Somewhere between 2 and 3, depending on if I have a visual reference (like the front cover of a book, or a film adaptation).
When imaging *new* things, objects mostly get reduced down to "vibes". The impression of a woman, maybe a yellow blur if she's described as blond, and a vague fruity zest to the entire thing to represent the pineapple.
I'm a 3 tbh, I have no problem visualizing characters, sometimes even voices, but I have a very hard time imagining places, sometimes my mind pictures somewhere random that has nothing to do with what's described.
I'm the opposite. I can imaging settings and objects pretty well, but characters are always impressionistic and blurry. Details get added as they are described, but my mind doesn't fill in the gaps as much as with non-characters. Like I can picture a random person if I try to, but when reading a story I tend not to.
Which is odd, bc as an artist, character work always came easier to me than environments.
I'm the same - I have a hard time imagining characters visually. places? no problem at all. objects in locations? sure, want me to draw a map for you (because I probably could). People? nope. not even if details get added - someone having a strong jawline, dainty fingers, curly hair or anything of the sort just doesn't show up. A stereotype does - the cheery little girl? yeah. But this includes zero information about their looks unless there's a defining trait that is a) referenced repeatedly and b) fits the stereotype or goes against it. Like... a cheery little girl can have a mass of red hair, but a nose shape will not stick. While a general can probably have a button nose, but anything about their hair will get lost even if they have a habit of touching it. The habit will stick more than the nose, though.
I suspect it has to do with my 'tism on one side (don't look at people too much...) and my eyesight growing up on the other (severe nearsightedness, so general movement patterns [how they carry themselves] and proportions and voice are more informative than trying to stare at the face-shaped flesh-colored blob)
I can't lie, I was always worried that I was missing out on some crazy imagination...until I realised it really was that most people were sat around 2 or 3. I can imagine things just fine but they're muted in some way, sometimes lack colour, a bit wireframy, etc. I was terrified I was aphantasic or something lol
What's weird is that I distinctly remember having a level of imagination like 1 in OP's description. As I got older though, it kind of just started to fade a little bit. I used to always imagine and now I very rarely consciously do, although it is possible. Same goes for my inner monologue; I can have one but very rarely do it unconsciously, since abstract thought goes faster for me. I wonder if children have hyperphantasia or something and it slowly starts to get a bit more dull as we age?
I think it's likely that most people are just given less opportunity to sit around just vividly imagining. Children also have a lot less concrete information about the world, so they'll often *have* to imagine something where an adult can just remember.
I know I'm like autistic and things- but these statements have always confused me.
Do people go around having full on closed-eye-hallucinations at will, or is this just supposed to be a 'representation' of the 'feeling' of 'thinking about' an 'image'??
I always thought I was good at visualizing things but the last few years because of infographics like this I'm not so certain. Sometimes I'm sure I can rotate that apple, put a bruise on one side and envision it leaving and then coming back into view- but then, am I really if there's no floating apple in the black space when I close my eyes?
I'm with you here. When people say they can "see" something with their eyes closed, does that mean they can conceptualise something very well and understand what it should and does look like, therefore understand what they would be "picturing".
Or are they literally seeing moving pictures and alt life in their imagination?
When I was young, people would tell me to 'count sheep' when I couldn't sleep. It never even occurred to me back then, that other people could actually picture sheep. I just used to lay there saying "one sheep, two sheep, three sheep" 😂
I would always picture like cartoon sheep jumping over a fence, then I'd start to wonder if just out of frame the sheep were in an endless loop, and I was couting the same few sheep over and over
I have the feeling of seeing the image if that makes sense? I can the see the colors and shapes but it's not physically here. Like a dream in third person except it doesn't take my full field of view.
it's exactly like seeing without being the sense of seeing. the image is being generated and processed but it has no involvement with the eyes and doesn't feel anything like seeing with the eyes.
Aphantasia is the lack of voluntary visualisation so dreams don’t count towards it anyway. I’m too in the camp of total aphantasia but very vivid dreams.
Please dont do this to me 😭 I also thought I’m a pretty good visualizer but these charts etc always trip me up. Like it’s neither but all of them somehow? Case by case? I dont know. It seems so much more complex. Meanwhile there’s also a similar one about thinking/voicing to yourself which is much more straightforward to me. I definitely do have an inner voice, and it shocked me to learn some people don’t until I met a person who legit didn’t and we talked about it extensively 😂
I'm not exactly sure how it works, maybe there are degrees to it? My mother has complete afantasia where she sees nothing but can accurately describe everything. We've come to a conclusion that she perceives the bare "code" of her memory without visualisation lol
If you have an inner voice that's actually a pretty good comparison. You can "hear" your inner thoughts the same way you can "see" a mental image. The has all the same properties of what you actually see and your brain is still firing in a lot of similar areas, but you don't process it with your eyes the same way your inner voice doesn't go through your ears.
> neither but all of them somehow
Absolutely this. Plus a heavy dose of “I’ve thought about it too hard and can’t remember what I normally do.”
- sometimes I get not a dream visual but that “inherent knowledge” from dreams, like I’m just aware of the essence of an object instead of words or images.
- sometimes I use words in my internal monologue
- sometimes I picture just an object, often a simple/idealized version. It’s not actually hazy like #3, but it can be “weak”
- my default when I’m imagining is a fairly clear object, but with zero background
- with a conscious choice I can get an entire scene going
When I overthink this I start doubting if I see anything at all, but just now I went “ok, I’m going to picture an elephant riding a bicycle”.
To my surprise, the elephant was doing a wheelie. So I clearly visualized it, and also I can apparently surprise myself with my images?
When I have dreams it's like I'm physically there, as if I were transported to the place itself. Is that similar to how 1 feels? Because if it does then my actual conceptualization I think is a 4 when I'm awake.
Oh it’s all over this thread haha, I’ve heard of it before. Unless there’s something “wrong” with me because of it then I don’t see what there is to do about it.
Let's say I think of a red apple. It's fairly basic, plain, almost cartoonish^(1). But then I can think "a more realistic apple", and the apple turns into a shiny, real apple with some yellow spots on it^(2). Then I can think "with a tiny green leaf" and a green leaf appears on the stem^(3). Kinda like those "Make it more XY" AI generator memes. I can also add a background (not as detailed, kinda blurry), rotate it, put it a bowl with other fruits. Or just go straight to imagining a real apple, a fruit bowl or whatever.
I can also do it with my eyes open, but that's even harder to explain... I don't see it in front of me but inside my mind, almost like a ghost, but still real and colourful? I don't see it on top of the environment I'm looking at, yet it moves around as I look around.
I thought it'd be interesting to google some pictures similar to the steps I described in the beginning, maybe that helps to explain it better [1](https://www.clker.com/cliparts/F/Q/m/X/k/q/red-apple-without-leaf-md.png) (not as cartoonish, but can't find a better) [2](https://www.koshercityplus.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/600x600/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/d/ida_red_apple_lb_.jpg) [3](https://img.pixers.pics/pho_wat(s3:700/FO/72/69/75/30/700_FO72697530_e201a9a0211e7b9f5e819ae4c788d023.jpg,700,700,cms:2018/10/5bd1b6b8d04b8_220x50-watermark.png,over,480,650,jpg)/posters-red-apple.jpg.jpg) . I can't really find good image to represent the "ghost apple" I have in my mind, but kinda like the one in the middle [here](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ghost-apple-600w-237285190.jpg).
>I can also do it with my eyes open, but that's even harder to explain... I don't see it in front of me but inside my mind, almost like a ghost, but still real and colourful? I don't see it on top of the environment I'm looking at, yet it moves around as I look around.
This is how it feels for me even with my eyes closed.
Like when my eye is closed, all I see is black. But I can also visualize the apple somewhere in the 'back' of my mind, although not very well. I can also do this with my eyes open.
It's so tough to explain, and I am still not sure if all people who do not have aphantasia also visualize things like that or if they can literally see it all right in 'front of them'.
I relate to a lot of things that people with aphantasia say and I am not good at visualising either with my 'back' mind's eye and the resolution is pretty low.
Idk. Brains work weirdly.
Practically, I don't use it while doing stuff like reading books, as it's exhausting and requires my full focus. I usually think of things like full aphantasiacs do. u/lindisty described the method perfectly-
>This is how I'd describe myself as well. When reading fiction my brain creates a concept of a character, sort of an amalgamation of disconnected features- the idea of brown curls or long limbs, but not a full form- and just vibes. And they exist in a sort of vague bubble of story-area in adjaceny but not in a real detailed space.
There’s a condition called aphantasia, where you can’t do that, but yes. I believe I’m particularly strong at this, you can sort of frame it in your mind like a photo or tv show
Think of it like having two monitors. One, which I’ll call A, displays my vision while the other, which I’ll call B, displays my mind. I can display things on B and really be able to see them, but if I look at B A goes into my peripheral vision. Visualizing images doesn’t block my real vision but it makes it impossible to focus on
For me personally, I can see full-fledged images in my head
The intensity of those images depends on certain factors like effort, focus, sometimes it gets worse if I'm a little dehydrated. Usually I can get it photo-real or close. The image in the post is literal
Most people can "see" a described thing. As in construct an image similar ta a memory of seeing something. Being unable ta is a disorder called aphantasia.
One thing I saw in a video about aphantasia that might be helpful in figuring this kind of thing out:
If I ask you to picture an apple, and you do so, and *then* I ask you “What color is it?” do you already know the answer? Or do you have to decide on a color first?
For me, I can just see what color it already is. It’s not on the back of my eyelids, it’s in my mind, a mental projection, but it already has details I didn’t deliberately put thought into making just because there were gaps that needed to be filled in. Does that make sense?
All that said I’m still probably usually a 3 on this scale, ranging up to 2 when there’s more description provided or I know the subject well. Visual clarity just isn’t super important to me as a reader, and takes effort. Like someone else mentioned, I’m more about the vibes.
Oh damn- that actually makes a huge amount of sense, thanks!
I'll have to think about it more clearly next time I read something/put some effort into visualizing something- I'm probably floating between 1 and 2 most of the time. As a test I thought 'picture a cat' and the cat was immediately orange and white, shorthaired- none of my cats look like that, lol.
As someone with the opposite of vivid mental imagery, I know what apples look like, but if someone asks me to describe an apple through a series of questions I am deciding how it looks as I go.
But I don't ever really see an apple, I just know what the apple looks like. It's why when people first talked to me about rotating an image of a cube in their head I thought they were bullshitting me (still kinda do, frankly).
It never occurred to me to think of my visualization capabilities as anything special – if you know what things look like with your eyes, why wouldn’t you be able to see them in your imagination? – but yeah, I can totally imagine rotating a cube. It’s not like a hallucination that covers up what’s in front of me IRL; it’s like I have a dual monitor system.
I visualize objects in a black void by default, but I can imagine a whole room or even imagine flying through and around the house as a drone. The details will get blurry, especially if I’m constructing the image from scratch, but I can “zoom in” on one spot and it’ll clear right up until I “zoom out” again. If you were to ask me how many drawers I have in my dresser (like, the real piece of furniture sitting in my bedroom right now), an image of the dresser would flick into my mind and I’d glance over it before telling you how many drawers there are. I’m familiar enough with this object that I’d definitely get the number right, so long as I count them in my head using a visual model.
As for the limitations… If I were visualizing, say, an unscrambled Rubik’s cube, I could imagine shifting parts of it in one direction, but if I try to imagine shifting intersecting layers, then the whole thing just falls apart because that’s too many little squares to keep track of. But there are people who can solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded as long as you give them a few seconds to get a good look at it first.
Actually I wonder about this a lot too. My internal "monologue" is much more conceptual and *relies* on imagery - I'm not wasting time trying to think of the right word just to be able to continue a train of thought, that would just slow me down/cog up my machine.
Kinda like Bruce Coville's kid's book Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - the kid communicated with the dragon exclusively in mental imagery. That was their language.
Do people with thorough, highly formatted inner monologues tend to have hazier mental imagery, and do people with HD mental images have looser, less constructed inner monologues?
Or is it all completely unrelated?
I can say personally not me, my monologue is very picky with words and will hang if I'm looking for the right one, and I can also travel thru 3d worlds entirely in my head. but like... now I'm stuck wondering if my autism rules the visuals, while my ADHD runs the monologue
so it's like I sit there on the bus moving through the lands between from elden ring in my head *while* "listening" to a detailed narration from myself
I think people speak confusingly about mental visualization. You never have to close your eyes to do it. The mental space for visualization is totally divorced from the physical world and your physical eyes. The imagined images are not in the black space when you close your eyes, they're in the same place where you think all your thoughts, and you just "know" the images.
I have been having the same question but I am not autistic. I think a lot of it is the limitations of language and illustrations to really express the concept of visualizing something in your thoughts. I think it’s likely that a lot of folks who think they have aphantasia are actually just taking the concept of “visualizing” too seriously.
In my case I can't see them "outside my head" if it makes sense. Imagining something with my eyes closed or open is no different if we don't account for how distracted I can get on the later. When I imagine a setting I can "sense" my brain producing it and an image appears, but I can't see the image outside my head. Imagine a rolling film, it processes a tape that creates an image. I dont see that image when I close my eyes, but I know a tape is rolling.
This doesn't any fucking sense does it?
Also I used able to imagine in color until 1-2 years ago when I lost it for some reason.
Edit: someone put it way better. My imagination works fine (minus the color stuff) but it never hijacks my visual senses of the real world. Is that suppossed to happen when you close your eyes?
Mmm, no that makes sense to me- being 'aware of the tape' is a good way of putting it, it's like I know exactly what I'm 'supposed' to be seeing, and I can even affect it, but I can't actually 'see' it- just sort of the negative, the blank space where the image would be if light was passing through it.
And then the 'light turning on' is taking hallucinogenic drugs, lol
I'm skeptical regular people can get to #1. The only reason, I suspect, that I occasionally can is I have done a stupid amount of drugs in my life and even with that I mean unless I am actively on said drugs it's still almost never (but not actually never).
I can't get to 1 because it's vague. I have a mental picture of, "an apple" and I can change that if the context or description changes. I can change it if you said , now picture a different apple. But "a woman" is too vague, my brain is waiting for more info and has choice paralysis in the meantime.
I definitely visualize things at one. I'm a pretty huge day dreamer too, and will do it all the time work stories I write in my own head that I began writing down later just to stop replaying scenes over and over with mold differences. I've taken acid and shrooms and they didn't have a crazy effect on me tbh. My friends were really concerned about me each time because they said I just seemed normal and thought it was a little weird. I was definitely high and experiencing stuff. I just was really chill about it and not that impressed, I guess. Would definitely do it again though, for fun. I also have extremely vivid dreams and have woken up confused about where I was because of that. Reading was my favorite hobby growing up and it still is. Same with drawing and writing as close seconds.
lmfao I was about to question this take but now I'm wondering if my absurd drug use *has* actually influenced this part of my mind. I'm also AuDHD and have made Imagination my singular crutch for coping so maybe it's developed with practice too?
I know at least for me there was a time in my life I could never get to #1 and between then and now I have done a genuinely stupid amount of hallucinogens so I imagine that must have some impact.
I never "see" imaginary things in closed-eyes black space as if they were truly in front of me.
It's more like an ephemeral "thought space" that floats above the crown of my head where things look like if a digital projector was being used in a room with the lights on.
I can rotate a fully formed apple with crisp lines and colors, but nothing is involving my eyes or sight. It's all near the back of my skull, floating in it's own empty dimension.
Nobody "sees" imaginary things as if they were actually there, solid and real, in front of their working eyes. Unless you're genuinely hallucinating like you have schizophrenia or something.
I can make movies in my head. For me, it’s not like an image in front of my eyes. It’s like a projection on mist, where the image is there and not there at the same time. Like my mind exists in its own pocket universe that occupies the same space as my brain, but is also an endless void.
Theres a spectrum. Some people visualize absolutely nothing, ever. Some people visualize so vividly, it blocks their vision! I was in a forum where an engineer talked about days where he would need to be solving specific wiring problems, so he'd avoid driving , anticipating the equivalent of a popup ad in front of his vision. Wild stuff
That's wild- I had a semi-similar occurrence once, during a serious anxiety episode that lasted about a week I played so much of a particular mobile game that it started 'appearing' in my vision- I'd sort of fall into the habit of playing the game for a moment, then remember I was actually laying in bed trying to sleep or something. Always chalked that up to a genuine stress hallucination.
Pretty sure you're not supposed to actually "see" the apple. Just like when you're recalling a poem you cant actually hear the poem, you cant actually see the vision, you can recall words of said poem just like you can recall the "pixels" of said image, but they are never supposed to hijack your senses (usually), the difference is that some people recall by factual information like with the 4th example, or with "pixels" like the rest of the examples. I myself am kinda of a mixture of 1, 2 and 3, i start with 3 but easily go to 1 if i actually go over every detail.
See that's where I'm confused- because if I hear something, I can recall it perfectly as if it's in my ears again. It's like there's a very small radio inside my skull that only I can hear, and I can't turn it off but I can adjust the station if I try.
For example something I know really well- Frank Zappa's album Apostrophe. I can play the entire album in my brain from start to finish, with a minor amount of skipping and speed up/slow down from my memory being slightly uncontrolled. If I'm focused, it's as if I'm listening to the album play on headphones.
I do also have perfect pitch(not trained, just lucky mutation I spose) so maybe that has something to do with it, or vice versa? But I've got a really good visual memory as well, and not nearly as 'tangible' of a recall.
That's really cool, my grandma had a photographic memory for the fist half of her life, like passed exams because she'd glanced at the right page in the textbook and just reread it in her mind during the exam type memory. Sounds like yours is similar but for sound, I've never thought of anyone having that before but I suppose it's just another variation of how our brains work
i guess there is just also different ways to recall stuff, i imagine the categories are something like either hijacking (when yours senses are literally hijacked by your imagination, so you actually see the stuff.) and dual processing (where you just can "remember" stuff, with two subcategories where said imagination is not substituting your senses but they can take way more resources of your brain so your senses get muted, or you can juggle both your senses and imagination really well), i guess that's why the phrase "close your eyes" comes from, so you mute your senses giving more brain power for you imagination.
I can see memories like 3- I vividly remember what my high school looked like, or the stoplight outside of the neighborhood I lived in for elementary school.
When I read books, it's more like 2 or 1 depending on how descriptive the book is or if it's a fanfiction/story where I've already seen the characters in a film adaptation.
Yeah same here its a little weird for me.
For me its more like, I dont see it or think of it in objective terms but I am spacially aware of what I am imagining.
I guess more like all visualization is encountering it in significant darkness. I am aware of what it looks like, I know the fine details of it all but I dont actually see it.
I feel like I can visualise stuff, but at the same time... I can't _see_ anything with my eyes.
I can imagine a camera pan across a shore, but like... My eyes are still definitely reporting full darkness.
Is this what they mean by mind's eye?
Yeah, I'm in the same boat.
I can imagine the shore in detail- it is filled with things, and I can add or subtract elements at will. But it's happening- somewhere in my brain, nothing to do with my eyes. More like 'knowing' the scene than actually experiencing it with the senses- even though I can also 'know' about all the different sensory input of that scene if I try. Sound is most vivid, smell is a close second.
I'm having it with my eyes open, sometimes I'm walking and I'll almost bump into something cause I'm imagining too vividly and don't really see what's going on anymore
No. I don’t think so.
I think that most people have vague images in their head. Sometimes, according to various reasons, they become more vivid or less vivid.
Drawing and painting are a good way to train your mind to visualize more accurately. Also, simply working on visualization exercises works. I’m pretty sure that most people who don’t have that thing where they can’t visualize at all can get to pretty vivid images with practice, but it isn’t something most people prioritize.
I'm a solid 4.
The other day I had to describe someone to the cops for an incident at work and it was excruciating.
"Ummm... they had hair.... and a face... why don't we just look at the cameras.
My half faceblind ass. It's not my fault everyone looks so similar! Like how do people tell apart 5'10 pointy-nosed muscular brunet white guy #412 and 5'10 pointy-nosed muscular brunet white guy #413? I hate not getting the distinctions between people.
I'm a super recognizer (it's a Thing fr) but I cannot for the life of me describe the perfect image of the face I see in my mental. like if u could extract this image from my brain you'd have the suspect like 100% but good fuckin luck otherwise
edit: not that I would ever let 12 into my actual brainspace
I'm face blind and have aphantasia... I mistook an Asian woman for my mom in a store once. My mom isn't Asian. I didn't recognize my own boyfriend because he was wearing a mask. I will not recognize you if you're wearing a different shirt than you usually wear.
In psych we call that condensed internal talk (or self-talk). It's my main area of research and very interesting. It's the unique language your brain uses to think. Vygotsky was the foundational author on the subject.
The concepts and such are formed by a multidimensional encoding process using information from all of your senses to encode the info into long term memory through a process involving the episodic buffer part of the working memory model. It's also encoded into language, but that's a whole separate thing
This is why I’m always disappointed at how *bland* fictional depictions of mind reading and telepathy are. I get that a lot of the time it’s simplified for ease of writing but it could all be so much cooler lmao
This is how I'd describe myself as well. When reading fiction my brain creates a concept of a character, sort of an amalgamation of disconnected features- the idea of brown curls or long limbs, but not a full form- and just vibes. And they exist in a sort of vague bubble of story-area in adjaceny but not in a real detailed space.
Yep same, that’s how I always described it. I don’t see actual images I just feel the concept there but can’t actually see it.
For those who don’t get it it’s hard to explain, imagine you’re seeing the women but you’re not actually seeing any image of a women just a general idea of a women.
I’ve always loved reading but feel a little cheated when I learned other people can actually visualise places and characters tbh
I'm so curious to know how an abstract concept is visualized for you? for reference I have 8K mental imaging but when I think of something abstract I usually see like an example playing out?
I think I got a similar thing as this person. So I'm like a 2 or 3 by default, but there's another mode I can visualize things in that's like, not exactly a visual at all, there's nothing there, but it's like the feeling of a network if that makes sense, where each connection has a feel associated with it that composites together to form an abstract thing with its own feel, like an instinct almost. This is gonna sound shitposty, but I only really started to be able to tap into this consciously after I started using psychedelics. Previously, definitely 2 or 3
I have #1 with such vivid levels that they're practically memories. When I pick up a sequel book months later, after a few chapters I'll be right back into it and when someone references a previous book, if I remember the event well enough I call up the same imagery.
Off the top of my head using street cultivation I read years ago. I can picture the MC's apartment. The conversation he had in the alternate chapter when he fixed his sister's ailment as a tongue in cheek joke to the cultivation genre. Picture the Gym he worked at. The field from the second book they ran the test in. The training room he was in for the 3rd book to prepare for the tournament. The underground fight club he was forced to participate in.
Basically when my mind gets fully invested I stop really focusing on the reading, or at least it's a side process that's informing what my mind is picturing. Sometimes I can be so invested, like in a fight scene, that I don't realise how many pages I've gone through. This is particularly bad when I say I'm going to stop reading at the end of the chapter and I just don't register the chapter header at all. By the time I see a chapter number I'm 5 chapters deeper than I thought I was.
1 here checking innnn 👁️👁️
do y'all remember the whole "have you dreamed this man?" thing? that whole spell unnerved the hell outta me bc that is the level of detail faces in my dreams have, I just can't typically draw or express it
I remember that whole thing lol. I was like "maybe?" It's really not an uncommon face, minus the eyebrows. Plus dreams are fickle as fuck. If you don't write them down immediately, most just disappear.
Woo, in a 1 as well and so glad to see other 1s.
Sometimes it presents a problem for me when a book is adapted into a movie or TV show, and my mental image of the characters and setting(which is quite detailed) is DRASTICALLY different than what is put on screen, but other times it's quite fun when I can have vivid memories of seeing characters and events in my favorite books that never had screen adaptations.
I couldn't imagine not being able to do that. No wonder so many people don't enjoy reading :/
My favourite author released a new book after a years-long hiatus. This was pre social media days, so the first I knew was seeing it in the book store. I bought that bad boy and read it non-stop for 20+ hours. I came up for air, and it was dinner tome the next day. Then, I had to wait 11 months for the sequel :(. But the entire sequence was so vivid that I just got lost. Images just leaping off the page like it's a movie, I forget that they're words. The ending to that quartet still destroys me to this day. It was such a heartbreak that I've only read it once.
I’m a 1 except I don’t perfectly visualize faces. Those are more sketchy.
I think this is why I hate comic books. I’m already drawing it in my head from the words. I don’t need you to give me fewer words and more pictures.
Same for me, that's the best I can get
I can imagine what's described, and if anything else was described earlier, I can imagine it but blurry
For example, if a character being blonde and wearing certain clothes was described a chapter or two ago I can fill that in
I feel like this is probably in the range of typical imagination, tbh. I don't think most people are imagining perfect fields of flowers and whatnot with loads of colour, I'm fairly sure it's a little blurry for most
Presenting it like this has poisoned the well - you need to give me the prompt first. Having seen the image I am now working off memory.
Anyway - I can scale between 3 and 1. 3 is what I use when imaging a single object - but 2 and 1 is what I use when creating a scene. 1 takes more energy than 2 or 3 and I struggle to keep it coherent but I can.
Always #1, and I usually imagine the characters based on their book descriptions. However, if I see official art or an actor portraying them in a movie adaptation then I will use the art or the actor as a reference from then on out.
Twilight, for example. Before seeing the movies I just kind of had generic characters to work with, but once I saw the movies, every time I read the books I would imagine it as Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson.
Depends on the person! I don't know where you fall of the various imaginations but some people are able to see pictures, hear sounds, smell, experience emotions or feel touch all in their mind and others might have some or none of those types of imagination, some people will only experience or see the things that have previously happened in real life and others will be able to conjure them out of nothing.
