6 ms·

> If you want to see what aphantasia is like look at the picture of the Apple. Now close your eyes and try to imagine the apple, seeing it mentally in your mind

> If you want to see what aphantasia is like look at the picture of the Apple. Now close your eyes and try to imagine the apple, seeing it mentally in your mind’s eye. If you don’t see anything, you might have aphantasia. I can imagine the apple, but I can't literally see it. Nothing I "see" has any colour or obvious shape. It's more like a memory of having seen it. I can still describe it, but only the features that I can remember. Is this aphantasia? Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? Or is aphantasia actually the inability to even imagine the apple?

DarylZero 5y ago
Take this test: https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ https://aphantasia.com/vviq/
- necovek 5y ago
  Not the GP, but it was hard for me to take that test: I can describe features of a thing I am trying to imagine, but it does not show as a visual image at all. So it's all "nothing at all" all the way in the test. My first thought is "am I trying hard enough?" It sounds like this might be aphantasia, but if it is, it's really hard for someone with it to understand what's being asked of them. :) I take that to mean that I do have it, but I am just slightly not sure, just like the GP.
- jstanley 5y ago
  Huh, maybe I have aphantasia too, thanks. The lowest level above "no image at all" is "Dim and vague; flat", which are not words that I would ever use to describe thoughts. But it's hard for me to believe that anyone else would use these words to describe thoughts.
  - timvdalen 5y ago
    That was my experience as well. The things in that test are not how I relate to thoughts.
- ud_0 5y ago
  The problem with this test is I have nothing to compare it to, and the answer spectrum provided is not helpful because it seems concerned with things like how vivid the colors of mental images are. If I don't actually "see" the object but I know exactly what it looks like to the point of having a clear but abstracted version of it in my head, do I still put the slider all the way to the left, or to the center, or what? I would say that me "visualising" an object kind of feels like watching a GAN paint an image, only the image is never as explicitly shown as if it was on my retinas. Does that count? When I close my eyes and I think of an object there is never a danger of me not realizing that my eyes are currently closed. Am I an aphantasiac because of that? Was I supposed to literally hallucinate scenes all the time?
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    > When I close my eyes and I think of an object there is never a danger of me not realizing that my eyes are currently closed. Hallucination and visualization are distinct things. People without aphantasia who talk about "seeing" things in their mind are not confusing the mental images with the scene in front of them, that would be a hallucination.
    - ud_0 5y ago
      I know they're distinct things, I just wonder about the way visualization is described. From the way non-aphantasia is characterized here one could assume that the difference is just how much control people have over the content of the image, as opposed to the degree of realism. A hallucinating person may have an experience that feels indistinguishable from reality, but they can't control what the experience entails. From this test, I gather that a non-aphantasiac person has an equally-as-realistic image in front of them, but they are completely in command of what is shown.
      - SamBam 5y ago
        I do think there's a difference between visualizing something clearly and not clearly, though, and this is what the test is asking. The test asks me to visualize the face of a close friend or relative. I can quite clearly bring to mind my wife's face. I can imagine looking at each individual mole, or different facial expressions she makes. If I were asked to visualize the face of the barista who served me coffee 20 minutes ago, I could only come up with something vague. I remember he was wearing large earrings, because they stood out to me, but his face is a blur. I mean that literally: when I imagine looking at his face, there are parts that simply won't come into focus or even into view, like they're missing -- in the same way that the dot disappears when you find your blind spot (i.e. not in a "argh, he's missing a nose!" way, but in a "it's just not there, but that's not weird" way). So I have a pretty clear phenomenological distinction between visualizing things clearly and not.
- fsflover 5y ago
  Or try this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367989.
- illwrks 5y ago
  "You have hyper-aphantasia". Makes sense as I'm a designer and can very easily visualise things, objects etc in my head.
fsflover 5y ago
> Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? No. See this recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365277.
- jstanley 5y ago
  That thread seems to indeed suggest that people are confusing seeing something with imagining seeing something. The point about the common inability to draw an accurate bicycle seems to prove it.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    That point actually proved nothing. It demonstrated that there's a distinction between: 1. Ability to visualize 2. Accuracy of memory 3. Ability to produce technically accurate drawings Those aren't one thing, it's a combination of things. The same commenter tried to use helicopters (a thing which people are even less familiar with in general) to bolster their point. Like I said in that thread, I've got friends who work on helicopters (engineering side) and could produce remarkable technically accurate drawings, and some friends from the same office who couldn't draw to save their lives. It says nothing about their ability to visualize and more about the accuracy of their memory and ability to draw.
    - jstanley 5y ago
      The people who had trouble drawing a bicycle from memory would presumably have no problem connecting the right parts if they had a bicycle in front of them, which suggests they are not accurately visualising a bicycle.
      - Jtsummers 5y ago
        Right, but accuracy with respect to reality is not the distinction between aphantasia and non-aphantasia, that's more about memory or technical knowledge than about the ability to visualize itself. Someone without aphantasia can also visualize fantastical scenes with no connection to reality, either because it is fully fantastical (dragons and dwarves) or not a real memory (imagining meeting with someone, but it hasn't happened yet for you to be able to recall). They could visualize cartoonish scenes or cel shaded scenes or animated XKCD stick figures. None of those are realistic, but they could still be visualized in detail.
DoktorDelta 5y ago
That sounds like antaphasia based on what I've read. You might be interested in the materials available at https://aphantasia.com/ https://aphantasia.com/ They have a more in-depth test there called the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire
jhedwards 5y ago
> Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? Memory doesn't necessarily play a part. I can close my eyes and watch imaginary movies, imagine cartoons, artwork, or really any kind of scene I can think of, and it's just like watching a video except that it takes some mental effort to maintain the scene and draw up the details. I think it's interesting that the author of the article suggested that aphantasia might be a strength for thinking about highly abstract things. I've found that I can work well with software because I can visualize it like an engine or a system of pipes and machines, but I cannot for the life of me do algebra. I recently was trying to go through an algebra II book when I realized I was constantly trying to visualize the equations and failing. That constant "failing to start" of my visual imagination was both distracting and tiring, and led me to quickly give up. For this reason I think there are definitely advantages for both types of thinking.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  > I've found that I can work well with software because I can visualize it like an engine or a system of pipes and machines, but I cannot for the life of me do algebra. I'm the same way. Really good at the work I do. Reinventing an existing algorithm? Nope. I can just barely read math notation, but I have to write everything on paper. It requires an amount of logical state I can't achieve without externalizing everything.
alecbz 5y ago
> it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? So FWIW, the way I would describe how I "see" things in my mind is exactly how I'd describe remembering images. I'm not sure if that means I have aphantasia or not. Like, when people ask "try to see an apple and describe how vivid it is", that question almost doesn't make sense to me, or at least feels like a hopelessly vague and subjective question. I do feel like I "see" an apple, but I have no idea how to describe the vividness of the apple. I would describe it more like: the apple itself is 100% vivid, but my "memory" of seeing this vivid apple may be strong, as if it just happened, or weak. But I can "see" things in this way I've never literally seen IRL. I can do mental math by imagining numbers on paper, e.g. But the way I'd describe the experience of seeing those numbers is almost exactly what it'd be had I seen them IRL and was now remembering it.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > So FWIW, the way I would describe how I "see" things in my mind is exactly how I'd describe remembering images. I'm not sure if that means I have aphantasia or not. I think if you aphantasia, then you wouldn't be able to remember images at all.
causality0 5y ago
Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? No. Visualizing gives you access to data you weren't consciously aware of and also allows you to make accurate predictions. For example, in the elephant portion of the article I thought about the sight of a bull elephant turning and charging directly at the viewpoint. I was surprised at how significantly the flared ears affected my perception of the size and power of the elephant, and I wondered if they flare their ears specifically for that purpose and if so why I've never heard of that. I googled it and yes, that is the case.
- perennialmind 5y ago
  Oh that's fun. I imagined a distressed elephant walking through the office and pulling down ceiling tiles, the wood floor splintering under the weight. Didn't think about ears. Attitude, mass, height, and building materials: yes. Ears: no.
torstenvl 5y ago
Most people can see things in their mind that they don't consciously remember as discrete facts. For example, many people have a visual and motor memory of things like passcodes, but do not consciously and discretely remember the digits. A fun example from my own life: when I was a child, during a spelling test, I couldn't remember where to put the "h" in "ghost" until I called to mind the cover of this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0448405776 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0448405776
jcranmer 5y ago
The way I would describe things (being a programmer) is that my actual eye and my "mind's eye" are using different display devices. The actual eye comes out as a PNG in its full vividness, but the "mind's eye" only "sees"... something like an SVG? It definitely comes across that the "mind's eye" is encoding visual information differently, and words like "wireframe" or "storyboard" (for entire scenes) seem to be a better way of describing it than anything else, although I wouldn't call them great descriptions [1]. The most notable difference is that there's no "visual" encoding of color in my "mind's eye"--all that's there is "this thing is filled with color 3df76346cdcad147dcf0efc07e347bd0"--and when I look at a color palette with my physical eye, I can tell you if that shade is "color 3df76346cdcad147dcf0efc07e347bd0" or not, but if it isn't, I'd struggle to tell you what needs to be done to match the color. It really does seem to be some sort of one-way hash function in encoding color; I can "visualize" a red square or a green square, but something like a color gradient just makes my "mind's eye" go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. [1] I think the general idea to convey is that details can be very flexible. For example, as I wrote this, someone turned on their car (remote start, I presume), got into it, backed out of their parking space, and drove away, and I only know about this through hearing it. I can visualize all that in my mind's eye without having to decide if the car is a sedan, an SUV, a minivan, a convertible--knowing that it's a car is sufficient detail, and the mental imagery doesn't give it any more detail. Then I can decide that it's an SUV, one of those that has some piping in front of the metal grill, and make a pretty detailed image of that front of the car. But the mind's eye usually doesn't bother doing anything beyond a very low level of detail unless prompted.
- Twisol 5y ago
  Just to add my own anecdatum here -- my mind's eye definitely encodes color, and I can relatively easily match a color in the real world to one in my mind's eye. Color gradients are instant for me, although I summon the incorrect red-green gradient caused by incorrect gamma correction to mind by default rather than the more pleasing one with correct gamma correction. In the case of the red-green gradient, I'm not exactly computing the colors intentionally; I've just seen quads with interpolated coloring often enough that those memories feed my mind's eye. I can fairly easily visualize a blue-purple or orange-teal gradient, too, but I can't attest to their accuracy. > But the mind's eye usually doesn't bother doing anything beyond a very low level of detail unless prompted. That's my experience, too. Reading your description of somebody driving away in their car, I was able to easily reconstruct an imagined scene in my mind's eye, but I naturally filled in the missing details with a kind of "default" -- camera position and angle, whether the parking is covered, the car is like the one Dexter's dad drives in Dexter's Laboratory (but not a cartoon), etc. The details are... there-ish, if I care to query them, but for a simple replay of the scene, my imagination doesn't bother rendering them to any significant fidelity unless I intend to.
housecarpenter 5y ago
I'd slightly trollishly say nobody has aphantasia, it's just that some people make a false distinction between remembering what something looks like and seeing it. Same as what you're saying really, but makes people feel better about themselves, rather than worse. It seems clear at any rate from the way these discussions always go that aphantasia vs. non-aphantasia, as real as the distinction may be, is hardly predictive of anything else about a person, and the subject only attracts so much interest because people mistakenly assume it's more predictive than it is.

