3 ms·

If you’re looking for objective measures, aphantasia correlates inversely with objective measures of visual memory. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P

If you’re looking for objective measures, aphantasia correlates inversely with objective measures of visual memory. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7856239/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7856239/ But you can also imagine tests based on introspection which are better than just straight up asking how vivid your mental imagery is. For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it? For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. It has no color because it’s just an abstract concept. For me it is a white outline on a black background, very vividly.

auggierose 2y ago
The article uses the VVIQ test (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire), taken on the Internet, to select aphantasiac participants. I cannot take research like that seriously. > For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it? > For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. If you are not an aphantasiac, how do you know what meaning this question has for one? I am pretty sure aphantasiacs can "imagine" a triangle with some color in it. It is just that this imagine manifests differently than it does for you, but how can we measure that objectively? To elaborate, even for an aphantasiac, a triangle or a color is not something abstract. You can draw it on a paper, and it is right there. If you close your eyes, you can remember what you have drawn on the paper, aphantasiac or not. So how exactly do you distinguish the quality of memories here? Certainly not with vague internet questionnaires. Research like that makes me really angry.
- canjobear 2y ago
  If I say "imagine a triangle" and ask you what color it is, why would it have a color if there is no image there? I didn't ask you to imagine a red triangle. Only a triangle. The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.
  - auggierose 2y ago
    I understand your reasoning, but it is not very logical. It depends on what you mean by "imagine a triangle". A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside? So if your triangle doesn't have a color, it might be because you are more accurate in your imagination, not because you have no triangle imagination. So without a proper way of defining things like "imagine" or "mental picture" first, tests like yours or like VVIQ are not well-defined. Now, maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I have aphantasia. Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I am a logician and mathematician, and I am very peculiar about "meaning". Maybe even both. Without a doubt though, VVIQ is not an objective test, because its elements are not properly defined.
    - canjobear 2y ago
      The point isn’t to rigorously define “visualize” or “imagine”—we will probably never be able to do this. The point is to use a verbal prompt to elicit a mental experience and then to try to probe that experience. > A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside? That’s just it: when I imagine a triangle, it is a definite image with a definite color. The visual details like color come automatically for me. I cannot imagine it in the more abstract way you are describing. If it’s a wireframe, the wireframe is gray. It’s always a full, colorful, 3d scene, perhaps vague but definitely with visual detail.
  - taughtology 2y ago
    > The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it. This does not follow. I can imagine a red triangle without visualizing one.
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      What does this mean? What do you see when you "imagine" versus when you "visualize?"
  - jackjeff 2y ago
    My answer would have been. Hang on a second you never asked me to imagine a triangle WITH a color? What else has this triangle got? A flavor? A smell? A name? It would have never occurred to me it had a color in the first place before you asked.
  - bombela 2y ago
    In my mind there is an infinite void. No color per say, think of the void of space, without a single spec of dust. This void is a 3D space. There is a general sense of up, down, left, right, front and back. In this void I materialize a triangle. It is a wireframe. 3 lines, all the same length. No color, they are just lines. By default the triangle is resting on one side, pointing up, and facing me. I can then rotate and move my mind "camera" around it while simultaneously rotating and moving the triangle as well. The more complex the shapes, the more shapes, the harder it is to maintain coherency. I can close my eyes and concentrate to help. I can assign colors if I wish to, but they are not really there visually. More like an extra information attached to the shape.
dumbo-octopus 2y ago
For the test to be meaningful, it should still produce accurate results when the subject is pretending to have the condition (the SAT wouldn’t be helpful if you could ace it by acting as if you know the all answers!) Consider a turing test of sorts: I want to convince you I am phantastic, you are tasked with determining whether I am faking it. Could such a test be realized? Consider, for example, the “draw a bicycle” phenomenon. Many alleged phantists are wholly unable to correctly render a bicycle onto paper, and furthermore they are often unable to self-evaluate that their renders are bogus. Many aphants on the other hand have no issue depicting a well formed bicycle onto a paper, and furthermore would be able to identify faulty ones. Of course this test does not have perfect recall/accuracy, it’s just an example of how the results can be counterintuitive.
- Terretta 2y ago
  > Many aphants on the other hand have no issue depicting a well formed bicycle onto a paper, and furthermore would be able to identify faulty ones. As one, I don't draw, I construct. A set of rules make a bicycle a bicycle, so pick a part, draw it, then sequentially continue attaching parts per the rules, and at the end, it's a valid bicycle that functions. The resultant drawing is considered good, though I couldn't "see" any part of the bicycle before or while drawing. This isn't from an image, but it is arguably a mapping. Similarly, I've observed those who can mentally organize concepts but can't visualize pictures are often better able to render frameworks onto whiteboards than those who picture scenes. It's made me wonder if the same parts of the mind are used for the one or the other, as if remembering everything visually uses up circuitry that could support semantic-space-time.
  - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    A anecdote along the same lines as your drawing vs constructing observation: I happen to be fairly adept at wood working. And I often think up novel constructions that people quite fancy and indeed are willing to pay their hard earned bucks for. Once I have thought these things up, I am able to render them to paper/CAD very easily for concrete plan creation. I am never surprised at the appearance of the thing when it is rendered to CAD, I always knew that’s what it would look like. I never saw it in any visual sense, but I knew exactly how it would appear, and I could answer in great detail any question someone might have about it (barring, perhaps, the sorts of questions that require trigonometry/excessive number crunching – the reason I’m putting it to CAD/paper). To me, this means there isn’t a binary “has ‘imagination’/does not have ‘imagination’” divide. Rather, folks perhaps have different methods of “visualization”. Some folks have a “bitmap” approach (≈Photoshop). From the comments here, it seems some a “vector” approach (≈Illustrator). I would perhaps describe mine as a “CSG” approach (≈OpenSCAD/Grasshopper/etc.). What’s nice with this phrasing is that nobody is missing anything. Nobody is a-trait. Everyone just has a different method of doing the same sorta thing, perhaps with some relative strengths and weaknesses accordingly, but no fundamental lack of ability to answer any particular question. But who knows, maybe that’s just cope.
jackjeff 2y ago
> For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless I confirm. I would have probably picked up a color at random to play along with the whole “mind’s eye metaphor” before I realized people can actually “see” for real and it’s not a metaphor.
layer8 2y ago
I don't consider myself having aphantasia (I can visualize stuff in my head), but if I imagine a triangle it doesn't by default have a color. It would if the instructions were something like "imagine a red and a blue triangle", but when I only imagine shapes they don't necessarily have a color.