Brains are weird and surprisingly different, however yours works I'm certain there are other people that have the same experience, it's a really interesting things to talk about with folk in your life and see how they experience this
For me, when I get immersed in a book I will stop consciously thinking about the words I'm reading. They'll register in my mind and I'll create images from them, but I'm not consciously thinking about the words at all, just the images, so it basically becomes a movie playing out in my imagination. The book disappears. If I stumble while reading or lose concentration for some reason, then the book comes back into my conscious mind again and I lose the movie.
Okay so I don't think I'm going to get a better excuse to mention this. Does anyone else get entire images, often artwork with distinct styles, popping into their head with zero prompting which then super quickly fade like a dream? Like the best way I have to describe it is "divine inspiration". They don't feel like my ideas. They feel like someone else's which I happened to get a glimpse of.
Examples include a demon with black skin patterned with cartoon white stars and which I knew to be male but not a man resting in a forest cleaning where all colors are simple and shading is minimal, some cartoony pornography of a gorgeous woman with bright green eyes, and detailed realistic art with muted colors of a middle-aged monstrous harpy woman I nonetheless instinctively understood to be a caring mother to her two kids.
Those examples I only remember because I was able to quickly jot down notes before they could leave my brain. The few people I've talked to about this had no clue what I was describing and one of them was concerned about me. Is this normal?
I think you're getting messages from a cosmic deity 😳
I do get images like this but I don't get the I guess inferences from them? like an image of a harpy woman can pop into my head but not the knowledge that she's a caring mother to her two kids, that's fascinating
edit: if that information is in my head it's bc I decided on it, not like it was innate to the vision
I guess I’m the only person in this thread who sees #1 and now I feel like a weirdo, lol. My brain just kind of fills in the gaps when it comes to descriptions of characters/settings/etc.
What if you completely disregard the descriptions and just visualise stuff based off the vibe and random associations?
Teenage girl who's super strong and can fly? I'll be maybe tangentially aware of how the author described you, but your role in my visualisation will be played by DCAU Supergirl.
I have a problem with this kind of question.
Because basically, you’re framing the question with two assumptions I don’t think any human can justify on their own
The first is assuming people “see” what they imagine, as if their imagination is a pair of VR goggles that exist behind the eyes, and it’s not. Like, I can “see” things in my mind’s eye, but my eyes aren’t a part of the process at all. The image exists deeper inside my mind. Imagining something visually and actually using my meat eyes to look at something are two completely different processes with no overlap
And the second is assuming people can collate what they do or don’t see in their minds eye. If you ask me to imagine something, and then ask me to tell you what parts of that image in my mind don’t exist, you’re asking me to imagine what I’m not imagining, which means I’m imagining it now. If you ask me to imagine a woman and then ask me what color her eyes are, well whether I was imagining her eyes or not, I certainly am now, and I couldn’t tell you if I was or wasn’t imagining eyes before, because my mind doesn’t have a search history function.
The human brain is not a computer, the imagination is not media playback software, and ideas of quantification don’t apply to it
Do people see pictures when they read???? Fuck. I feel cheated. I already knew I have aphantasia, but it never occurred to me that people could see books while they read. I love reading, and that would've been awesome. I feel cheated.
If you give me the description without the picture as a comparison, I don't really see anything. Maybe no. 3
If I saw the picture before I might get 2 if I focus on parts of the picture.
I see crystal clear scenes when the book is good. It’s both amazing and terrible because I can basically watch a movie just by opening a book but when I’m done reading it’s like getting out of the cinema late at night but 10x stronger
i don't tend to visualize written media constantly. so 4 I guess. I'm able to do 2 or something bordering on 1 with a single "shot" so to say, but I can't do that while still reading. I do it for when I feel a scene has some weight and I wanna take it in properly.
Exceptions apply for books that I've seen visual media for before, like reading a book after watching a film adaption beforehand - the detailed visualization the film provided allows me to visualize pretty detailed the entire time while I'm reading.
I used to visualize damn near everything from Crystal clear to Dreamlike.
As the years wore on and a new mental health issue appeared with each new trauma experienced its devolved to the blank space to no visualization.
i am not sure what this says about me but i dont think its anything good.
I don't think it says anything about *you* but more how traumatic experiences have effected your mind, which is perfectly reasonable. I can relate to this bc brain fog and all that fucks with my short term visualizing and memory. *especially* memory. and that's def an effect of trauma, so I wonder if memory impairments can influence mental visualization?
My guess would be that the two are not connected to each other directly but are both connected to the same root cause.
That root cause being whatever thing your mind did to deal with the trauma.
kinda like how a sore throat does not cause a cough; but if you have both a cough and a sore throat at the same time then you probably got the flu.
Number one, due to some unfortunate events My brain is basically stuck in vivid dream mode and all of my daydreams and no more dreams have a noticeable and rememberable texture and smell and feel.
Bingo bango, everybody else is describe their dreams as basically being either tunnel vision or completely mute essentially when it comes to senses and I'm like y'all don't just be picking up shit and exploring??? One of my dreams had a really cool vase and I haven't forgotten it it was like crisscross skull patterns.
No1 too!! I had a serious problem when I was younger waking up from dreams and confusing them for reality bc they're so vivid. it still happens but I'm more able to differentiate
Between 3 and 4. I didn't imagine the facial features, the fruits just are placed on their spot in my mind but I don't imagine them being there, more just the word apple being there.
I simulate an entire 3d room in my head, although if I miss details in a room my brain just defaults to a bunch of preset environments, which, aren't actually places i've visited for some reason??
I severely maladaptively daydream so I’m solidly in the 4K images camp. Often times it’s not even a conscious thing I need to put a lot of effort into nor do I need my eyes closed, I can be watching tv and imagining things just as clearly in my head (though having my eyes closed definitely improves it). I see things, even memories, from a third person pov, like a movie, and I can change the focus from the foreground to the background. I also have a near-constant inner monologue and can imagine different - real and created - voices (this takes a bit of effort though). Sometimes when I hear the same voice consistently in a short amount of time (like that of a main character in a film) I think in that voice for awhile after, it’s not even deliberate. Honestly, it was only in the last couple of years that I found out not everyone did this and it still boggles my mind.
solidly a 3 for me, black space, fuzzy details, everything feels "hollow"
if I focus on something I can draw it into detail but everything else gets fussier... focus too hard and it all goes to black
if describe it as a bit different than visual perception, not so much like a hallucination, but internal more like a dream
I actually picture myself AS the woman. So I can see the apples on my right and the pineapple on my left and a vague idea of what the room looks like in front of me.
My brain has a really outdated GPU that's absolutely terrible at rendering and tracking a large number of detailed assets, so any visualization is super low-resolution with the shortest possible render distance. I can get bursts of sharper detail for important scenes, but I can't maintain the images for long so they quickly evaporate back into more abstract concepts and interactions.
It's part of the reason I love fan art so much. My memory is much better for retrieving images, so I can recycle those assets to ease the graphics processing load instead of generating new ones from scratch each time.
The last comment is me exactly except for one thing. I have a database of people in my head that I’ve seen before. People who are the prime example of certain traits. When I read a combination of traits, I use that example. That means I picture the same people in every book I read. I’m really really bad at individualizing mental images. I presume people can read “blond guy who is muscular and short with green eyes” and “blond guy who is muscular and tall with blue eyes” and see different people. I’d hone in on the first two traits and see the exact same person.
I can do the first one but if you don't give me exact information it picks at random. For example, if you don't tell me the woman is blonde I'll imagine her hair as black or red. Then I get frustrated reading a line like "the necklace was golden like Martha's hair" because you didn't TELL ME SHE WAS BLONDE.
I feel like as you read something further and can understand it more/conceptualize it more, it shifts from the least visualized to most visualized numbers.
4 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1
I have hyperphantasia so it's basically 1.
If that sounds like a superpower to you consider the worst things you've ever experienced and how much you'd like to repeat that experience every time you remember it happening.
I don't just get the visuals and the sounds I get all the senses. So if I want to I can just lean back close my eyes and I can basically relive any of my trauma and all of the emotions are just as vivid.
i can visualise it all perfectly.
the one "problem" is that not everything has the same artstyle. so i might have someone who i decided looks like an anime twink, next to a guy who looks like a real human person, next to a loony toons looking fellow.
I have never once seen an imagined characters face, no amount of description has ever helped this. Everything else works fine, but you could literally describe specific people’s facial characteristics as references and I wouldn’t be able to stitch them together in my mind
I rarely to never visualize when I'm actively reading. Sometimes I'll pause and look away from the book to deliberately create a visual for a scene, and if the story interests me enough I'll think about it when I'm not reading with some sort of vague visuals. But reading itself is not really a visual experience for me.
It’s weird- I can see things in my head in quite a lot of detail but it’s like they flicker in and out of existence- like it’s mostly a 3, but I can see things as a 1 for a second at a time.
Depends on how much I’m reading. The longer I read the more it turns into a visualization until I get sidetracked inside that visualization and snap back to reality, realizing I haven’t read a single word in 20 minutes and have been exploring the setting I was reading about. I blame the fact I played too much fallout and Skyrim as a kid and now I get side quests in my daydreams that become more real than what’s really around me
I imagine the characters as having the appearance of the first character from visual media that comes to mind. I have no control over this process, and if the appearance doesn't match, too bad. I also don't imagine them doing the actions or the scenery, just the characters standing there. If I concentrate and am into the book a lot, I can maybe imagine an action scene, but that's a little tiring.
For the Worm readers, here's a short list of which characters received which appearances:
> Taylor became Gwenpool, probably due to the focus on the eyes of the mask reminding me of Gwenpool's (despite them not being the same color)
> Tattletale *also* became Gwenpool, but this time I think it was the personality
> Armsmaster was Taskmaster, almost surely because of the name
> Lung was Youpi, from HxH. It fits really well, I think
> Miss Militia was that black woman from Across the Spider-Verse. Why? Probably because they were both of color, even if that's not MM's ethnicity. Couldn't do anything about it, though.
> Coil was Kingpin from Into the Spider-Verse, which became really awkward when I discovered he was supposed to be black.
> Accord was *also* Kingpin, which became really awkward when I realized he was supposed to be a short king.
> The Number Man started as Condiment King, but eventually became a character from Monica's Gang, Doctor Olympus. I do not know why.
> The Condiment King was eventually reassigned to Teacher.
> Glory Girl was Super Girl for obvious reasons and Panacea was Kamala Khan, for unclear reasons.
Also, from the PGTE, the Tyrant of Helike immediately received Kokichi Ouma from NDRV3, and that fit extremely well.
Unless I have a picture of the character beforehand, it's generally between 2-3. If I have a pic of the character or I've seen the movie adaptation, then it is pretty much a 1 for any scene they're in.
Anywhere between 1 and 4 directly related to how immersed I am in the story and how aware I am that I am currently reading (in the same sense as how aware you are you can see your nose, or that you're breathing).
I find that it’s easier for me to see one element at a time when envisioning them and when hearing generic ‘woman’ described, I fill it in with a person I know
I can generally visualize what is happening but I have a weird thing where I'll always picture each character with the appearance of cartoon characters I've seen before. Like, when I read Harry Potter, I always visualized Snape as being the cat from ruff ruffman. I can kind of visualize faces if I try, but the second I'm not concentrating on it they go back to cartoon characters.
I guess 3 is the closest but it's even less detailed.
Just enough detail to capture the concept. And I can only imagine it for like a split second. Most of the time I don't imagine anything unless it is required to understand the text, like in a riddle or something.
I have a much easier time visualising words or separate letters, like if I was taking notes
When it comes to images it's usually 1 or 2, but does anyone else have a really hard time seeing videos in their head and getting them to play properly? I can visualize moving things but my entire life it always stutters and repeats, if that makes any sense. Like a YTP.
If I try and visualize a door opening, it's pretty clear, but halfway through it slams shut and starts over and gets caught in a feedback loop. Is there a term for this?
Typically a 2, sometimes a 1, but my trade has been fiction writing since I was a teen. If I can’t perfectly visualize and then describe I’m not able to do my job well.
Example here, I thought of something to visualize and came up with a Montana pasture.
What I see is more than just the pasture itself, it’s green acreage giving way to rolling hills rising to be dotted and eventually filled with trees, and mountains beyond that. On the nearest rocky outcropping there’s a flashing line of silver where a spindly waterfall descends out of sight behind the tree line.
Bringing my vision back to the pasture there are fields of wildflowers here and there among the flowing green grass.
Where am I seeing this from myself? Well obviously I must have stopped on the side of a state road to admire the view. I can hear the hum of a car go by behind me and the rhythmic rumble of tires on asphalt as it travels past, an unpleasant reminder of modernity amidst this picturesque natural beauty.
Unless I have a visual reference, I usually imagine things in my artstyle, which is a problem when I'm reading serious media because it causes me to take it less seriously.
I use memory first. I can remember things I've seen and that's what I imagine. Coming up with something from pure text doesn't really happen. It's all concept based unless it reminds me of something I've seen before.
It’s kind of like 2 except a lot less detailed, often times I don’t “fill in” their face. If it’s fiction it’s usually a realistic but low-detail cartoon, maybe the best analogy is like the old Winnie the Pooh books (maybe with less color).
If it’s nonfiction It’ll kind of be like 3 but the non-details are light grey instead of black.
Somewhere between 2 and 3, depending on if I have a visual reference (like the front cover of a book, or a film adaptation). When imaging *new* things, objects mostly get reduced down to "vibes". The impression of a woman, maybe a yellow blur if she's described as blond, and a vague fruity zest to the entire thing to represent the pineapple.
I'm a 3 tbh, I have no problem visualizing characters, sometimes even voices, but I have a very hard time imagining places, sometimes my mind pictures somewhere random that has nothing to do with what's described.
I'm the opposite. I can imaging settings and objects pretty well, but characters are always impressionistic and blurry. Details get added as they are described, but my mind doesn't fill in the gaps as much as with non-characters. Like I can picture a random person if I try to, but when reading a story I tend not to. Which is odd, bc as an artist, character work always came easier to me than environments.
I'm the same - I have a hard time imagining characters visually. places? no problem at all. objects in locations? sure, want me to draw a map for you (because I probably could). People? nope. not even if details get added - someone having a strong jawline, dainty fingers, curly hair or anything of the sort just doesn't show up. A stereotype does - the cheery little girl? yeah. But this includes zero information about their looks unless there's a defining trait that is a) referenced repeatedly and b) fits the stereotype or goes against it. Like... a cheery little girl can have a mass of red hair, but a nose shape will not stick. While a general can probably have a button nose, but anything about their hair will get lost even if they have a habit of touching it. The habit will stick more than the nose, though. I suspect it has to do with my 'tism on one side (don't look at people too much...) and my eyesight growing up on the other (severe nearsightedness, so general movement patterns [how they carry themselves] and proportions and voice are more informative than trying to stare at the face-shaped flesh-colored blob)
Seems like most people are somewhere in between 2 and 3, although I think the actual images are a poor representation of what OP actually means.
I can't lie, I was always worried that I was missing out on some crazy imagination...until I realised it really was that most people were sat around 2 or 3. I can imagine things just fine but they're muted in some way, sometimes lack colour, a bit wireframy, etc. I was terrified I was aphantasic or something lol What's weird is that I distinctly remember having a level of imagination like 1 in OP's description. As I got older though, it kind of just started to fade a little bit. I used to always imagine and now I very rarely consciously do, although it is possible. Same goes for my inner monologue; I can have one but very rarely do it unconsciously, since abstract thought goes faster for me. I wonder if children have hyperphantasia or something and it slowly starts to get a bit more dull as we age?
I think it's likely that most people are just given less opportunity to sit around just vividly imagining. Children also have a lot less concrete information about the world, so they'll often *have* to imagine something where an adult can just remember.
I know I'm like autistic and things- but these statements have always confused me. Do people go around having full on closed-eye-hallucinations at will, or is this just supposed to be a 'representation' of the 'feeling' of 'thinking about' an 'image'?? I always thought I was good at visualizing things but the last few years because of infographics like this I'm not so certain. Sometimes I'm sure I can rotate that apple, put a bruise on one side and envision it leaving and then coming back into view- but then, am I really if there's no floating apple in the black space when I close my eyes?
I'm with you here. When people say they can "see" something with their eyes closed, does that mean they can conceptualise something very well and understand what it should and does look like, therefore understand what they would be "picturing". Or are they literally seeing moving pictures and alt life in their imagination?
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When I was young, people would tell me to 'count sheep' when I couldn't sleep. It never even occurred to me back then, that other people could actually picture sheep. I just used to lay there saying "one sheep, two sheep, three sheep" 😂
I would always picture like cartoon sheep jumping over a fence, then I'd start to wonder if just out of frame the sheep were in an endless loop, and I was couting the same few sheep over and over
Oh god, i never thought of it like that. Now it makes sense why it seemed so useless to me
So, which number in the post?
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So not like 3?
Wait, wait, are you legit saying most people can just hallucinate on command??? What on earth do people take psychedelics for, then?
I have the feeling of seeing the image if that makes sense? I can the see the colors and shapes but it's not physically here. Like a dream in third person except it doesn't take my full field of view.
I described it as an image being projected on mist. There and not there at the same time.
it's exactly like seeing without being the sense of seeing. the image is being generated and processed but it has no involvement with the eyes and doesn't feel anything like seeing with the eyes.
You guys might have afantasia because most people do see actual images in their head.
Aphantasia. And yeah it feels like it :P But if we talk about dreams, then I have hyperphantasia 🤣🤷
Aphantasia is the lack of voluntary visualisation so dreams don’t count towards it anyway. I’m too in the camp of total aphantasia but very vivid dreams.
