Submitted 2 hours ago by shalafi@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://i.imgur.com/OlhiGci.jpg
And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
Yet #5’s are not handicapped in the slightest. They’re so “normal” that mankind is just now figuring out we’re far apart on this thing. Fucking weird.
There are times I can be “sucked into” a book. I’m in there, seeing the story like its real. I forget about everything else momentarily. Very jarring when my concentration is broken, and suddenly I remember who/where I am.
Oh wait can people really imagine something with that amount of detail in their heads??(#1) I (#3) always thought the idea of sonething is enough
I’m a 5, yet I can have extremely vivid dreams that are exactly like I am in that world. I can perfectly picture peoples faces from the past too while dreaming. So the ability is in there somewhere. 🤷♂️
Are you able to see your memories more like dreams or are your memories more like a vibe?
You guys are gonna lose your shit when you find out some people don’t have an inner monologue.
That should be my next post! 😂 My inner monologue is like words on a page. And again, I can’t see how one could enjoy a novel with the monologue and mind’s eye.
Isn’t 5 is called Aphantasia ? To be unable to visualize something in the mind?
Yep! Craziest thing is that we just started looking into this thing in the past 10-20 years. Proof to me that it’s no handicap, but if you took my mind’s eye away I’d feel crippled.
For individual objects it is difficult to impossible for me to create the exact image.
For directions however, I can do a visual “fly” over the roads which I believe I should be going down, to make sure I’m going the right place. The roads are clear images, but not to the same effect of watching a video of someone driving along said roads.
I’m coming to think there is a lot more nuance to this than the 5 images let on.
I’m a #5 on that scale.
And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
I won’t say I’m not jealous of people who’re #1s. However, to directly answer your question, it’s not like our heads are empty. You think apple and (apparently) ‘see’ an apple. I think apple and it’s like thinking of how you’d describe an apple. It’s red, it’s round. It has a stem. It’s juicy. It tastes good… but I can’t see it. Or anything else. They’re just thoughts.
I have a very difficult time with facial recognition, presumably as a result of this. If I’m watching a movie where there’s a lot of characters that are shown but not named, I have a difficult time following that. I need to be able to assign names to them to keep them straight in my head, and often-times if a character isn’t named but they’re important, I’ll assign them a name myself just to have something to track them with. I can recognize people I interact with a lot obviously but if you asked me to describe what someone looks like who I’m not currently interacting with, that’s very difficult for me to do, beyond very surface-level stuff, like their gender or their build. If I had to describe someone for a police sketch, I’d be useless at that. Remembering facial features is like remembering a list of words; I can’t just call up an image of them to describe… if I haven’t already committed that description to memory, I can’t describe the person.
It’s funny, honestly, because I never realized this wasn’t how everyone is until I saw the image you linked some years back. I actually called up my mother immediately after and asked her what she could see. The conversation went something like:
“When you think of an apple, can you see the apple?”
“Yes…”
“Yeah, but like… you can actually see it, though?”
“…yes…?”
“Yeah but I mean like… you can see it, as if you’re looking at it?”
“…yes, what is this about?”
I had that exact same conversation with my mom but it went like this:
“Ok mom, picture a cow in your head”
“Oookayyy”
“Now you can see a cow right?”
“What do you mean”
“Like… You can see a picture of the cow, right?”
“Nooo”
My dad chimes in “yes, obviously”
“…crap. Mom, I have some news for you”
Both of us grew up thinking we had no imagination or were dumb. I remember being incredibly frustrated when a teacher taught us the concept of the Memory Palace where you picture things in rooms of a house. Like if you had to remember five playing cards you’d picture a room with 7 red clowns, with hearts on their cheeks. Then in the next room you’d picture a king, holding up a spade, etc. That just made it harder for me to remember and the teacher kept telling me I wasn’t listening or trying
I used to want very much to be an artist, or at least, be able to draw capably, but it’s always seemed impossible. I can think of what I want to draw in a macro sense - like, if I was thinking of that famous Norman Rockwell painting with the boy with the bindle sitting at the diner next to the police officer, I can certainly imagine the scene. Just thinking of that painting from memory, the officer is looking down at the boy who’s looking up at the officer, there’s a man behind the counter in a white outfit looking at both of them with an amused expression, there’s some pastries or donuts or something on the counter…
But to draw something, it feels like you’ve got to be able to imagine the micro details, and without references to look at, I just can’t do that. The same is true if I was going to try to describe the minutia in the painting - what color is the officer’s hair? Are any of the characters wearing glasses? What do the wrinkles in their clothes look like? What kind of shoes are they wearing?
I even have a difficult time commissioning artwork as a result of this, because it’s difficult to describe what I want without having something visual to reference.
Good heavens! I learned about the memory palace in a Hannibal Lector book, thought it was genius, assumed everyone could do that.
I’m basically the opposite. I can remember peoples faces very well but have a hell of a hard time trying to remember their names. I’d say I’m a 1 or 2 on this scale, depending imon if I’m fully engaged with the content (like reading a book).
