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Research and discussion of mental imagery has always confused me. It seems like there is a perennial surprise at conditions like aphantasia, or of discoveries t

by fwlr 3y ago

Research and discussion of mental imagery has always confused me. It seems like there is a perennial surprise at conditions like aphantasia, or of discoveries that some people have high fidelity mental imagery while others have low fidelity mental imagery. But one of the very first major published papers on mental imagery, arguably the paper that opened this topic up to scientific inquiry, was a statistical study of peoples’ varying experiences of mental imagery. It demonstrated the existence of aphantasic individuals as well as high fidelity and low fidelity individuals! From the very beginning, back in 1880! The paradigm proposed in that paper is more or less that there’s a bell curve of varying vividness of mental imagery, all the way from a few percent who almost completely lack it, up to a few percent with hyper-real “more detailed than reality” mental visualization, with most clustered in between. This new paper fits neatly into that paradigm; they chose a high threshold and (inevitably) discovered that most of the bell curve falls below that high threshold. The paper is Sir Francis Galton’s Statistics of Mental Imagery https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm (incidentally interesting: it was so long ago that the paper notes “There are many who deny to statistics the title of a science”, which is a bemusing thing to read today.)

spiralx 3y ago
I only realised that I barely had any ability to visualise in the last few years and I'm over 40, it's something that's never been there and because it's not the same as lacking either visual memory or imagination there's not really much in the way of cues to make it obvious - the last time I was asked to "picture this in your head" was probably at school three decades ago... Given I can replay music in my head on demand (called audiation according to a comment below!) with reasonable fidelity even for songs I don't have strong memories of, it seems likely my aphantasia is the developmental deficit of the connection between visual memory and my executive function due to ADHD in both stability and throughput.
WaffleIronMaker 3y ago
Regarding aphantasia, I've had a lot of anecdotal success with this image [1]. I'm personally about a 2, and I've found that this test tends to be quiet understandable and revealing to a variety of audiences. Anecdotally, I gave this chart to my friends in my school's band (N=6), and none of them had aphantasia (excluding me), and two of them reported hyperphantasia, and intensely vivid audiovisual imagination. I also gave this chart to my friends in software engineering and cybersecurity (N=4), and two of them also had aphantasia. I'm hesitant to draw conclusions, given a small sample size, but I'd hypothesize that there is a larger proportion of aphantasic individuals in STEM than in the arts. [1] https://twitter.com/backus/status/1091203973246111744?s=20 https://twitter.com/backus/status/1091203973246111744?s=20
- kordlessagain 3y ago
  One problem with this test is that some people can visualize things like faces better than arbitrary shapes. Or, they may be able to see real things they’ve recently viewed with eyes, in mind. Also, Aphantasia is typically defined as not seeing in mind with will, but some people never see anything in mind, ever.
TechBro8615 3y ago
I'd like to know what is complementary to high fidelity visualization, e.g. do people with aphantasia have a more developed internal monologue? Personally I can visualize images in high fidelity but I don't really have a monologue, so I wonder if the opposite is true as well.
- GravelRocks 3y ago
  As a dataset of one, I can tell you that I am aphantasic and have a lot of internal monologue from multiple voices (No I'm not schizophrenic). I also have very strong auditory memory and can, as other have said, "play songs in my head." Though translating those imagined songs to the real world is less then steller in my case. I can also fairly acutely imagine a touch/feeling. Just for a little insight into my internal thoughts, most of my thought processes are highly object oriented. Conjuring up a picture of a chair isn't really neccessary when you have an understanding of the chair object and its properties. I understand how it would work with an image of a chair, and it does seem like it might have some advantages at times, but I don't think it is necessary for me to "see" the chair to know how it functions and its basic spacial properties. Nor do I think that it's neccessary someone with a very vivid pictorial imagination. What I do have a hard time understanding is that people can conjure up smells and taste in their imagination. I do neither of those, but it sounds really quite intriguing to me. I've often wondered what it would be like to try to imagine a new recipe and get an imaginary sampling before the attempt. To circle back to your original question, I don't think the absence of one of the modes of imagination necessarily enhances another. I don't even think there are complimentary modes of imagination as you put it. Nor do I think the fidelity of those modes are indicators of intelligence, ability, or personality. I also don't think they are indicative of actualizing particular thoughts into the real world, or is really a measure of anything other than the somewhat uniqueness of the individual human experience. Lastly I don't think this short list if 5 senses begins to describe how humans actually think. Consider that there's probably more hidden subprocess that our brain is doing for thought then using these particular 5 sense modes of imagination. We obviously are not as aware of them because they don't have a real world translation in most cases. For instance, the way people memorize stuff isn't exactly a relational database, but it's kind of close. What exactly is that process called and why don't assign that a value on the imagination scale. As another example, large tree structure can somewhat represent, "a good sense of direction" but again we don't assign that an imagination scale either. Limiting the reaearch to the 5 senses is great for understanding how those processes work, but it is only a tiny baby step to further understanding how human thought works on the whole.