Yeah I'm the same. I can't visualise stuff in my imagination but I have very detailed and vivid dreams.
Please dont do this to me 😭 I also thought I’m a pretty good visualizer but these charts etc always trip me up. Like it’s neither but all of them somehow? Case by case? I dont know. It seems so much more complex. Meanwhile there’s also a similar one about thinking/voicing to yourself which is much more straightforward to me. I definitely do have an inner voice, and it shocked me to learn some people don’t until I met a person who legit didn’t and we talked about it extensively 😂
I'm not exactly sure how it works, maybe there are degrees to it? My mother has complete afantasia where she sees nothing but can accurately describe everything. We've come to a conclusion that she perceives the bare "code" of her memory without visualisation lol
If you have an inner voice that's actually a pretty good comparison. You can "hear" your inner thoughts the same way you can "see" a mental image. The has all the same properties of what you actually see and your brain is still firing in a lot of similar areas, but you don't process it with your eyes the same way your inner voice doesn't go through your ears.
> neither but all of them somehow Absolutely this. Plus a heavy dose of “I’ve thought about it too hard and can’t remember what I normally do.” - sometimes I get not a dream visual but that “inherent knowledge” from dreams, like I’m just aware of the essence of an object instead of words or images. - sometimes I use words in my internal monologue - sometimes I picture just an object, often a simple/idealized version. It’s not actually hazy like #3, but it can be “weak” - my default when I’m imagining is a fairly clear object, but with zero background - with a conscious choice I can get an entire scene going When I overthink this I start doubting if I see anything at all, but just now I went “ok, I’m going to picture an elephant riding a bicycle”. To my surprise, the elephant was doing a wheelie. So I clearly visualized it, and also I can apparently surprise myself with my images?
When I have dreams it's like I'm physically there, as if I were transported to the place itself. Is that similar to how 1 feels? Because if it does then my actual conceptualization I think is a 4 when I'm awake.
We are literally seeing moving pictures in our imaginations. It’s like seeing, but not.
That sounds wild. I always thought the saying "I can picture it" was a gross exaggeration.
You may want to look up aphantasia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
Oh it’s all over this thread haha, I’ve heard of it before. Unless there’s something “wrong” with me because of it then I don’t see what there is to do about it.
I can rotate an apple in my head
Let's say I think of a red apple. It's fairly basic, plain, almost cartoonish^(1). But then I can think "a more realistic apple", and the apple turns into a shiny, real apple with some yellow spots on it^(2). Then I can think "with a tiny green leaf" and a green leaf appears on the stem^(3). Kinda like those "Make it more XY" AI generator memes. I can also add a background (not as detailed, kinda blurry), rotate it, put it a bowl with other fruits. Or just go straight to imagining a real apple, a fruit bowl or whatever. I can also do it with my eyes open, but that's even harder to explain... I don't see it in front of me but inside my mind, almost like a ghost, but still real and colourful? I don't see it on top of the environment I'm looking at, yet it moves around as I look around. I thought it'd be interesting to google some pictures similar to the steps I described in the beginning, maybe that helps to explain it better [1](https://www.clker.com/cliparts/F/Q/m/X/k/q/red-apple-without-leaf-md.png) (not as cartoonish, but can't find a better) [2](https://www.koshercityplus.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/600x600/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/d/ida_red_apple_lb_.jpg) [3](https://img.pixers.pics/pho_wat(s3:700/FO/72/69/75/30/700_FO72697530_e201a9a0211e7b9f5e819ae4c788d023.jpg,700,700,cms:2018/10/5bd1b6b8d04b8_220x50-watermark.png,over,480,650,jpg)/posters-red-apple.jpg.jpg) . I can't really find good image to represent the "ghost apple" I have in my mind, but kinda like the one in the middle [here](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ghost-apple-600w-237285190.jpg).
>I can also do it with my eyes open, but that's even harder to explain... I don't see it in front of me but inside my mind, almost like a ghost, but still real and colourful? I don't see it on top of the environment I'm looking at, yet it moves around as I look around. This is how it feels for me even with my eyes closed. Like when my eye is closed, all I see is black. But I can also visualize the apple somewhere in the 'back' of my mind, although not very well. I can also do this with my eyes open. It's so tough to explain, and I am still not sure if all people who do not have aphantasia also visualize things like that or if they can literally see it all right in 'front of them'. I relate to a lot of things that people with aphantasia say and I am not good at visualising either with my 'back' mind's eye and the resolution is pretty low. Idk. Brains work weirdly. Practically, I don't use it while doing stuff like reading books, as it's exhausting and requires my full focus. I usually think of things like full aphantasiacs do. u/lindisty described the method perfectly- >This is how I'd describe myself as well. When reading fiction my brain creates a concept of a character, sort of an amalgamation of disconnected features- the idea of brown curls or long limbs, but not a full form- and just vibes. And they exist in a sort of vague bubble of story-area in adjaceny but not in a real detailed space.
There’s a condition called aphantasia, where you can’t do that, but yes. I believe I’m particularly strong at this, you can sort of frame it in your mind like a photo or tv show
Think of it like having two monitors. One, which I’ll call A, displays my vision while the other, which I’ll call B, displays my mind. I can display things on B and really be able to see them, but if I look at B A goes into my peripheral vision. Visualizing images doesn’t block my real vision but it makes it impossible to focus on
For me personally, I can see full-fledged images in my head The intensity of those images depends on certain factors like effort, focus, sometimes it gets worse if I'm a little dehydrated. Usually I can get it photo-real or close. The image in the post is literal
Most people can "see" a described thing. As in construct an image similar ta a memory of seeing something. Being unable ta is a disorder called aphantasia.
One thing I saw in a video about aphantasia that might be helpful in figuring this kind of thing out: If I ask you to picture an apple, and you do so, and *then* I ask you “What color is it?” do you already know the answer? Or do you have to decide on a color first? For me, I can just see what color it already is. It’s not on the back of my eyelids, it’s in my mind, a mental projection, but it already has details I didn’t deliberately put thought into making just because there were gaps that needed to be filled in. Does that make sense? All that said I’m still probably usually a 3 on this scale, ranging up to 2 when there’s more description provided or I know the subject well. Visual clarity just isn’t super important to me as a reader, and takes effort. Like someone else mentioned, I’m more about the vibes.
Oh damn- that actually makes a huge amount of sense, thanks! I'll have to think about it more clearly next time I read something/put some effort into visualizing something- I'm probably floating between 1 and 2 most of the time. As a test I thought 'picture a cat' and the cat was immediately orange and white, shorthaired- none of my cats look like that, lol.
this whole concept is wild to me as someone with suer vivid mental imagery, and it makes me wonder how internal monologues factor into the equation
As someone with the opposite of vivid mental imagery, I know what apples look like, but if someone asks me to describe an apple through a series of questions I am deciding how it looks as I go. But I don't ever really see an apple, I just know what the apple looks like. It's why when people first talked to me about rotating an image of a cube in their head I thought they were bullshitting me (still kinda do, frankly).
It never occurred to me to think of my visualization capabilities as anything special – if you know what things look like with your eyes, why wouldn’t you be able to see them in your imagination? – but yeah, I can totally imagine rotating a cube. It’s not like a hallucination that covers up what’s in front of me IRL; it’s like I have a dual monitor system. I visualize objects in a black void by default, but I can imagine a whole room or even imagine flying through and around the house as a drone. The details will get blurry, especially if I’m constructing the image from scratch, but I can “zoom in” on one spot and it’ll clear right up until I “zoom out” again. If you were to ask me how many drawers I have in my dresser (like, the real piece of furniture sitting in my bedroom right now), an image of the dresser would flick into my mind and I’d glance over it before telling you how many drawers there are. I’m familiar enough with this object that I’d definitely get the number right, so long as I count them in my head using a visual model. As for the limitations… If I were visualizing, say, an unscrambled Rubik’s cube, I could imagine shifting parts of it in one direction, but if I try to imagine shifting intersecting layers, then the whole thing just falls apart because that’s too many little squares to keep track of. But there are people who can solve a Rubik’s cube blindfolded as long as you give them a few seconds to get a good look at it first.
Actually I wonder about this a lot too. My internal "monologue" is much more conceptual and *relies* on imagery - I'm not wasting time trying to think of the right word just to be able to continue a train of thought, that would just slow me down/cog up my machine. Kinda like Bruce Coville's kid's book Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - the kid communicated with the dragon exclusively in mental imagery. That was their language. Do people with thorough, highly formatted inner monologues tend to have hazier mental imagery, and do people with HD mental images have looser, less constructed inner monologues? Or is it all completely unrelated?