I’d never really connected my lack of a mind’s eye with my inability to follow unnamed characters through a movie until you just said that. 🤯
So you never have sexual fantasies? If somebody asks you to describe how something looks, how are you able to do it? Can you at least remember the colors red and blue?
I have sexual fantasies, but they’re more like reading erotica than watching porn.
I imagine I describe things just like I expect others do, except that instead of having a catalogue of pictures to reference, I have a filing cabinet of documents with descriptions of those things. The concept of a ‘photographic memory’ is completely foreign to me. If I’m walking down the street and I see someone get mugged, then I get asked about it later, I can recall and recite the things I specifically took notice of in the moment, but if I want to be able to give a description of e.g. what the person was wearing or what color their hair was, I need to consciously observe those things and commit them to memory at the time. As I understand it, some folks can just recall the event and ‘replay’ it in their mind, and recall things they might not have taken direct notice of originally; I definitely can’t do that.
I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.
But aren’t you visualizing the assigned character’s faces? I think we all have varying amounts of this depending on what it is. It sounds like you can visualize faces, but not spaces.
It sounds like you can visualize faces, but not spaces.
Can’t visualize faces at all; I think you pulled that quote from a different post. ;)
The thing to remember, though, is that… I didn’t even know this was something that I “couldn’t do” until it was pointed out to me that others can do it. I just assumed everyone else was being metaphorical when they said they “visualized something” in their head, or whatever. So whereas you hear it and think “Oh gosh, these people can’t do this very normal thing! That must be awful!”, to us, it’s more like we’ve just been living our lives as normal and then 30+ years in, we discover that most people have a superpower that we don’t have.
I’m a 5.
Probably why I prefer graphic novels and was not really into textual books that much. I wish I could play a whole movie in my head while reading a book. I’m so jealous.
My dreams are super vivid though, and lucid dream often. And I remember my dreams in heavy detail. My dreams are like a 1 or 2.
This one is a cluster fuck for me… I can visualize an object in my head and even to the point of placing it in real space in my hand and being able to rotate it. I cannot however, see your face in my mind after you have just left the room.
Don’t really know how that fits in.
Face blindness (prosopagnosia) seems a different thing altogether, though you would think they’re related.
Thats so weird! As I was reading one of the other comments I realized that I can almost live in the fantasy world of a book, but no one has a distinctive face…
My sister has #5 and I can ask her to make a response if you want OP.
Last we talked about it she said if she tried really hard she can see come colors and shapes but that’s about it.
The best conversation about it we ever had went something like this (keep in mind were both autistic and when together dont always communicate like neurotypical people do):
*while driving*
her: “get in that turn lane to the right”
*i do the 👆hand tricks and turn*
her: “when I don’t want to do that I always think in my head ‘never eat soggy waffles’ and remember that east is left and right is west”
me: “that’s not even correct, but like WHY would you do that??”
her: “to remember how to turn”
me: “why wouldn’t you just do the hand things?”
me: “like imagine them in your head and-”
her: “MUST BE NICE HUH?”
*we both explode in laughter*
she didn’t even mean to make a joke about it, that’s just genuinely the way she remembers lefts and rights
The left/right story might be a different thing. Was in my 40s until I could instinctively know left from right. Before that I would snap my left fingers, or mime it, because I’m sinister and can’t snap my right.
Only way I got better was saying to myself, “This is bullshit and you’re all growed up. Work on this thing.” Somehow I got better, can’t say how.
I have serious issues with modelling the world in 3D, but I’m a solid 1 on the aphantasia scale. Weird.
The left/right story might be a different thing.
very well could be, our genetics are a concoction of adhd, autism, anxiety, depression, etc etc
i used to be able to know without doing the L R hands in highschool, but I guess that skill faded over time 🤷♀️
personally it’s not big enough of an issue for me to do anything about bc taking a wrong turn is way more embarrassing than doing a L R hand.
I have serious issues with modelling the world in 3D, but I’m a solid 1 on the aphantasia scale. Weird.
that’s interesting, my sister has done some stuff with a CAD program for 3d printing and it wasn’t an issue for her. What specifically do you have trouble with?
I never know how to interpret this scale. I can think of objects and describe what I’m thinking about, but I don’t see anything in the same way my eyes do. Or rather, I see a black void, and if I try to picture an apple it’s like a black object on a black background, but I know it’s there.
I also get better at it the longer I do it; if I read a book for a long while, the ideas get sharper in my head and can be in color, but I’m still not “seeing” in the same way my eyes do.
I’d call that a 5. With work a 4?
Too fun and interesting to be a shitpost. Half my family are 1 the other half are 5. Woo!
Some people really are out there living their lives with aphantasia. I can’t imagine that.
I am definitely a number 1, I couldn’t imagine not being able to imagine. I can go beyond one. I can visualize the apple and taste it as I begin to eat said apple.
Discover the trick as a kid, when denied food from my abusive mom boyfriend. He made me stand in a corner while they ate dinner. I used this skill to bring a cheeseburger into existence and then began to eat it. Even felt full afterwards. Of course that sensation only lasted couple hours, but was still interesting trait to discover.
