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This reminds me of some other recent articles about topics like aphantasia (no visual imagination) and severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM). People

by 1980phipsi 7y ago

This reminds me of some other recent articles about topics like aphantasia (no visual imagination) and severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM). People who have these conditions do not realize how different other people think.

godshatter 7y ago
I'm one of those that has aphantasia. No visual or auditory imagination for me, so no running monologue in my head, or view of sentences. Or, if it's happening, I can't hear it or see it. Thoughts come to me as concepts, and sort of just pop into my head. Had no idea until a year or two ago that this wasn't how it worked with everyone.
- marknadal 7y ago
  How many thoughts/ideas/things can you process simultaneously? I can probably do up to 8 different subjects/thesis, but I also can imagine in: audio, touch, sound, color, space, abstract, visual, time, taste, smell, linguistic, and hyperdimensional. Couple of these things I had to practice though.
  - godshatter 7y ago
    That's a hard question for me to answer. I know it sounds weird but "I" am not the one doing the thinking. It happens elsewhere in my brain; I only get notified of the results. So my answer is either 1, 0, or "no idea", depending upon how you look at it. I can keep track of a lot of pieces of a large process or program all at once, but it's happening in the abstract, I guess. This might just be a communication problem, though. In terms of the senses, I can walk into a busy scene and take everything in. The sounds, the sights, the smells, etc. I seem to be more situationally aware than a lot of other people I interact with. Just no record button. Notes I make to myself or overall impressions stay, but I would not be very helpful as a witness to a crime if I wasn't trying to memorize what I was seeing in the specific. This is a difficult thing for me to "look at", in some ways I don't do much thinking at all, but am still successful and am thought of as that guy that can figure out the problem when others are stuck.
- mikelevins 7y ago
  You noted the possibility that you might have mental images or monologue but don't experience them. That's interesting. I expect someone will object that it's logically contradictory to propose that you have an inner monologue but don't experience it; I don't think it is, actually. I get migraines. I've experienced them for about forty-five years. They're not just headaches. They're some kind of unusual neural and vascular activity in the brain that can cause a whole slew of weird effects. One effect that I've experienced many times is called scotoma. It's a phenomenon where a region of the visual field is taken over by a vivid abstract pattern. Scotomas take various shapes, but they generally have a few things in common: they are more vivid than real seen objects; they often flicker rapidly and may move slowly; they often have high-contrast black-and-white-striped zigzag patterns; they may be surrounded by faint or vivid colorful auras that pulse or stream. I've seen lots of scotomas over the years with all of these attributes. One time just a few years ago I was reading a good book and I began to notice the mild visual distortions that alert me to an oncoming scotoma. There's nothing much I can do about them, and I was really interested in the book, so I sort of shrugged and figured I'd continue reading until I had to stop. I never had to stop. The scotoma came on full-force and took over the center of my visual field. I couldn't see anything except the scotoma directly in front of me. Nevertheless, I was able to continue reading without any trouble. Well, the scotoma was distracting, but it didn't prevent me from reading. As you can imagine, I found this really weird. If you don't believe me, I don't really blame you. I found it so surprising that I started reading the book aloud, as if that would somehow serve as a reasonable test that I wasn't simply making up the contents of the book without realizing it. I continued reading. The scotoma eventually faded away, and I could confirm that, yes, the pages I had read while I couldn't see them were just as I had heard myself reading them aloud. This experience suggests to me that seeing the book is one process, but consciously experiencing the seeing of it is another, completely separate, process. The migraine sabotaged my ability to consciously experience seeing the book, but it didn't interfere with the process of actually seeing or reading it. If that's true, it suggests that the process of running an internal monologue, or of constructing internal images, could be separate from the process of being conscious of them. Perhaps you indeed have an internal monologue and you simply don't experience it?
  - godshatter 7y ago
checkyoursudo 7y ago
I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree). I didn't realize that, for example, "mental image" was not just, like, a metaphor for thinking. When I close my eyes, it's black. Just, black. Well, you know, depending on how bright the lights are, etc.
- godshatter 7y ago
  There's a part of me, deep down, that still believes the rest of the world is trying to have a joke on me at my expense.
- Zenbit_UX 7y ago
  > I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree). Then it might blow your mind further to know that I can visualize things easier with my eyes open. I overlay them onto my visual field and they're _far_ more vivid with my eyes open than shut, by an order of magnitude at least.
  - checkyoursudo 7y ago
    That would have blown my mind a few years ago before I knew about aphantasia, but not any more. I have spent a while digging deeper into it, and it has even come up in my recent graduate studies in cognitive science (to the great amusement of my program colleagues). I am 100% jealous of your ability to do that, however. I have recently learned that it might be possible to train myself to invoke mental images. There is a technique where a person with aphantasia sits their eyes shut and starts by imagining, e.g., a green apple. But you don't imagine it fully at first. You start with its different qualities, like imagine roundness for a while. And then greenness. Then shininess. Then some gradient. Then a stem. Then more detailed shape. Et cetera. I have had a tiny bit of success with this technique, or at least I have fooled myself into thinking I have? If I try this, after a while I can start to picture a green apple, though it is like a faint, faded ancient photograph with almost no color or detail and certainly no vividness. But there does seem to be some little bit of something there.
Eric_WVGG 7y ago
I was thinking the same thing. This bit on aphantasia is wonderfully interesting and funny: https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-...