DarylZero 5y ago

Take this test: https://aphantasia.com/vviq/ https://aphantasia.com/vviq/

necovek 5y ago
Not the GP, but it was hard for me to take that test: I can describe features of a thing I am trying to imagine, but it does not show as a visual image at all. So it's all "nothing at all" all the way in the test. My first thought is "am I trying hard enough?" It sounds like this might be aphantasia, but if it is, it's really hard for someone with it to understand what's being asked of them. :) I take that to mean that I do have it, but I am just slightly not sure, just like the GP.
jstanley 5y ago
Huh, maybe I have aphantasia too, thanks. The lowest level above "no image at all" is "Dim and vague; flat", which are not words that I would ever use to describe thoughts. But it's hard for me to believe that anyone else would use these words to describe thoughts.
- timvdalen 5y ago
  That was my experience as well. The things in that test are not how I relate to thoughts.
ud_0 5y ago
The problem with this test is I have nothing to compare it to, and the answer spectrum provided is not helpful because it seems concerned with things like how vivid the colors of mental images are. If I don't actually "see" the object but I know exactly what it looks like to the point of having a clear but abstracted version of it in my head, do I still put the slider all the way to the left, or to the center, or what? I would say that me "visualising" an object kind of feels like watching a GAN paint an image, only the image is never as explicitly shown as if it was on my retinas. Does that count? When I close my eyes and I think of an object there is never a danger of me not realizing that my eyes are currently closed. Am I an aphantasiac because of that? Was I supposed to literally hallucinate scenes all the time?
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  > When I close my eyes and I think of an object there is never a danger of me not realizing that my eyes are currently closed. Hallucination and visualization are distinct things. People without aphantasia who talk about "seeing" things in their mind are not confusing the mental images with the scene in front of them, that would be a hallucination.
  - ud_0 5y ago
    I know they're distinct things, I just wonder about the way visualization is described. From the way non-aphantasia is characterized here one could assume that the difference is just how much control people have over the content of the image, as opposed to the degree of realism. A hallucinating person may have an experience that feels indistinguishable from reality, but they can't control what the experience entails. From this test, I gather that a non-aphantasiac person has an equally-as-realistic image in front of them, but they are completely in command of what is shown.
    - SamBam 5y ago
      I do think there's a difference between visualizing something clearly and not clearly, though, and this is what the test is asking. The test asks me to visualize the face of a close friend or relative. I can quite clearly bring to mind my wife's face. I can imagine looking at each individual mole, or different facial expressions she makes. If I were asked to visualize the face of the barista who served me coffee 20 minutes ago, I could only come up with something vague. I remember he was wearing large earrings, because they stood out to me, but his face is a blur. I mean that literally: when I imagine looking at his face, there are parts that simply won't come into focus or even into view, like they're missing -- in the same way that the dot disappears when you find your blind spot (i.e. not in a "argh, he's missing a nose!" way, but in a "it's just not there, but that's not weird" way). So I have a pretty clear phenomenological distinction between visualizing things clearly and not.
fsflover 5y ago
Or try this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367989.
illwrks 5y ago
"You have hyper-aphantasia". Makes sense as I'm a designer and can very easily visualise things, objects etc in my head.

