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Yes. I find that when I imagine a scene there might be a lot of details missing without extra effort to imagine them. If I imagine a beach I might immediately g
by versteegen 11y ago
Yes. I find that when I imagine a scene there might be a lot of details missing without extra effort to imagine them. If I imagine a beach I might immediately get a detailed convincing image just like watching a video clip, with waves, birds, etc, because beach scenes come to mind very easily. But if I have to visualise some vague memory or novel scene I do get a very vague impression that isn't really an image at all. If I ask myself: "what's the carpet?", "what's on the walls?", etc, I can slowly add details until I get a proper image by piecing together memories.
On the other hand I am very bad at recognising people or visualising faces! Even if I try to visualise my own face or the faces of my parents or a celebrity like Bill Clinton I get something that's very uncanny, distorted and missing details. The part of your brain for recognising faces is signicant in size and very specialised, so it makes good sense that you might be able to visualise faces but not other scenes or vice versa.
BTW, I am a VERY visual thinker, I even do algebra in my head by imagining equations floating in space in front of me and moving terms around "physically". But I'm not an extrovert. If I can't visualise something (e.g. much of abstract algebra) I'm hopeless at it.