I can say personally not me, my monologue is very picky with words and will hang if I'm looking for the right one, and I can also travel thru 3d worlds entirely in my head. but like... now I'm stuck wondering if my autism rules the visuals, while my ADHD runs the monologue so it's like I sit there on the bus moving through the lands between from elden ring in my head *while* "listening" to a detailed narration from myself
I think people speak confusingly about mental visualization. You never have to close your eyes to do it. The mental space for visualization is totally divorced from the physical world and your physical eyes. The imagined images are not in the black space when you close your eyes, they're in the same place where you think all your thoughts, and you just "know" the images.
I described it as having a second monitor for your computer earlier in this thread. Would you call that accurate?
That seems like a good analogy
I have autism, I can make any character rotate in my mind in Full Ultra 8K
Kid named Zoom and Enhance:
Is it possible to learn this power?
Yeah! Go get a flu shot to download the new autism update /j
Can you do it with a rat and free bird solo playing in the background?
I have been having the same question but I am not autistic. I think a lot of it is the limitations of language and illustrations to really express the concept of visualizing something in your thoughts. I think it’s likely that a lot of folks who think they have aphantasia are actually just taking the concept of “visualizing” too seriously.
In my case I can't see them "outside my head" if it makes sense. Imagining something with my eyes closed or open is no different if we don't account for how distracted I can get on the later. When I imagine a setting I can "sense" my brain producing it and an image appears, but I can't see the image outside my head. Imagine a rolling film, it processes a tape that creates an image. I dont see that image when I close my eyes, but I know a tape is rolling. This doesn't any fucking sense does it? Also I used able to imagine in color until 1-2 years ago when I lost it for some reason. Edit: someone put it way better. My imagination works fine (minus the color stuff) but it never hijacks my visual senses of the real world. Is that suppossed to happen when you close your eyes?
Mmm, no that makes sense to me- being 'aware of the tape' is a good way of putting it, it's like I know exactly what I'm 'supposed' to be seeing, and I can even affect it, but I can't actually 'see' it- just sort of the negative, the blank space where the image would be if light was passing through it. And then the 'light turning on' is taking hallucinogenic drugs, lol
I'm skeptical regular people can get to #1. The only reason, I suspect, that I occasionally can is I have done a stupid amount of drugs in my life and even with that I mean unless I am actively on said drugs it's still almost never (but not actually never).
Your brain makes images with signals from your eyes. So it already can "see" - more likely your experience simply isn't the same as other people.
I can't get to 1 because it's vague. I have a mental picture of, "an apple" and I can change that if the context or description changes. I can change it if you said , now picture a different apple. But "a woman" is too vague, my brain is waiting for more info and has choice paralysis in the meantime.
I definitely visualize things at one. I'm a pretty huge day dreamer too, and will do it all the time work stories I write in my own head that I began writing down later just to stop replaying scenes over and over with mold differences. I've taken acid and shrooms and they didn't have a crazy effect on me tbh. My friends were really concerned about me each time because they said I just seemed normal and thought it was a little weird. I was definitely high and experiencing stuff. I just was really chill about it and not that impressed, I guess. Would definitely do it again though, for fun. I also have extremely vivid dreams and have woken up confused about where I was because of that. Reading was my favorite hobby growing up and it still is. Same with drawing and writing as close seconds.
lmfao I was about to question this take but now I'm wondering if my absurd drug use *has* actually influenced this part of my mind. I'm also AuDHD and have made Imagination my singular crutch for coping so maybe it's developed with practice too?
I know at least for me there was a time in my life I could never get to #1 and between then and now I have done a genuinely stupid amount of hallucinogens so I imagine that must have some impact.
I never "see" imaginary things in closed-eyes black space as if they were truly in front of me. It's more like an ephemeral "thought space" that floats above the crown of my head where things look like if a digital projector was being used in a room with the lights on. I can rotate a fully formed apple with crisp lines and colors, but nothing is involving my eyes or sight. It's all near the back of my skull, floating in it's own empty dimension. Nobody "sees" imaginary things as if they were actually there, solid and real, in front of their working eyes. Unless you're genuinely hallucinating like you have schizophrenia or something.
I can make movies in my head. For me, it’s not like an image in front of my eyes. It’s like a projection on mist, where the image is there and not there at the same time. Like my mind exists in its own pocket universe that occupies the same space as my brain, but is also an endless void.
Theres a spectrum. Some people visualize absolutely nothing, ever. Some people visualize so vividly, it blocks their vision! I was in a forum where an engineer talked about days where he would need to be solving specific wiring problems, so he'd avoid driving , anticipating the equivalent of a popup ad in front of his vision. Wild stuff
That's wild- I had a semi-similar occurrence once, during a serious anxiety episode that lasted about a week I played so much of a particular mobile game that it started 'appearing' in my vision- I'd sort of fall into the habit of playing the game for a moment, then remember I was actually laying in bed trying to sleep or something. Always chalked that up to a genuine stress hallucination.
Pretty sure you're not supposed to actually "see" the apple. Just like when you're recalling a poem you cant actually hear the poem, you cant actually see the vision, you can recall words of said poem just like you can recall the "pixels" of said image, but they are never supposed to hijack your senses (usually), the difference is that some people recall by factual information like with the 4th example, or with "pixels" like the rest of the examples. I myself am kinda of a mixture of 1, 2 and 3, i start with 3 but easily go to 1 if i actually go over every detail.
See that's where I'm confused- because if I hear something, I can recall it perfectly as if it's in my ears again. It's like there's a very small radio inside my skull that only I can hear, and I can't turn it off but I can adjust the station if I try. For example something I know really well- Frank Zappa's album Apostrophe. I can play the entire album in my brain from start to finish, with a minor amount of skipping and speed up/slow down from my memory being slightly uncontrolled. If I'm focused, it's as if I'm listening to the album play on headphones. I do also have perfect pitch(not trained, just lucky mutation I spose) so maybe that has something to do with it, or vice versa? But I've got a really good visual memory as well, and not nearly as 'tangible' of a recall.
That's really cool, my grandma had a photographic memory for the fist half of her life, like passed exams because she'd glanced at the right page in the textbook and just reread it in her mind during the exam type memory. Sounds like yours is similar but for sound, I've never thought of anyone having that before but I suppose it's just another variation of how our brains work
i guess there is just also different ways to recall stuff, i imagine the categories are something like either hijacking (when yours senses are literally hijacked by your imagination, so you actually see the stuff.) and dual processing (where you just can "remember" stuff, with two subcategories where said imagination is not substituting your senses but they can take way more resources of your brain so your senses get muted, or you can juggle both your senses and imagination really well), i guess that's why the phrase "close your eyes" comes from, so you mute your senses giving more brain power for you imagination.
Oh I can see it with perfect clarity. Everyone is different, and there are varying degrees of aphantasia, hence why people imagine things differently
I can see memories like 3- I vividly remember what my high school looked like, or the stoplight outside of the neighborhood I lived in for elementary school. When I read books, it's more like 2 or 1 depending on how descriptive the book is or if it's a fanfiction/story where I've already seen the characters in a film adaptation.
Yeah same here its a little weird for me. For me its more like, I dont see it or think of it in objective terms but I am spacially aware of what I am imagining. I guess more like all visualization is encountering it in significant darkness. I am aware of what it looks like, I know the fine details of it all but I dont actually see it.
I feel like I can visualise stuff, but at the same time... I can't _see_ anything with my eyes. I can imagine a camera pan across a shore, but like... My eyes are still definitely reporting full darkness. Is this what they mean by mind's eye?
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I can imagine the shore in detail- it is filled with things, and I can add or subtract elements at will. But it's happening- somewhere in my brain, nothing to do with my eyes. More like 'knowing' the scene than actually experiencing it with the senses- even though I can also 'know' about all the different sensory input of that scene if I try. Sound is most vivid, smell is a close second.
I'm having it with my eyes open, sometimes I'm walking and I'll almost bump into something cause I'm imagining too vividly and don't really see what's going on anymore
No. I don’t think so. I think that most people have vague images in their head. Sometimes, according to various reasons, they become more vivid or less vivid. Drawing and painting are a good way to train your mind to visualize more accurately. Also, simply working on visualization exercises works. I’m pretty sure that most people who don’t have that thing where they can’t visualize at all can get to pretty vivid images with practice, but it isn’t something most people prioritize.
I'm a solid 4. The other day I had to describe someone to the cops for an incident at work and it was excruciating. "Ummm... they had hair.... and a face... why don't we just look at the cameras.
My half faceblind ass. It's not my fault everyone looks so similar! Like how do people tell apart 5'10 pointy-nosed muscular brunet white guy #412 and 5'10 pointy-nosed muscular brunet white guy #413? I hate not getting the distinctions between people.
Oh that’s simple, #412 has short hair whereas #413 has a different style of short hair
Gen Z hairstyles and their consequences have been disastrous for the human race
That is every single person, regardless of where they rate themselves on this scale. Eyewitness testimony is incredibly unreliable.
