Aphantasia poll

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Yes, words are so important to my understanding of things. And most things aren't articulated properly so I am confused a lot. So I tend to only half listen until I can find the missing details that I need to form an opinion, or to file it away as something I agree to.

I have faceblindness and I often can forget what people look like. I can forget what I even look like! But strangely I have a heightened ability to picture things in my mind that are not people related. I can pick out a Blackstone diesel shunter from a class 08 and I do not know what I am looking at as outwardly they both appear to be identically the same (If one looks at an early unfitted 08). I do jot know how I can do this and I do not know of another person who can do this from a photograph, so it is strange.
When I worked in a bicycle shop, I could not remember customers from their faces, but as soon as I saw an individual bike, I knew who they were. We could have sold a great many of a soecific make and model and yet I could pick out the exact bicycle individually... But with the customer... Nope. Sorry!

I can picture things in my mind but I can't draw them from memory.

I am beginning to think I am unusual. I have a very visual imagination and can design things using my mind with no need for paper, and I rarely need to measure other then the most basic of measurements to find the centre points of things while making something. But somehow, when it comes to certain peoples faces I just can't visually recall them? As far as I know it is only with people that I get this.

I have immense trouble trying to visualize anything, but my dreams are quite vivid.

I can't recall smells or textures, but I'm pretty good with sounds if I have heard them enough times.

Even though I see myself in the mirror every day when I shave, I can't picture myself at all. I do best when my hair is real long because I can remember the hair. But right now, my hair is between 1/4 and 1/2 inch long.

If I was a witness to a crime and had to try to describe the culprit to a sketch artist, I would be completely lost.

I know my own mother but if I had to describe her she would look like a picasso haha.

https://www.superrecognisers.com/take-part

I got 7 of 14 - surprised I did that good. But I focused on the eyes, chin, ears and not the entire face. And used words like slanty, squinty, cleft. Not images.

I got 10 out of 14. I focused on blemishes on the face, like a mole, and looked for the face that seemed to match that.

I had the same difficulty as you, when I first encountered the concept of aphantasia. I couldn't find a clear (and, to me, believable) explanation of what people mean when they speak of "seeing images in their mind's eye." I still don't really comprehend what they mean, since to me it is unimaginable that they really "see" anything.

The nearest I feel I have come to understanding my own situation comes from the options I have encountered in some of the aphantasia questionnaires, where the possible responses ranged between "I see images as realistically as if they were in real life" at the high end, down to "I see no images, I only 'know' what things look like," at the low end.

That low-end response describes my own situation perfectly. I 'know' what things look like, but I don't see any image at all.

Thanks. That makes better sense than the definitions I've encountered. Those wouldn't be options if they weren't possible. I'm near the lower end

That is a good expression of how I see things also. I just try to make it clearer about what I CAN do. As for dreams and full daydreams, they ARE effectively visual, I perceive them as if I were seeing them with my eyes, but I AM more detached there. And I DO perceive more color but, again, it is more logical or a sense, and not actually a sensation of color.

I don't know if I've got this aphantasia thing or not. I can picture simple things easily enough but I'm not so good at picturing complicated things. OTOH if I try to picture a complicated thing, although the picture I create is fairly simple, I can create a zoomed-in picture of the particular detail of that part of the main picture, at least to some extent. I'm not all that great at picturing 3D images, presumably because they're more complicated. I'm not good at picturing familiar objects without first looking at them with the intention of picturing them a little later on, but I guess that's an attention thing. I tend not to notice much that I don't expect will be useful to me and I'm not great at taking in lots of detail in a short space of time. If I were drawing a person I wouldn't expect to do very well without setting up a model or a lay figure to copy from, if the posture wasn't very simple, and even if it was I wouldn't expect a very good result, but I would think with practice I might get quite good at it.

I've no idea how that compares with what others can picture. Do many realist artists draw without looking at the real thing they're drawing? I don't suppose so. Why not, if they were good at phantasia?

I also get something like hypnopompic hallucinations, like sharp, clear colour photographs and short movies, purely visual.

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sle ... ucinations

They're not quite like they describe - I don't misinterpret, edit or distort what I really see with my open eyes, they only happen when I close my eyes, and when I get them my brain seems pretty much awake and fully functional. They only happen when I've just woken myself from a lucid dream. Anyway I'm pretty sure my brain is very good at picturing things in detail and much more vividly than most people can picture anything, when the conditions are right. [My normal dreams on the other hand may only be vague but fully believed impressions of seeing this or that, but I can't recall enough about them after waking to know how much detail was there at the time].

There is a flaw with your post. You never specified what aphantasia is, which you should have done at the beginning of your post, because not everyone knows what that is.

^
I wish everybody would stop assuming prior knowledge, but it's not going to happen, and there is a problem about where to draw the line. Wikipedia usually does the trick for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia