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This is a thought experiment "Ball on a Table" for detecting whether someone has Aphantasia. What do you see when you perform this experiment? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by zlatiah@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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This is more of me trying to understand how people imagine things, as I almost certainly have Aphantasia and didn't realize until recently... If this is against community rules, please do let me know.

The original thought experiment was from the Aphantasia subreddit. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g1e6bl/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment_2/

Thought experiment begins below.

Try this: Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it) a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball?

Once you're done with the above, click to review the test questions:

What color was the ball?
What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
What did they look like?
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?

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[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

I have songs stuck in my head all the time and I ‘know’ what they sound like, and my brain keeps the beat with the song, but I’m not hearing it.

That's just weird. You're aware there's a song stuck in your head, but you can't actually hear it? I wonder if that's more or less frustrating than a song stuck in your head that you can hear.

Can you taste or smell things that aren’t around?

Yes, but if normal experience of a taste or smell is a 10/10 in sensation, imagining a taste or smell is like a 1/10. Like, imagining smelling salts which are just overwhelming in reality barely rate a tickle in imagination. Same idea with taste. I can imagine biting into a lime, which in reality would be an almost painful experience in reality, but in the imagination it's barely noticeable. I imagine that when I'm imagining a situation, all the body sensations are there: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, even proprioception. But, I think everything is muted compared to reality, sight might be at a 3/10 compared to reality, sound maybe at a 2/10, and the others are lower, probably even below 1/10. I can only manage a 1/10 for something that would be an overwhelming sensation in reality.

[-] Reyali@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If I think of tasting a lime, my mouth puckers and salivates like I’m about to eat something sour. I could probably say I’m imagining the taste, similar to how you described, like a 1/10.

I think hearing is maybe like that but like 1/100 instead of 1/10? It’s hardest to explain that one because with the stuck song thing, it’s there. I know it’s there. I can’t not imagine the song when it’s stuck. But I don’t “hear” it in any way like my ears hear things?

Smell I can’t imagine at all, but I can usually recognize smells (“usually” because for things that are similar to a memory, like someone wearing the aftershave my dad used as a kid or something that smells like my grandmother’s house from 25 years ago, are likely a miss, but normal things I recognize without question).

Visuals are probably more like smell in that I just don’t have them, but remembering visuals is more critical so I’m better at coping with that one.

I will mention I’ve met people and then instantly forgotten everything about how they looked, like I could only tell you gender and race, but I recognized them when I saw them again. Now, I had context clues. Like I met a couple in a dive shop in town then saw them at the airport on the way to the trip we were both going on through the dive shop. I knew I’d probably see them at the airport and I knew them when I did. But I couldn’t have told you a thing about them until then! It was the weirdest experience, and I think not being able to visualize was the root cause.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

It's pretty interesting how we're all running basically the same hardware, but there are major software differences.

this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024

259 points (98.5% liked)

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