Someone else mentioned rotating 3D shapes in their head, and I think this is a good point of reference. I have somewhat strong aphantasia. On this test image[0], I score 2, maybe 3 on a good day. I've managed 4 when tired. I showed that to my wife the other day and she says she does easy 6. That suddenly explained various arguments we had in the past, that boiled down to me requiring explicit presentation of something that she, as it turns out, was entirely capable of processing in her head.
People's minds are diverse.
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But I do wonder how much of it is about different uses of words by different people. I do have an internal monologue when I want to build sentences, eg crafting a sentence for writing or just imagining talking to someone and trying to convince them as if practicing arguments for a debate (though decidedly not hallucinating someone to talk to). Or when trying to serialize so explicit steps I need to do, I may list them verbally in my mind.
I may call this a conversation with an entity, but actually I feel I'm just talking to myself. I identify with the speaker. I guess, and I'm trying now, I can sort of feel as if the stream of sentences is coming from a different entity.
It might be that we have very similar (though not equal) experiences we just use different terms and stories to make sense of them.
There's a book that argues that Ancient Greeks in the time of Homer also believed their gods talked to them and it might have been something like this. And that the idea of an individual free-will autonomous singular human is a relatively modern cultural concept.
There are qualitative differences, however. I think a better question would be not how vivid the imagined shape is, but how connected and contextual it is.
Someone might imagine a 6 red star and stop at that, someone might imagine a 3 star, but with the whole Kremlin tower attached on a snowy night with distant car sounds.
Testable things i found are looking for reactions. Imagine yourself at the beach, standing half immersed in the sea, enjoying the view, then something grabs your leg underwater.
-Did you flinch, or was these just words? Some people would, since they are contextually immersed in the scene.
-Can you answer side questions, like how calm the sea was, were you looking towards the land or the horizon, were there any birds in the sky, and so on? Some people can, because they were visualizing the scene, some people won't unless prompted, since they were constructing the scene.
In the similar vein, do you project your imagination over the world around you? People who do tend to not comprehend how you can lose things, like forgetting where you parked your car.
For example English is not my native language and even though I'm basically fluent as far as understanding any TV show or reading books goes, but I still notice it doesn't reach me as viscerally as speech in my native language. It's blunted, it's like touching things with gloves on. So there is some sort of vividness of ideas, but it's hard to describe.
I think people who claim they can visualize something don't actually pixel for pixel visualize it. I read about some study where these people only realized this when followup questions came. I think you can excite your neurons to represent the visual concept of a house without having to expend all the effort to actually create all the parts, decide on the color of window frames, all the small details.
Overall I'm torn. I guess there are differences and we should listen to descriptions like these. On the other hand, I also know how unreflective and un-introspective average people can be.
- this is exactly it. I seem to be unable to visualize things in my mind. If someone asks me to visualize a beach, I can create a description of a beach and know what exists on the beach, I am able to give an verbal explanation of it. However I do not at any moment see it, nor do I have insight into the beach that I didn't construct. I don't notice that there is a hotel in the distance, but I can think about it and add it in the description. I feel this is very different to what apparently majority of people can do.
A complication is that a lot of these are from elementary school geometry books, so i tend to just remember the answer before getting a chance to look at it.
Can't quite play tetris, however - i start to lose track of the pieces once there are like 5-10 of them.
Or mark the edges of a cube into thirds, and cut off each of its corners back to the marks. What does the result look like? Can you mentally rotate this shape around?
If I try to imagine a cube, and then mark the edges into thirds, I cannot imagine what remains when I cut off corners back to the mark. And the cube itself is more of an idea of a cube rather than visual representation.
I cannot mentally rotate the shape as I do not see a shape.
I'm sure it's hard to believe, but trust me, it's hard for me to believe people can visualize in the way people describe.
The link states that this can be trained. Is that your experience as well?
You learn something new every day I guess. I wonder if this can be used to predict what fields someone goes into or could go into that they'd be good at (engineering, etc).
Would love to see if there is more to it.
Perhaps a better test is how difficult someone finds these exercises:
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/education/institute91/handouts...
It's less ambiguous than the star thing.
That's the thing, though: apparently the same thing was being said about internal monologue historically, with people assuming claims contrary to their experience are just turns of a phrase. Until, the legend goes, somebody got enough academics in the same room that they finally realized inner voice is a thing that not everyone has.
So I'm leaning towards believing that people claiming they can mock their own visual input actually can do it.
(The hardware for that is already there. Despite being 1-2 when awake, every now and then I wake up remembering a dream that was a clear 6.)
Perhaps there is some crossover between people who can't visualize and those who do not experience internal monologue.
Another aspect I've known for a long time is that I have bad "situational" memory. I have good trivia/history memory but very bad memory about personal situations or events. I am not sure about faces, I didn't really notice myself struggling with it but hard to really judge.
For me, it is:
- 1-2 / 6 on the "mind's eye" scale
- perfectly working internal monologue; almost all of my conscious thinking involves me "hearing" sentences in my head (I don't experience actual auditory stimulus, but I can "hear" the words, the cadence, and sometimes even tone)
- good trivia/history memory
- bad situational memory, bad memory for people's names
- I can only recognize faces of people with whom I dealt for prolonged periods of time
Do you feel like it's always "you" who is actively saying the monologue, or is it being "dictated" from the outside, you are listening but not saying it internally? Perhaps by an imaginary friend, Jesus, aliens, gods, buddhas, whatever?
But then I am also an artist... Although more because of this than the other way around. Although drawing has further trained this ability, I have accurate detailed childhood (~5-6y) memories (of houses, schools, objects, etc) from before I was drawing consistently enough for it to matter (high school).
I wonder, can people who see 0 imagine movement if they're seeing the object right in front of them? And if they can draw 3d objects, can they still do so if they close their eyes?
For example, I just tried the test and felt like it was a great effort to visualize the star. I've just had a cup of coffee (similar to amines). But this morning, transitioning from a very restful sleep (when acetylcholine levels would have been high), I was having clear, partially directed mental images, similar to dreams, but wakeful.
EDIT: And even more interestingly (to me) I'm having a very _easy_ time with the other exercises you linked below...