auggierose 2y ago

The article uses the VVIQ test (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire), taken on the Internet, to select aphantasiac participants. I cannot take research like that seriously. > For example: imagine a triangle. What color is it? > For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless. If you are not an aphantasiac, how do you know what meaning this question has for one? I am pretty sure aphantasiacs can "imagine" a triangle with some color in it. It is just that this imagine manifests differently than it does for you, but how can we measure that objectively? To elaborate, even for an aphantasiac, a triangle or a color is not something abstract. You can draw it on a paper, and it is right there. If you close your eyes, you can remember what you have drawn on the paper, aphantasiac or not. So how exactly do you distinguish the quality of memories here? Certainly not with vague internet questionnaires. Research like that makes me really angry.

canjobear 2y ago
If I say "imagine a triangle" and ask you what color it is, why would it have a color if there is no image there? I didn't ask you to imagine a red triangle. Only a triangle. The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it.
- auggierose 2y ago
  I understand your reasoning, but it is not very logical. It depends on what you mean by "imagine a triangle". A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside? So if your triangle doesn't have a color, it might be because you are more accurate in your imagination, not because you have no triangle imagination. So without a proper way of defining things like "imagine" or "mental picture" first, tests like yours or like VVIQ are not well-defined. Now, maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I have aphantasia. Or maybe I don't understand the meaning of VVIQ because I am a logician and mathematician, and I am very peculiar about "meaning". Maybe even both. Without a doubt though, VVIQ is not an objective test, because its elements are not properly defined.
  - canjobear 2y ago
    The point isn’t to rigorously define “visualize” or “imagine”—we will probably never be able to do this. The point is to use a verbal prompt to elicit a mental experience and then to try to probe that experience. > A triangle doesn't have to be filled with a color to be a triangle. Why would you imagine it with any color in it in the first place, not just a wireframe, being transparent inside? That’s just it: when I imagine a triangle, it is a definite image with a definite color. The visual details like color come automatically for me. I cannot imagine it in the more abstract way you are describing. If it’s a wireframe, the wireframe is gray. It’s always a full, colorful, 3d scene, perhaps vague but definitely with visual detail.
- taughtology 2y ago
  > The only way it logically gets a color is if you are visualizing it. This does not follow. I can imagine a red triangle without visualizing one.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    What does this mean? What do you see when you "imagine" versus when you "visualize?"
- jackjeff 2y ago
  My answer would have been. Hang on a second you never asked me to imagine a triangle WITH a color? What else has this triangle got? A flavor? A smell? A name? It would have never occurred to me it had a color in the first place before you asked.
- bombela 2y ago
  In my mind there is an infinite void. No color per say, think of the void of space, without a single spec of dust. This void is a 3D space. There is a general sense of up, down, left, right, front and back. In this void I materialize a triangle. It is a wireframe. 3 lines, all the same length. No color, they are just lines. By default the triangle is resting on one side, pointing up, and facing me. I can then rotate and move my mind "camera" around it while simultaneously rotating and moving the triangle as well. The more complex the shapes, the more shapes, the harder it is to maintain coherency. I can close my eyes and concentrate to help. I can assign colors if I wish to, but they are not really there visually. More like an extra information attached to the shape.