godshatter 7y ago

I'm one of those that has aphantasia. No visual or auditory imagination for me, so no running monologue in my head, or view of sentences. Or, if it's happening, I can't hear it or see it. Thoughts come to me as concepts, and sort of just pop into my head. Had no idea until a year or two ago that this wasn't how it worked with everyone.

marknadal 7y ago
How many thoughts/ideas/things can you process simultaneously? I can probably do up to 8 different subjects/thesis, but I also can imagine in: audio, touch, sound, color, space, abstract, visual, time, taste, smell, linguistic, and hyperdimensional. Couple of these things I had to practice though.
- godshatter 7y ago
  That's a hard question for me to answer. I know it sounds weird but "I" am not the one doing the thinking. It happens elsewhere in my brain; I only get notified of the results. So my answer is either 1, 0, or "no idea", depending upon how you look at it. I can keep track of a lot of pieces of a large process or program all at once, but it's happening in the abstract, I guess. This might just be a communication problem, though. In terms of the senses, I can walk into a busy scene and take everything in. The sounds, the sights, the smells, etc. I seem to be more situationally aware than a lot of other people I interact with. Just no record button. Notes I make to myself or overall impressions stay, but I would not be very helpful as a witness to a crime if I wasn't trying to memorize what I was seeing in the specific. This is a difficult thing for me to "look at", in some ways I don't do much thinking at all, but am still successful and am thought of as that guy that can figure out the problem when others are stuck.
mikelevins 7y ago
You noted the possibility that you might have mental images or monologue but don't experience them. That's interesting. I expect someone will object that it's logically contradictory to propose that you have an inner monologue but don't experience it; I don't think it is, actually. I get migraines. I've experienced them for about forty-five years. They're not just headaches. They're some kind of unusual neural and vascular activity in the brain that can cause a whole slew of weird effects. One effect that I've experienced many times is called scotoma. It's a phenomenon where a region of the visual field is taken over by a vivid abstract pattern. Scotomas take various shapes, but they generally have a few things in common: they are more vivid than real seen objects; they often flicker rapidly and may move slowly; they often have high-contrast black-and-white-striped zigzag patterns; they may be surrounded by faint or vivid colorful auras that pulse or stream. I've seen lots of scotomas over the years with all of these attributes. One time just a few years ago I was reading a good book and I began to notice the mild visual distortions that alert me to an oncoming scotoma. There's nothing much I can do about them, and I was really interested in the book, so I sort of shrugged and figured I'd continue reading until I had to stop. I never had to stop. The scotoma came on full-force and took over the center of my visual field. I couldn't see anything except the scotoma directly in front of me. Nevertheless, I was able to continue reading without any trouble. Well, the scotoma was distracting, but it didn't prevent me from reading. As you can imagine, I found this really weird. If you don't believe me, I don't really blame you. I found it so surprising that I started reading the book aloud, as if that would somehow serve as a reasonable test that I wasn't simply making up the contents of the book without realizing it. I continued reading. The scotoma eventually faded away, and I could confirm that, yes, the pages I had read while I couldn't see them were just as I had heard myself reading them aloud. This experience suggests to me that seeing the book is one process, but consciously experiencing the seeing of it is another, completely separate, process. The migraine sabotaged my ability to consciously experience seeing the book, but it didn't interfere with the process of actually seeing or reading it. If that's true, it suggests that the process of running an internal monologue, or of constructing internal images, could be separate from the process of being conscious of them. Perhaps you indeed have an internal monologue and you simply don't experience it?
- godshatter 7y ago

checkyoursudo 7y ago

I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree). I didn't realize that, for example, "mental image" was not just, like, a metaphor for thinking. When I close my eyes, it's black. Just, black. Well, you know, depending on how bright the lights are, etc.

godshatter 7y ago
There's a part of me, deep down, that still believes the rest of the world is trying to have a joke on me at my expense.
Zenbit_UX 7y ago
> I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree). Then it might blow your mind further to know that I can visualize things easier with my eyes open. I overlay them onto my visual field and they're _far_ more vivid with my eyes open than shut, by an order of magnitude at least.
- checkyoursudo 7y ago
  That would have blown my mind a few years ago before I knew about aphantasia, but not any more. I have spent a while digging deeper into it, and it has even come up in my recent graduate studies in cognitive science (to the great amusement of my program colleagues). I am 100% jealous of your ability to do that, however. I have recently learned that it might be possible to train myself to invoke mental images. There is a technique where a person with aphantasia sits their eyes shut and starts by imagining, e.g., a green apple. But you don't imagine it fully at first. You start with its different qualities, like imagine roundness for a while. And then greenness. Then shininess. Then some gradient. Then a stem. Then more detailed shape. Et cetera. I have had a tiny bit of success with this technique, or at least I have fooled myself into thinking I have? If I try this, after a while I can start to picture a green apple, though it is like a faint, faded ancient photograph with almost no color or detail and certainly no vividness. But there does seem to be some little bit of something there.

Eric_WVGG 7y ago

I was thinking the same thing. This bit on aphantasia is wonderfully interesting and funny: https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to-be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-...