I’m probably about a 4, maybe 3.5, on this scale. It kinda sucks not having any idea what it’s like to actually be able to visualize things, so I don’t even really know what I’m missing.
Kinda the point of the headline. Apparently you’re not missing much or the ancients would have figured it a handicap, named it and studied it.
Far from a handicap, I was reading that scientists and mathematicians are mostly 5s. Maybe you can save CPU cycles and think in more abstract terms?
I’m a software engineer, so that tracks.
This reminded me of a sort of similar topic, and curiously enough it’s about reading, and might provide some insight into your question.
Some years ago, I happened on a thread in which the OP asked people whose voice they “heard” when they read.
I couldn’t even make sense of that question. The only time I “hear” voices when I read is when a character speaks. The rest of the time, I not only don’t “hear” the words - I’m not even really aware of them. My eyes follow the lines while my brain instantly translates the words I’m seeing into images and concepts and the like. And yes - it’s like a movie playing out inside my brain, and yes, I’m a #1 on this chart.
But apparently there’s a not insignificant number of people who “hear” a book inside their heads just as if someone else was reading it out loud. Instead of visualizing things, they remain focused only on the words - the representations - and somehow glean from them alone the necessary details.
I wouldn’t be surprised if those people are also generally #5 or thereabouts on this chart, and again what it is is that their brains don’t directly envision things but instead rely on descriptive representations.
I don’t get how it works either, but self-evidently it does.
I hear a narrator if I decide to; otherwise the words just go directly into my brain like you described. I just had Morgan Freeman read your comment to me for funsies.
Wow! No, I’ve never “heard” a novel. Some writing is easy enough, like a meme where, “You just read this in Morgan Freeman’s voice.” OTOH, I didn’t “hear” it, but somehow I read it that way in my mind’s eye/ear.
I might be a 5 on the hearing scale! That’s really something to think on.
being a 1 with ADHD is crazy, like I can be in the middle of a class and zone out and start visualising myself walking around the campus in incredible detail, or FPV droning inside a friend’s house, or really anything I can think of, although that said it takes a fair bit of effort to keep it going beyond a certain amount of time.
Dude it’s a constant battle to not get lost in thoughts. The real world is boring af 90% of the time. I’ve sat for hours quietly immersed in the imaginings. It’s also fantastic for extrapolating and working through ideas though. Sights, sounds, tactile sensations, movement, it isn’t vivid like reality but it has such depth.
I’m somewhere between 3 and 4 I think. If I try to imagine a detail, I can’t see the rest of the thing. If I want to see the whole thing, it’s all very vague and shadowy.
Yes this is me. I have to ‘zoom in’ to get details
I think that I have a good visual imagination but it works on a higher level of abstraction than simply imagining a picture of something. Let’s say that you see a mouse run by. You think “I have seen a mouse. It was small and gray.” My imagination seems to work on that level - it goes straight to the feeling of seeing something rather than generating pictures and then processing them to create that feeling.
This might not seem visual but I can rotate 3D objects in my mind to solve geometry problems, so I think that it is.
When I read “you see a mouse run by” I saw it like a movie. The background was rather generic, a wooden floor, chair leg in the foreground, warm lighting, but that’s it. But I clearly saw the little gray mouse, even pausing for a second, whiskers twitching about before continuing on.
I am utterly broken as to rotating objects in my head. Took me until I was into my 40s to figure out that my brain simply doesn’t work.
Standardized tests in 70s-80s elementary, rocked out on every subject until spatial reasoning. Didn’t give up because I found it hard, really tried my little ass off, couldn’t do it, mostly guessed.
Say I get an antique shotgun and tear it down. I’m mostly mystified as to reassembly, very little online to explain old stuff like that. Have to have my young friend across the street come over and figure it out. He’s a born mechanic, hates the work. 🤷🏻♂️
Interesting… I can’t do what you describe with regard to the mouse. If I focus on actually picturing the mouse, the most I can do seems like a child’s crude sketch, and only the parts of the scene that I am particularly focused on are pictured at all. The rest is abstract. And yet I can entertain myself by daydreaming in visual impressions. For example, just now I thought about a cool car chase, and I was thinking visually rather than verbally, but then I noticed that I hadn’t bothered to imagine what color the cars were - I can assign them colors now that I think about it, but before there was just no impression of seeing any color.
While we’re at it, when I start falling asleep reading a novel, it just keeps going in my head, like a movie. And believe it or not, the plot is usually a logical progression from where I left off. Stephan King is perfect for this, but that may be because I’ve read his books so many times. May also be because his prose flows so smoothly for me that I can just roll with it.
I’m somewhere between 5 and 4 if I’m really trying. Never felt like a handicap or anything before
One time I had a dream about the ascii game I played. I dreamed it both IN TEXT, and my brain produced images of the people, places, and things at the same time as I usually imagined them.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 24 minutes ago
am I the only one like this?
it’s all in my head