories. Without that I'd be hopeless.
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For those who can't visualize spatially - how do you do at athletic games (playing them)? I'm not very good at them so I'm visualizing trajectories. Without that I'd be hopeless.
In most sporting competition there isn't time to mentally work out angles and stuff. I've never visualized trajectories while playing sports . . . you eventually drill enough to recognize certain situations and your body just reacts instinctively.
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For those who can't visualize spatially - how do you do at athletic games (playing them)? I'm not very good at them so I'm visualizing trajectories. Without that I'd be hopeless.
You can still calculate, you just don't picture anything visually.
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For those who can't visualize spatially - how do you do at athletic games (playing them)? I'm not very good at them so I'm visualizing trajectories. Without that I'd be hopeless.
In most sporting competition there isn't time to mentally work out angles and stuff. I've never visualized trajectories while playing sports . . . you eventually drill enough to recognize certain situations and your body just reacts instinctively.
What about billiards? I suppose that applies - if one trains enough, their muscle memory takes over and one doesn't need to visualize the balls bouncing off the bumpers.
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For those who can't visualize spatially - how do you do at athletic games (playing them)? I'm not very good at them so I'm visualizing trajectories. Without that I'd be hopeless.
In most sporting competition there isn't time to mentally work out angles and stuff. I've never visualized trajectories while playing sports . . . you eventually drill enough to recognize certain situations and your body just reacts instinctively.
What about billiards? I suppose that applies - if one trains enough, their muscle memory takes over and one doesn't need to visualize the balls bouncing off the bumpers.
Billiards is a great example. There are many guys who are amazing at calculating angles in Physics and realize when they hit the pool table that calculations are largely useless. Subtle things like the quality of felt on a particular pool table, the consistency/accuracy of striking the cue ball and how that limits particular shots, the effect of adding extra chalk to the cue tip, etc. effects the game too much.
There are always too many variables. Your brain creates a shorthand to deal with the variables by recognizing mental scenes and scenarios. To be great at any sport (or music) you have to reach a point where you've practiced enough to subconsciously react properly.
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I was thinking of trials bikes and mtn bikes - going slow and picking a path over obstacles or planning a jump. Guns. Archery. Billiards too. Frisbee. Soccer when you're a goalie trying to smack the ball down field. Those sort of situations. I agree - when it is a sport and you're in a race against another player its just muscle memory and experience. I don't excel at any sport well enough to be at that level.
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Wow, this has been really fascinating!
I'm wondering if this is a spectrum instead of a yes or no situation. For me, one train of thought can spiral into a hundred things. Going back to arebelspy's example of cat-horse-motorcycle, I might see a cat, and it might remind me of a cat from childhood, and that time I put him in a silly costume, but it'll also remind me of a horse and the lessons I used to take, which reminds me of a motorcycle... and all of a sudden I'm visualizing my childhood cat on a motorcycle. That's a poor example.. what I'm trying to get at is one seed of thought turns into a massive tree, and I'm left with figuring out how various branches came from the same thought. My mom and I have always shared a similar sense of 'logic,' as we called it. She'd ask me one thing, I'd respond with something seemingly completely random (but she'd follow along), and several sentences later we're talking about something completely different, leaving my poor dad in a state of confusion. I've only met one other person with a similar sense of 'logic,' and we always just joked it was because we were silly.
Sometimes it's overwhelming, and I do tend to lose my train of thought easily. Imagine that, for your average person, a train of thought is like a faucet that's running. For someone with aphantasia, it's off, or running in a very controlled manner. For me, it's like a pipe burst. All these thoughts and visualizations all over the place. It's something I've learned to "control" (as in, I am able to focus on a single task and get work done), but I need time specifically to space out and day dream, to let my mind go off leash.
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For those who can't visualize spatially - how do you do at athletic games (playing them)? I'm not very good at them so I'm visualizing trajectories. Without that I'd be hopeless.
You can still calculate, you just don't picture anything visually.
I noticed this today: every time I read one of your posts, I now see nothingness. You will forever be associated with that in my mind's eye.
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Really interesting article. This guy's missing one of the "senses" I never even knew I had, and didn't notice until he was an adult!
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I'm wondering if this is a spectrum instead of a yes or no situation.