by fwlr 3y ago

spiralx 3y ago

I only realised that I barely had any ability to visualise in the last few years and I'm over 40, it's something that's never been there and because it's not the same as lacking either visual memory or imagination there's not really much in the way of cues to make it obvious - the last time I was asked to "picture this in your head" was probably at school three decades ago... Given I can replay music in my head on demand (called audiation according to a comment below!) with reasonable fidelity even for songs I don't have strong memories of, it seems likely my aphantasia is the developmental deficit of the connection between visual memory and my executive function due to ADHD in both stability and throughput.

WaffleIronMaker 3y ago

Regarding aphantasia, I've had a lot of anecdotal success with this image [1]. I'm personally about a 2, and I've found that this test tends to be quiet understandable and revealing to a variety of audiences. Anecdotally, I gave this chart to my friends in my school's band (N=6), and none of them had aphantasia (excluding me), and two of them reported hyperphantasia, and intensely vivid audiovisual imagination. I also gave this chart to my friends in software engineering and cybersecurity (N=4), and two of them also had aphantasia. I'm hesitant to draw conclusions, given a small sample size, but I'd hypothesize that there is a larger proportion of aphantasic individuals in STEM than in the arts. [1] https://twitter.com/backus/status/1091203973246111744?s=20 https://twitter.com/backus/status/1091203973246111744?s=20

kordlessagain 3y ago
One problem with this test is that some people can visualize things like faces better than arbitrary shapes. Or, they may be able to see real things they’ve recently viewed with eyes, in mind. Also, Aphantasia is typically defined as not seeing in mind with will, but some people never see anything in mind, ever.

TechBro8615 3y ago

I'd like to know what is complementary to high fidelity visualization, e.g. do people with aphantasia have a more developed internal monologue? Personally I can visualize images in high fidelity but I don't really have a monologue, so I wonder if the opposite is true as well.

GravelRocks 3y ago
As a dataset of one, I can tell you that I am aphantasic and have a lot of internal monologue from multiple voices (No I'm not schizophrenic). I also have very strong auditory memory and can, as other have said, "play songs in my head." Though translating those imagined songs to the real world is less then steller in my case. I can also fairly acutely imagine a touch/feeling. Just for a little insight into my internal thoughts, most of my thought processes are highly object oriented. Conjuring up a picture of a chair isn't really neccessary when you have an understanding of the chair object and its properties. I understand how it would work with an image of a chair, and it does seem like it might have some advantages at times, but I don't think it is necessary for me to "see" the chair to know how it functions and its basic spacial properties. Nor do I think that it's neccessary someone with a very vivid pictorial imagination. What I do have a hard time understanding is that people can conjure up smells and taste in their imagination. I do neither of those, but it sounds really quite intriguing to me. I've often wondered what it would be like to try to imagine a new recipe and get an imaginary sampling before the attempt. To circle back to your original question, I don't think the absence of one of the modes of imagination necessarily enhances another. I don't even think there are complimentary modes of imagination as you put it. Nor do I think the fidelity of those modes are indicators of intelligence, ability, or personality. I also don't think they are indicative of actualizing particular thoughts into the real world, or is really a measure of anything other than the somewhat uniqueness of the individual human experience. Lastly I don't think this short list if 5 senses begins to describe how humans actually think. Consider that there's probably more hidden subprocess that our brain is doing for thought then using these particular 5 sense modes of imagination. We obviously are not as aware of them because they don't have a real world translation in most cases. For instance, the way people memorize stuff isn't exactly a relational database, but it's kind of close. What exactly is that process called and why don't assign that a value on the imagination scale. As another example, large tree structure can somewhat represent, "a good sense of direction" but again we don't assign that an imagination scale either. Limiting the reaearch to the 5 senses is great for understanding how those processes work, but it is only a tiny baby step to further understanding how human thought works on the whole.