fsflover 5y ago

> Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? No. See this recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29365277.

jstanley 5y ago
That thread seems to indeed suggest that people are confusing seeing something with imagining seeing something. The point about the common inability to draw an accurate bicycle seems to prove it.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  That point actually proved nothing. It demonstrated that there's a distinction between: 1. Ability to visualize 2. Accuracy of memory 3. Ability to produce technically accurate drawings Those aren't one thing, it's a combination of things. The same commenter tried to use helicopters (a thing which people are even less familiar with in general) to bolster their point. Like I said in that thread, I've got friends who work on helicopters (engineering side) and could produce remarkable technically accurate drawings, and some friends from the same office who couldn't draw to save their lives. It says nothing about their ability to visualize and more about the accuracy of their memory and ability to draw.
  - jstanley 5y ago
    The people who had trouble drawing a bicycle from memory would presumably have no problem connecting the right parts if they had a bicycle in front of them, which suggests they are not accurately visualising a bicycle.
    - Jtsummers 5y ago
      Right, but accuracy with respect to reality is not the distinction between aphantasia and non-aphantasia, that's more about memory or technical knowledge than about the ability to visualize itself. Someone without aphantasia can also visualize fantastical scenes with no connection to reality, either because it is fully fantastical (dragons and dwarves) or not a real memory (imagining meeting with someone, but it hasn't happened yet for you to be able to recall). They could visualize cartoonish scenes or cel shaded scenes or animated XKCD stick figures. None of those are realistic, but they could still be visualized in detail.

DoktorDelta 5y ago

That sounds like antaphasia based on what I've read. You might be interested in the materials available at https://aphantasia.com/ https://aphantasia.com/ They have a more in-depth test there called the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire

jhedwards 5y ago

> Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? Memory doesn't necessarily play a part. I can close my eyes and watch imaginary movies, imagine cartoons, artwork, or really any kind of scene I can think of, and it's just like watching a video except that it takes some mental effort to maintain the scene and draw up the details. I think it's interesting that the author of the article suggested that aphantasia might be a strength for thinking about highly abstract things. I've found that I can work well with software because I can visualize it like an engine or a system of pipes and machines, but I cannot for the life of me do algebra. I recently was trying to go through an algebra II book when I realized I was constantly trying to visualize the equations and failing. That constant "failing to start" of my visual imagination was both distracting and tiring, and led me to quickly give up. For this reason I think there are definitely advantages for both types of thinking.

kayodelycaon 5y ago
> I've found that I can work well with software because I can visualize it like an engine or a system of pipes and machines, but I cannot for the life of me do algebra. I'm the same way. Really good at the work I do. Reinventing an existing algorithm? Nope. I can just barely read math notation, but I have to write everything on paper. It requires an amount of logical state I can't achieve without externalizing everything.

alecbz 5y ago

> it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? So FWIW, the way I would describe how I "see" things in my mind is exactly how I'd describe remembering images. I'm not sure if that means I have aphantasia or not. Like, when people ask "try to see an apple and describe how vivid it is", that question almost doesn't make sense to me, or at least feels like a hopelessly vague and subjective question. I do feel like I "see" an apple, but I have no idea how to describe the vividness of the apple. I would describe it more like: the apple itself is 100% vivid, but my "memory" of seeing this vivid apple may be strong, as if it just happened, or weak. But I can "see" things in this way I've never literally seen IRL. I can do mental math by imagining numbers on paper, e.g. But the way I'd describe the experience of seeing those numbers is almost exactly what it'd be had I seen them IRL and was now remembering it.

