3 ms·

I have aphantasia and I think of a very generic cup, akin to a stock image. It’s only a faint image, what’s more prominent is the concept of a cup.

• lstamour 5y ago
  Likewise. I think, “can hold liquids, handheld, might be hot or cold,” probably a white ceramic comes to mind, maybe something I might have seen at IKEA. No handle, no decorations, a cup isn’t defined by those and they don’t show up in my imagining of one. Smaller in diameter yet about as high or maybe a bit taller than a bowl. Bigger than a thimble, roughly the size of my hand, or easy to palm. Probably in a kitchen or on a dining table. It’s all rather conceptual for me. What’s weird for me is if I do the reverse, and instead of trying to jump from visually imagining a cup to associate other senses, if I instead think of the feeling of a warm cup in my hands, I can more easily imagine what it smelled and tasted like, and even a particular memory comes to mind too. But if I try to do the reverse, such as visualizing that same memory as a picture in my head, I can’t recall the heat or other details, I end up thinking of either concepts (words) or it’s like a photograph and flat, not real life. For me, associations from “imagery” are harder than other kinds of associations and don’t have much impact at all. Strangely, I can associate positionally, though. E.g. that something is on a third shelf or inside a closet, and have that trigger memories. But I can’t do so by remembering what the shelf or closet looked like.