dumbo-octopus 2y ago

For the test to be meaningful, it should still produce accurate results when the subject is pretending to have the condition (the SAT wouldn’t be helpful if you could ace it by acting as if you know the all answers!) Consider a turing test of sorts: I want to convince you I am phantastic, you are tasked with determining whether I am faking it. Could such a test be realized? Consider, for example, the “draw a bicycle” phenomenon. Many alleged phantists are wholly unable to correctly render a bicycle onto paper, and furthermore they are often unable to self-evaluate that their renders are bogus. Many aphants on the other hand have no issue depicting a well formed bicycle onto a paper, and furthermore would be able to identify faulty ones. Of course this test does not have perfect recall/accuracy, it’s just an example of how the results can be counterintuitive.

Terretta 2y ago
> Many aphants on the other hand have no issue depicting a well formed bicycle onto a paper, and furthermore would be able to identify faulty ones. As one, I don't draw, I construct. A set of rules make a bicycle a bicycle, so pick a part, draw it, then sequentially continue attaching parts per the rules, and at the end, it's a valid bicycle that functions. The resultant drawing is considered good, though I couldn't "see" any part of the bicycle before or while drawing. This isn't from an image, but it is arguably a mapping. Similarly, I've observed those who can mentally organize concepts but can't visualize pictures are often better able to render frameworks onto whiteboards than those who picture scenes. It's made me wonder if the same parts of the mind are used for the one or the other, as if remembering everything visually uses up circuitry that could support semantic-space-time.
- dumbo-octopus 2y ago
  A anecdote along the same lines as your drawing vs constructing observation: I happen to be fairly adept at wood working. And I often think up novel constructions that people quite fancy and indeed are willing to pay their hard earned bucks for. Once I have thought these things up, I am able to render them to paper/CAD very easily for concrete plan creation. I am never surprised at the appearance of the thing when it is rendered to CAD, I always knew that’s what it would look like. I never saw it in any visual sense, but I knew exactly how it would appear, and I could answer in great detail any question someone might have about it (barring, perhaps, the sorts of questions that require trigonometry/excessive number crunching – the reason I’m putting it to CAD/paper). To me, this means there isn’t a binary “has ‘imagination’/does not have ‘imagination’” divide. Rather, folks perhaps have different methods of “visualization”. Some folks have a “bitmap” approach (≈Photoshop). From the comments here, it seems some a “vector” approach (≈Illustrator). I would perhaps describe mine as a “CSG” approach (≈OpenSCAD/Grasshopper/etc.). What’s nice with this phrasing is that nobody is missing anything. Nobody is a-trait. Everyone just has a different method of doing the same sorta thing, perhaps with some relative strengths and weaknesses accordingly, but no fundamental lack of ability to answer any particular question. But who knows, maybe that’s just cope.

jackjeff 2y ago

> For a true aphantasiac, this question is meaningless I confirm. I would have probably picked up a color at random to play along with the whole “mind’s eye metaphor” before I realized people can actually “see” for real and it’s not a metaphor.

layer8 2y ago

I don't consider myself having aphantasia (I can visualize stuff in my head), but if I imagine a triangle it doesn't by default have a color. It would if the instructions were something like "imagine a red and a blue triangle", but when I only imagine shapes they don't necessarily have a color.