Definitely. I think it's more spectrum than binary.
And on top of it, brains work in all other kinds of weird/cool ways separate from that, and then they interplay, like your branching thing (which could work independently of the aphantasia thing--i.e. I can imagine someone having the branching you describe without being able to picture), or my lack of inner monologue.
For those who can't visualize spatially - how do you do at athletic games (playing them)? I'm not very good at them so I'm visualizing trajectories. Without that I'd be hopeless.
You can still calculate, you just don't picture anything visually.
I noticed this today: every time I read one of your posts, I now see nothingness. You will forever be associated with that in my mind's eye.
I couldn't ask for anything better.
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I was thinking of trials bikes and mtn bikes - going slow and picking a path over obstacles or planning a jump. Guns. Archery. Billiards too. Frisbee. Soccer when you're a goalie trying to smack the ball down field. Those sort of situations. I agree - when it is a sport and you're in a race against another player its just muscle memory and experience. I don't excel at any sport well enough to be at that level.
Yes - some of these things definitely could be easier if one can 'picture' the shot, or plot their line. Practice is going to win out in either event.
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I was thinking of trials bikes and mtn bikes - going slow and picking a path over obstacles or planning a jump. Guns. Archery. Billiards too. Frisbee. Soccer when you're a goalie trying to smack the ball down field. Those sort of situations. I agree - when it is a sport and you're in a race against another player its just muscle memory and experience. I don't excel at any sport well enough to be at that level.
Yes - some of these things definitely could be easier if one can 'picture' the shot, or plot their line. Practice is going to win out in either event.
I think you guys are underestimating how those of us who don't picture can still function effectively. :)
I can plan a trajectory without visually seeing it.
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I was thinking of trials bikes and mtn bikes - going slow and picking a path over obstacles or planning a jump. Guns. Archery. Billiards too. Frisbee. Soccer when you're a goalie trying to smack the ball down field. Those sort of situations. I agree - when it is a sport and you're in a race against another player its just muscle memory and experience. I don't excel at any sport well enough to be at that level.
Yes - some of these things definitely could be easier if one can 'picture' the shot, or plot their line. Practice is going to win out in either event.
I think you guys are underestimating how those of us who don't picture can still function effectively. :)
I can plan a trajectory without visually seeing it.
No one said it would impair or remove function; just that a person that could visualize something could be more effective.
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Right. Like I said, you may be underestimating how we can operate effectively. I could see it the opposite--calculations being more efficient without a visual distraction.
I don't know that there is a way to tell without a controlled study, and even then we can't get in someone's head, so I wouldn't assume that one method is more effective than another.
You may be right, but I wouldn't automatically assume that because it's within your experience. :)
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I have this to a degree. I was made aware at about 10 years old when the teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine a scene (An elephant - somewhere I can't remember). It was that vivid to me that I couldn't do it, that I have this memory (with no picture) of the situation. Again with some others, very few early memories. I have the occaisional picture, but they are fleeting.
However sorry to disappoint ARS, but I do have an internal dialogue, some days more active than others. I also do very poorly at recognizing people, be it supposedly famous people or people I have met before 1-2 times. When reading I do skip some of the imagery, as it adds nothing for me, however I speed read and that's one time when I lose the internal dialogue and just absorb the story. If watching a movie / meeting someone, I won't have a picture of what I expect it to be like, but sometimes will struggle if I think a key characteristic is wrong. Eye colour / hair length, etc if it is critical to the story. I can still skip to 'thought 22' via my internal dialogue and jumping from one tangent to another.
My DH on the other hand is VERY visual. Constantly has pictures. Often has music / tunes in his head also.
We have discussed this with friends in the past (only imagery, not dialogue but I'm keen to ask that now) and most people have pictures, although it is to my experience a spectrum about the quantity / quality.
I teach dance, and I have no problems doing choreography without being able to picture it first.
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DD and I talked about this last weekend. She can do Sudoku visually in her head, I have to do it by logic and visuals right there on the page/screen. But I have no problem with ecological relationship concepts, I just don't do pictures in my head.
