Comment on How can people know what they want at a given moment?
Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago“Out of sight, out of mind” really does ring true for people with aphantasia in my experience.
But from what I have heard and seen people with aphantasia are very good at memorizing lists.
It’s not really a how good of your memory it is but how you choose to store it. Are you going to pull up an image to remember, or are you just going to “know” it. Some things easier with images, some with just facts.
Like how many arches are on the Eiffel tower. Someone with really good image memory might pull up the image in their mind and count. Someone like me would have to know it as a fact and since “How many arches are on the Eiffel tower” isn’t common knowledge or I haven’t heard/memorized it then knowing it as a fact isn’t possible.
But images also tend to be wrong so you can’t always trust them.
In an experiment where people had to memorize a table set up. People with aphantasia got a total of less items on the table but placement and everything was more true. Someone with a true “photographic” memory could get everything right.
AloneDownUnder@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
Makes me wonder how many people with Aphantasia have actually had a traumatic childhood.
Because for me it also seems almost like I don’t want to remember things or maybe my mind is unconsciously trying to process something or suppress something and that actually influences my capacity to remember and imagine things.
Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s an interesting thing to think about.
My mother and brother both have aphantasia and I never remember seeing any images in my head ever. Counting sheep never made sense to me. So I think mine is more hereditary.
AloneDownUnder@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
That makes me wonder again. How do they separate the effects of genetics from behavior you have learned from your parents?
Especially considering it is often said that most of your behavior is learned from the first few years of your life. Apparently Autism and Complex PTSD also have a lot of overlapping symptoms and it can be difficult to distinguish one from the other. (And often they are also co-occuring)
Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My father is an imager. My mother raised me but I did more things growing up with my father.
My mother wouldn’t have done any mind image imagine stuff with me. I wouldn’t have gotten any practice. So that could definitely contribute.
Like apparently an imaginary friend is an imager thing?
I played a ton with Lego stuff growing up. I can imagine building Lego sets in my mind, not with images but with What,Where,Why,How,Etc… I enjoyed the instruction manual because in a way it tells a story. But once I built one I could replay building it in my own way with more details.
Then video games probably fried my brain
I was never put in a situation to really need vivid images growing up. I always had movies and video games. I’ve never liked reading, I’m not getting the head movie, it’s just facts I have to remember. A good story is a good story though and there are some I have enjoyed. Flowers for Alegernon is a great read, it’s in an epistolary style.
I never needed an imaginary friend. But maybe if I did I would have developed the skill?