nicoburns 5y ago
> So FWIW, the way I would describe how I "see" things in my mind is exactly how I'd describe remembering images. I'm not sure if that means I have aphantasia or not. I think if you aphantasia, then you wouldn't be able to remember images at all.

causality0 5y ago

Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? No. Visualizing gives you access to data you weren't consciously aware of and also allows you to make accurate predictions. For example, in the elephant portion of the article I thought about the sight of a bull elephant turning and charging directly at the viewpoint. I was surprised at how significantly the flared ears affected my perception of the size and power of the elephant, and I wondered if they flare their ears specifically for that purpose and if so why I've never heard of that. I googled it and yes, that is the case.

perennialmind 5y ago
Oh that's fun. I imagined a distressed elephant walking through the office and pulling down ceiling tiles, the wood floor splintering under the weight. Didn't think about ears. Attitude, mass, height, and building materials: yes. Ears: no.

torstenvl 5y ago

Most people can see things in their mind that they don't consciously remember as discrete facts. For example, many people have a visual and motor memory of things like passcodes, but do not consciously and discretely remember the digits. A fun example from my own life: when I was a child, during a spelling test, I couldn't remember where to put the "h" in "ghost" until I called to mind the cover of this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0448405776 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0448405776

jcranmer 5y ago

The way I would describe things (being a programmer) is that my actual eye and my "mind's eye" are using different display devices. The actual eye comes out as a PNG in its full vividness, but the "mind's eye" only "sees"... something like an SVG? It definitely comes across that the "mind's eye" is encoding visual information differently, and words like "wireframe" or "storyboard" (for entire scenes) seem to be a better way of describing it than anything else, although I wouldn't call them great descriptions [1]. The most notable difference is that there's no "visual" encoding of color in my "mind's eye"--all that's there is "this thing is filled with color 3df76346cdcad147dcf0efc07e347bd0"--and when I look at a color palette with my physical eye, I can tell you if that shade is "color 3df76346cdcad147dcf0efc07e347bd0" or not, but if it isn't, I'd struggle to tell you what needs to be done to match the color. It really does seem to be some sort of one-way hash function in encoding color; I can "visualize" a red square or a green square, but something like a color gradient just makes my "mind's eye" go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. [1] I think the general idea to convey is that details can be very flexible. For example, as I wrote this, someone turned on their car (remote start, I presume), got into it, backed out of their parking space, and drove away, and I only know about this through hearing it. I can visualize all that in my mind's eye without having to decide if the car is a sedan, an SUV, a minivan, a convertible--knowing that it's a car is sufficient detail, and the mental imagery doesn't give it any more detail. Then I can decide that it's an SUV, one of those that has some piping in front of the metal grill, and make a pretty detailed image of that front of the car. But the mind's eye usually doesn't bother doing anything beyond a very low level of detail unless prompted.

Twisol 5y ago
Just to add my own anecdatum here -- my mind's eye definitely encodes color, and I can relatively easily match a color in the real world to one in my mind's eye. Color gradients are instant for me, although I summon the incorrect red-green gradient caused by incorrect gamma correction to mind by default rather than the more pleasing one with correct gamma correction. In the case of the red-green gradient, I'm not exactly computing the colors intentionally; I've just seen quads with interpolated coloring often enough that those memories feed my mind's eye. I can fairly easily visualize a blue-purple or orange-teal gradient, too, but I can't attest to their accuracy. > But the mind's eye usually doesn't bother doing anything beyond a very low level of detail unless prompted. That's my experience, too. Reading your description of somebody driving away in their car, I was able to easily reconstruct an imagined scene in my mind's eye, but I naturally filled in the missing details with a kind of "default" -- camera position and angle, whether the parking is covered, the car is like the one Dexter's dad drives in Dexter's Laboratory (but not a cartoon), etc. The details are... there-ish, if I care to query them, but for a simple replay of the scene, my imagination doesn't bother rendering them to any significant fidelity unless I intend to.

housecarpenter 5y ago

I'd slightly trollishly say nobody has aphantasia, it's just that some people make a false distinction between remembering what something looks like and seeing it. Same as what you're saying really, but makes people feel better about themselves, rather than worse. It seems clear at any rate from the way these discussions always go that aphantasia vs. non-aphantasia, as real as the distinction may be, is hardly predictive of anything else about a person, and the subject only attracts so much interest because people mistakenly assume it's more predictive than it is.