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I was thinking of trials bikes and mtn bikes - going slow and picking a path over obstacles or planning a jump. Guns. Archery. Billiards too. Frisbee. Soccer when you're a goalie trying to smack the ball down field. Those sort of situations. I agree - when it is a sport and you're in a race against another player its just muscle memory and experience. I don't excel at any sport well enough to be at that level.
Yes - some of these things definitely could be easier if one can 'picture' the shot, or plot their line. Practice is going to win out in either event.
I think you guys are underestimating how those of us who don't picture can still function effectively. :)
I can plan a trajectory without visually seeing it.
"Seeing it" is such a big part of my planning that I don't know exactly how it could be done without the visualization phase.
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DD and I talked about this last weekend. She can do Sudoku visually in her head, I have to do it by logic and visuals right there on the page/screen. But I have no problem with ecological relationship concepts, I just don't do pictures in my head.
That would be pretty impressive to see someone stare at a Sudoku while they solved it mentally, and then just blitz through the numbers, writing them down one after another. It'd almost be like magic!
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DD and I talked about this last weekend. She can do Sudoku visually in her head, I have to do it by logic and visuals right there on the page/screen. But I have no problem with ecological relationship concepts, I just don't do pictures in my head.
That would be pretty impressive to see someone stare at a Sudoku while they solved it mentally, and then just blitz through the numbers, writing them down one after another. It'd almost be like magic!
Newton or Da Vinci or someone used to solve Magic Squares in his head like this.
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I had no idea until now that this was a "thing". Or that there was a name for it.
I am a totally visual person, I dream in vivid detail and have a constant internal monologue. It never even occurred to me that everyone wasn't like me. I'm a good driver (I know everyone says that, but I've never had an at-fault crash and have avoided several "inevitable" crashes that were caused by someone else") and I can't do Sudoku.
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I had no idea until now that this was a "thing". Or that there was a name for it.
Well to be fair, how would you know what other people are thinking? And since it does not limit people from accomplishing tasks or interacting with others, there would be little reason to ask or inquire about such a thing.
Much like a person diagnosed with situs inversus is completely different than almost everyone they would ever meet; it's internal, causes little or no distress and has almost zero impact on a person's day-to day actions; how would one know that this is a 'thing'?
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I had no idea until now that this was a "thing". Or that there was a name for it.
Well to be fair, how would you know what other people are thinking? And since it does not limit people from accomplishing tasks or interacting with others, there would be little reason to ask or inquire about such a thing.
Much like a person diagnosed with situs inversus is completely different than almost everyone they would ever meet; it's internal, causes little or no distress and has almost zero impact on a person's day-to day actions; how would one know that this is a 'thing'?
Nice analogy, thanks! That's it, isn't it? We each go along on our merry little way with absolutely no idea that things for us can be the absolute opposite to how they are for other people.
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I had no idea until now that this was a "thing". Or that there was a name for it.
Well to be fair, how would you know what other people are thinking? And since it does not limit people from accomplishing tasks or interacting with others, there would be little reason to ask or inquire about such a thing.
Much like a person diagnosed with situs inversus is completely different than almost everyone they would ever meet; it's internal, causes little or no distress and has almost zero impact on a person's day-to day actions; how would one know that this is a 'thing'?
Nice analogy, thanks! That's it, isn't it? We each go along on our merry little way with absolutely no idea that things for us can be the absolute opposite to how they are for other people.
Right? And I'm probably less attuned to differences than the average poster on this site. One of the reasons I enjoy this forum so much; the depth and breadth of views and experiences people share are absolutely amazing. It's really great.
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DD and I talked about this last weekend. She can do Sudoku visually in her head, I have to do it by logic and visuals right there on the page/screen. But I have no problem with ecological relationship concepts, I just don't do pictures in my head.
That would be pretty impressive to see someone stare at a Sudoku while they solved it mentally, and then just blitz through the numbers, writing them down one after another. It'd almost be like magic!
It was pretty annoying when Sudoko first came out, and DD and DH would whip through them while I slowly plodded along, using logic and tiny possible numbers written in the corners of the boxes. They couldn't understand why I was so bad at it (I was the family math whiz/techie) and I couldn't figure out how they knew that one of two possible numbers was the right one. She sees 4 moves/entries ahead. This explains so much. And I am so glad I never taught her chess, it would be embarrassing playing with her. At least I still can beat her at cribbage half the time.