5 ms·
I remain very confused about what aphantasia is. Let me give a concrete example. If you ask me to describe my mother's appearance to you, in as much detail as I
by woopwoop 5y ago
I remain very confused about what aphantasia is. Let me give a concrete example. If you ask me to describe my mother's appearance to you, in as much detail as I can, the output is pretty meager. She's a woman in her early 70s. Tall, about 5'9". Slightly overweight. She has brown hair with streaks of grey. And that's it. I'm embarrassed to note that I cannot recall her eye color from memory.
Does this mean I have aphantasia? From what I have read, I would say the opposite. Though their are many, many people fitting the above description, I'm confident I could pick her out in a lineup of hundreds of them. There is visual data in my head that I cannot articulate about, e.g., bone structure, skin texture, gait, etc. On the other hand, I cannot summon a picture of her in my head with high enough fidelity to be able to recall her eye color. If you are aphantasic, what is your experience recalling someone's face? Is it like this, or is everything you remember verbal, or verbalizable?
- scotu 5y agoI would start with the fact that not much in the world is either one thing or another, so also with aphantasia I don't think you either "have it" or you don't. One might have varying degrees of it. I feel I can almost visualize a simple shape like a square, but a face is something I'm sure I cannot visualize. Then I'd say, in my self-diagnosed experience, I can describe things I remember, maybe not in painstaking detail but I can. I'm not able to see an image of the same thing if I close my eyes and try to imagine it. I feel like the difference is, I can recognize your face if I see it again, but if I need to recall what you look like I get a list of features written in words out of my brain, not an image.
- woopwoop 5y agoIs your typical verbal description of a face you remember as sparse as the one I gave? Are their other things about the face you remember that you cannot put into words, or is everything you remember verbal?
- scotu 5y agoyeah, I'd say my description could be pretty similar. But when it comes down to sparse descriptions, I think memory also has a role. My memory is not fantastic, so I might have just dropped the memory of eye colors, unless that came up a few times for some reason for me to fix that memory. But thinking about coming up with an unknown, generic face (GAN style, if you will): I cannot see it. Or something simpler, an apple: very foggy visual+takes a lot of effort to keep seeing the vague blurry image I might be able to come up with.
- mod 5y agoIt's hard for me to imagine and describe the actual details, but it's not hard for me to say no, that's not correct. I think with the right vocabulary, and some prompting for details, we could get a lot more out of you. For instance, you would know the answers to at least some of these questions, I think, and not just matter-of-factly, but from your visualization: 1) Are her features highly unusual? Scar, missing eye, really far-apart eyes? 2) What color is her skin? (Relative answers are fine, like "the same color as mine") 3) What size was her nose? Tiny, average, huge? 4) What shape was her face? Long and tall? Round and cherubic? 5) Was she wrinkly? 6) Was her jawline prominent? I think with the right vocabulary, I could describe my mom's face. I could certainly sit with a patient enough sketch artist and get a great sketch. I can definitely pick her out of a lineup. But I couldn't describe to you how far her eyes sit from her nose or something. I'd have to see the sketch and give feedback on why it was wrong, I guess.
- cescobedo 5y agoAphantasia is the inability/difficulty in creating voluntary mental images. If said close your eyes and picture your mom. Do you see black, or do you actually see your mom. If you don't see your mom clearly, you have a some form of aphantasia.