Are Your Thoughts Mostly Detailed Or Diagrammatic?

Post Reply New Topic

It is called aphantasia and it is something I deal with. My mind is made up of conceptual impressions and associations as well as linguistic. I think this has been something that has helped me, a lack of visual recall makes concepts fuzzy and less concrete which has allowed me to understand figurative language quite well. On the downside, I have trouble recalling visual details unless I have integrated them into the conceptual impression of what I'm looking to describe. This compounds the problem with social interactions as I fail to recall someone I've already met who never left an impression on me or if I meet them in an environment that doesn't correlate with the impression I will not realize I know them.

As to the OP, I think the diagrammatic would fit my thinking style although I don't know if that's the word I would use. My mind runs with conceptual impressions pieced together by a narrator(myself) to explore associations between concepts. Does that make sense to anyone?

I have experimented with shutting off all visualization and thinking like that, it's definitely quite interesting. I've talked to my brother about this and he might have aphantasia too, although I am not 100% sure about that. It takes a constant conscious effort to suppress, but I can sort of shut off all visualization by trying to be as aware as I can of the world around me and stopping anything that pops up. It's much harder though if you ask me to do something I am dependent on visualization for like math, navigation, and memory recall because I really don't know how to effectively do that otherwise and the heads up display of sorts will keep trying to turn on so I have to focus on stopping that. I was actually rather surprised when I figured out that thinking without images is possible. I would be able to do more with it if I didn't have to concentrate on stopping all visualization and if I had enough experience with it to know how to do everything properly.

I am a visual learner, and as such my thoughts are mainly pictures, which I can also flip around and manipulate however I wish.

If you are able to suppress visualization maybe it would possible for me to enhance it. You've given me something interesting to ponder. My current visualization ability amounts to closing my eyes and letting light sources trick my brain into seeing something. However, that doesn't hinder my ability to translate conceptual impressions into visual media. I have a scale model of my house in minecraft but I didn't visualize it or work from photos. Instead, I built it and altered it as I went based off of the visual impressions it gave me when looking at it. It is kind of like minecraft acted as a visualization center that I lack in my mind.

^ I think it would be worth working on, if that's what you want to accomplish. The plasticity of the brain may make it possible.

I am neither a completely visual nor a completely verbal thinker. I would say that I use both images and language in my thinking processes, in addition to other things that I can imagine or remember, like taste.

When I think of things, I often will have pictures or other sensations accompany the word. For instance, if I think of chocolate, I may have a mental image pop up, and also be able to "taste" it, and maybe remember the way that it feels or smells, too. If I think of a date or day of the week, I'll usually bring up a mental image of a calender, or at least part of one. If I think if numbers, I will see them, too.

So for some things, I think I will always have a picture in my head when thinking of them, and for others it's not necessary and I'll just use words. But I do visualize quite a bit, especially when remembering things. I can't imagine what it would be like if I didn't.

Guilty as charged.

Many people can visualize in 3-D, but it is often in either picture form or with limited movement. I do not have those limitations, something I found out the hard way growing up. Other kids just could not understand how I could "see" things that they could not in science/math/history classes. The way I visualize things is hard to describe accurately. Often I see 4-D (or higher) fully moving images when visualizing targets during a mental experiment process. The cool part is that I can play it back in reverse/slowed down/stopped/x-ray to see what parts interacted at what stage. (I can also do this with things that I am inventing, but at a much reduced rate.) Having these visualization abilities does not make one better than anyone else, only different, much like a red car is different than a blue one.

^Nicely put! Um...what's 4D? I thought that was smells and stuff. Is it something else entirely?

4-D is basically space-time that Albert Einstein defined in his Theories of General Relativity/Special Relativity. You might have seen a picture of a 2-D plane bending downward around a planet as an example. Gravity can greatly influence space-time (4-D), especially around very dense or heavy objects (black holes, neutron stars, etc.).

As for smells, I have worked with a few chemicals in the past that smelled so bad that they should have come from another dimension.

^Fascinating, as Spock would say.

For me ..I think it depends. It's very vague if I don't care to think about it too much. I can control the images in my thoughts to become more vivid and detailed. I guess it's like an on/off switch. It isn't draining to think up the details either...it just has to be instructed in my mind I guess. I'm not sure if that makes sense lol

I did a bit of research on the topic and apparently it is possible for someone with aphantasia to learn to visualize. I found this article on the topic which seems promising based on what I read of it and what the comments said.

Most of my thoughts are highly detailed visual images. I think this is why I'm obsessed with photography. I can't recall large blocks of text and numbers. Most everything else is like a movie or photograph. I can easily model things in my mind as well. People usually think I'm spaced out when I'm visualizing things because the rest of the world seems to fade away. One caveat though is the information needs to have some significance to me or my brain filters it out.