Casual Conversation

5, unfortunately 😕

I’m a 5 on this scale. I was 50 years old when I discovered aphasia. When discussing this with my father I realised he has eidetic memory. This prompted me to think back and I remembered that used to see pictures in my head but it changed when I had traumatic head injury at 7 years old.

1. I can spin it, animate it, transform it into other things

It's complicated for me because it's not a specific one? It depends on my present state of mind and stuff, like when I try to visualize an apple I can kind of do it but sometimes it's a little staticky, or my mind just kind of cycles through a bunch of what feel like video feeds? Like memories of times i have seen an apple played as YouTube videos in a series? Except some of them are purely imagined?

Sometimes I can have a pretty much perfect mental visualization of what I'm thinking of though.

-1.

I can daydream so hard that it should be studied

Full on 5. Maybe a 4 if I try really hard. But I still have a "big imagination", I just can't see it in my mind.

It varies based on context and how much thought I put into it. I might just think apples and not image them if its just a place holder but if Im thinking more about apples or like a scene in a book is engaging then the apple will be there in the visualization but how detailed it is is going to be based on its importance in whatever the thing is. I would have to be really trying to visualize the perfect apple to get a high detail one in my head. I used to read a lot and I feel like I visualized a lot more then but now that I am consuming media that just has the thing its like im not working out the muscle.

Can you guys actually see things? Like I can pretty clearly imagine things but theres no physical things to see things. I can imagine folding a box in my mind or spinning it but I wouldn't say I can see the box

Follow up question.

Is it easier to imagine it with your eyes open or closed?

Probably a 3.

Unless I have nightmares, then it gets hyperrealistic and off the scales like I can see the the mushroom cloud of the nuke going off.

Edit: To add to this, I hate reading books, its just not enjoyable for me, for the most part. I need visual media to understand. whats going on.

5

1 or less I think. My mind also populated scenery in addition to the apple (a walnut stained table it was on outdoors).

4.5 on a very good day

But actually it feels more something like:

class Apple {       
  public:             
    string color;  
    string shape;
    string taste;
    string recipes[];
};

I know what an apple is, I know stuff about it and what properties it has, but it produces no picture (nor code btw...) in my head.

Solid 1. Reading a book is like watching a movie to me.

I can rotate a cow in my mind.

Question: when you picture something in your head, do you actually see it clearly, as if it's right in front of you?

I don't. My girlfriend claims that she does. I can imagine things on a level 2 or 3, but it's just a thought in my head, not a detailed image manifesting in front of me.

I’ve always thought this was really hard to describe. I think I’m a 1. The idea of fully picturing something is such a natural thing, but I also don’t know what level of vivid people actually mean.

When I picture the apple, I could easily write a detailed paragraph about what it looks like. I could even easily picture an environment for it that just sort of comes into frame (always on an apple orchard, during the afternoon).

I can easily even put myself in that space mentally.

I’ve just never thought about this being something other people can’t naturally and quickly do that when I saw this question, I assumed people were describing actually fully fooling their senses into the thing physically appearing before them.

I picture it like another monitor or render layer that I can flip to, manipulate, and test in to work out concepts.

I always thought aphantasia was a thing you either had entirely, or not. I thought it ought to be a scale but I never heard anyone say it was until today. I'm a 4.

There was an interesting comment when this image was posted to reddit 6 years ago.

quadraspididilis

I'd call myself a 3, but I don't find the twitter illustration very accurate. The apple isn't low resolution like in the drawing, but it is insubstantial. Like hold your hand a couple of inches in front of one eye and then try to read this; you can still see your hand, but it's mostly see-through because your brain is mostly ignoring that eye. My experience of picturing the apple is like that, but the apple is in focus. Also, I have a hard time holding the image for more than a second.

This is me, but with a very faint ghost hand. I also can't hold it still. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I become a 5. Sometimes if I have an edible I can hold on to images longer.

I feel like i understand so much more now about myself and others. This is why I struggle to make art that isn't just copying something. This is why I struggle with role-playing games.

Solidly 5 (no visual dreams either or much of any sense memory in general) and I thought "picture this" and similar sayings or instruction was figure of speech until aphantasia as a word became popular...less than a decade ago? idk I learned of it during covid I think.

4 1/2. I can "plot" various shapes, etc. but it isn't visual, it's spacial information. It's like an un-rendered cad file. Also, the more I concentrate on a detail, the less I perceive of the whole.

I guess when it comes to visualizing things, the apple I'd see would be between a 1 and a 2.
But to me when I try to fully imagine an apple, I also imagine how I can feel the texture of its skin, the weight of it in my hand, the taste and sensation when taking a bite out of it, the smell of the juice, the stickiness of my fingers afterwards, etc.
Or is this also included in the scale? Because then I guess it's a 1.

5. I cant picture my own partners face in my head.

2 when I don’t think about it, 1 with some effort.