Can you visualize things in your mind as if they were physically in front of you? People with aphantasia cannot and they often can't remember visual events from the past as a result. Perhaps you have it too.
As someone else with similar issues, I'm pretty deeply aphantasic. The best mental visualization I can manage of even simple imagery (think "a red triangle on a black background") is roughly comparable to a half-transparent blurry watercolor, and I can't clearly picture faces at all (though I don't have any particular trouble with recognizing people when I see them).
Is that really aphantasia? I understood it to be the absolute absence of any mental imagery. Your description actually sounds similar to my own experience. I'm capable of summon up imagery with effort when I need to, but it's never very clear or frequent.
My visualization is somewhere between wireframes and chalkboard diagrams, usually closer to the later. Also have little autobiographical memory. I suspect I’m somewhat on the autism spectrum, but that wasn’t diagnosed much back in the 60’s when I was growing up.
Wait. You're telling me that you're supposed to be able to do so? I thought it was some mind hack that gives you the power to become an artist, not everyday stuff.
Interesting. Do you have dreams? Do you see things in “full 3D” there? When I’m awake I can visualize things but they definitely don’t have the full dream-like quality. I suspect it’s because so much brain “bandwidth” (not the right term) is going towards other stuff.
I have terrible autobiographical memory- everything is out of order and I don’t know what happened last year or ten years ago. But at the same time I think mostly in images and visuals. If I want a fork the image of a shiny fork in my hand will flash in my mind but then sometimes I can’t think of the word for it and I’ll just say, I need the um, the ah, the thing, what is it called... while picturing it very clearly in my minds eye.
How can I tell if I am unable to do this? I think maybe I kind of can, but I have to focus really hard and it is a flickering image and I am not sure if I am actually imagining that I am imagining if that makes sense at all. Or the fact that I am not sure is already telling? I don't think I try to imagine anything in my daily regular life though.
Haha, exactly my thought! I can form a mental image (photo) in my mind, but how do I know others can "see" it similarly?
It's not very clear as I can't really see it in front of me, but it's in my head, and there's a different kind of "seeing" happening...
One evening I asked my 5yo daughter that when she imagines something in her head, does she see it almost like in real physical 3d? She said yes. I wouldn't say yes to that question. But again, it's so subjective...
I’m fairly normal in most other ways, mentally, with really high (tested) spatial reasoning, and a good-but-nothing-special (on HN, anyway) tested IQ.
Just badly deficient autobiographical memory.
I didn’t even realize there was anything wrong until my mid 20s. Turns out this is a relatively-recently-discovered disorder of some kind, and on reading accounts by people who have it, I was like “…oh.” Not super well studied, I think in part because it tends (incredibly!) not to actually impair living an OK life. You just don’t really remember it like a normal person does.