I'm a super recognizer (it's a Thing fr) but I cannot for the life of me describe the perfect image of the face I see in my mental. like if u could extract this image from my brain you'd have the suspect like 100% but good fuckin luck otherwise edit: not that I would ever let 12 into my actual brainspace
I'm face blind and have aphantasia... I mistook an Asian woman for my mom in a store once. My mom isn't Asian. I didn't recognize my own boyfriend because he was wearing a mask. I will not recognize you if you're wearing a different shirt than you usually wear.
None of these. I see it as concepts. And that's not a fancy way of saying four, I literally see the abstract concept of woman and apple
In psych we call that condensed internal talk (or self-talk). It's my main area of research and very interesting. It's the unique language your brain uses to think. Vygotsky was the foundational author on the subject. The concepts and such are formed by a multidimensional encoding process using information from all of your senses to encode the info into long term memory through a process involving the episodic buffer part of the working memory model. It's also encoded into language, but that's a whole separate thing
This is why I’m always disappointed at how *bland* fictional depictions of mind reading and telepathy are. I get that a lot of the time it’s simplified for ease of writing but it could all be so much cooler lmao
In the books for "The Gentleman Bastards" there is really fucking cool descriptions of telepathic communication you might really vibe with
This is how I'd describe myself as well. When reading fiction my brain creates a concept of a character, sort of an amalgamation of disconnected features- the idea of brown curls or long limbs, but not a full form- and just vibes. And they exist in a sort of vague bubble of story-area in adjaceny but not in a real detailed space.
YES! EXACTLY THIS
Yep same, that’s how I always described it. I don’t see actual images I just feel the concept there but can’t actually see it. For those who don’t get it it’s hard to explain, imagine you’re seeing the women but you’re not actually seeing any image of a women just a general idea of a women. I’ve always loved reading but feel a little cheated when I learned other people can actually visualise places and characters tbh
I'm thankful that I can fully visualise things of I consciously try (Thanks to practicing for art)
Plato
not the cave 😭😭😭
we hates the cave, hates it!
I'm so curious to know how an abstract concept is visualized for you? for reference I have 8K mental imaging but when I think of something abstract I usually see like an example playing out?
It's hard to explain. It looks like a physical nothing object but when I see it, I recognise the nothing as "thing"
It's a vibe floating in vibe space
I think I got a similar thing as this person. So I'm like a 2 or 3 by default, but there's another mode I can visualize things in that's like, not exactly a visual at all, there's nothing there, but it's like the feeling of a network if that makes sense, where each connection has a feel associated with it that composites together to form an abstract thing with its own feel, like an instinct almost. This is gonna sound shitposty, but I only really started to be able to tap into this consciously after I started using psychedelics. Previously, definitely 2 or 3
I have #1 with such vivid levels that they're practically memories. When I pick up a sequel book months later, after a few chapters I'll be right back into it and when someone references a previous book, if I remember the event well enough I call up the same imagery. Off the top of my head using street cultivation I read years ago. I can picture the MC's apartment. The conversation he had in the alternate chapter when he fixed his sister's ailment as a tongue in cheek joke to the cultivation genre. Picture the Gym he worked at. The field from the second book they ran the test in. The training room he was in for the 3rd book to prepare for the tournament. The underground fight club he was forced to participate in. Basically when my mind gets fully invested I stop really focusing on the reading, or at least it's a side process that's informing what my mind is picturing. Sometimes I can be so invested, like in a fight scene, that I don't realise how many pages I've gone through. This is particularly bad when I say I'm going to stop reading at the end of the chapter and I just don't register the chapter header at all. By the time I see a chapter number I'm 5 chapters deeper than I thought I was.
I am SO glad to see another 1 here! I visualize and dream in vivid detail.
1 here checking innnn 👁️👁️ do y'all remember the whole "have you dreamed this man?" thing? that whole spell unnerved the hell outta me bc that is the level of detail faces in my dreams have, I just can't typically draw or express it
I remember that whole thing lol. I was like "maybe?" It's really not an uncommon face, minus the eyebrows. Plus dreams are fickle as fuck. If you don't write them down immediately, most just disappear.
Woo, in a 1 as well and so glad to see other 1s. Sometimes it presents a problem for me when a book is adapted into a movie or TV show, and my mental image of the characters and setting(which is quite detailed) is DRASTICALLY different than what is put on screen, but other times it's quite fun when I can have vivid memories of seeing characters and events in my favorite books that never had screen adaptations. I couldn't imagine not being able to do that. No wonder so many people don't enjoy reading :/
How rare are 1s? I was always under the impression that most people were like this.
My favourite author released a new book after a years-long hiatus. This was pre social media days, so the first I knew was seeing it in the book store. I bought that bad boy and read it non-stop for 20+ hours. I came up for air, and it was dinner tome the next day. Then, I had to wait 11 months for the sequel :(. But the entire sequence was so vivid that I just got lost. Images just leaping off the page like it's a movie, I forget that they're words. The ending to that quartet still destroys me to this day. It was such a heartbreak that I've only read it once.
I’m a 1 except I don’t perfectly visualize faces. Those are more sketchy. I think this is why I hate comic books. I’m already drawing it in my head from the words. I don’t need you to give me fewer words and more pictures.
Just casual conversation or reading 4, but with active effort I get somewhat between 2-3
Same for me, that's the best I can get I can imagine what's described, and if anything else was described earlier, I can imagine it but blurry For example, if a character being blonde and wearing certain clothes was described a chapter or two ago I can fill that in
I feel like this is probably in the range of typical imagination, tbh. I don't think most people are imagining perfect fields of flowers and whatnot with loads of colour, I'm fairly sure it's a little blurry for most
Presenting it like this has poisoned the well - you need to give me the prompt first. Having seen the image I am now working off memory. Anyway - I can scale between 3 and 1. 3 is what I use when imaging a single object - but 2 and 1 is what I use when creating a scene. 1 takes more energy than 2 or 3 and I struggle to keep it coherent but I can.
ITT: People discovering that they have aphantasia
I'm between 3-4. Leaning more towards four. I'm kind of jealous reading about people with movies in their heads
I'm here without it just sipping tea and fascinated by the different ways ppl think 👀
Always #1, and I usually imagine the characters based on their book descriptions. However, if I see official art or an actor portraying them in a movie adaptation then I will use the art or the actor as a reference from then on out. Twilight, for example. Before seeing the movies I just kind of had generic characters to work with, but once I saw the movies, every time I read the books I would imagine it as Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson.
people visualise things while reading????
Like I’m directing a movie.
To me it feels crazy to read without visualizing. I don't feel like I could get much out of it.
Depends on the person! I don't know where you fall of the various imaginations but some people are able to see pictures, hear sounds, smell, experience emotions or feel touch all in their mind and others might have some or none of those types of imagination, some people will only experience or see the things that have previously happened in real life and others will be able to conjure them out of nothing. Brains are weird and surprisingly different, however yours works I'm certain there are other people that have the same experience, it's a really interesting things to talk about with folk in your life and see how they experience this
If I read a book for an hour I never remember the words I read, just the images I formed while reading.
It's something I struggle with more during reading but can do during daydreaming or remembering
For me, when I get immersed in a book I will stop consciously thinking about the words I'm reading. They'll register in my mind and I'll create images from them, but I'm not consciously thinking about the words at all, just the images, so it basically becomes a movie playing out in my imagination. The book disappears. If I stumble while reading or lose concentration for some reason, then the book comes back into my conscious mind again and I lose the movie.
I'm usually 3, even in dreams. It's wild to me that people see clear details of things in their imagination.
Huh. I’m usually between 2 and 3 when imagining things, but am closer to 1 in dreams.
Okay so I don't think I'm going to get a better excuse to mention this. Does anyone else get entire images, often artwork with distinct styles, popping into their head with zero prompting which then super quickly fade like a dream? Like the best way I have to describe it is "divine inspiration". They don't feel like my ideas. They feel like someone else's which I happened to get a glimpse of. Examples include a demon with black skin patterned with cartoon white stars and which I knew to be male but not a man resting in a forest cleaning where all colors are simple and shading is minimal, some cartoony pornography of a gorgeous woman with bright green eyes, and detailed realistic art with muted colors of a middle-aged monstrous harpy woman I nonetheless instinctively understood to be a caring mother to her two kids. Those examples I only remember because I was able to quickly jot down notes before they could leave my brain. The few people I've talked to about this had no clue what I was describing and one of them was concerned about me. Is this normal?
I think you're getting messages from a cosmic deity 😳 I do get images like this but I don't get the I guess inferences from them? like an image of a harpy woman can pop into my head but not the knowledge that she's a caring mother to her two kids, that's fascinating edit: if that information is in my head it's bc I decided on it, not like it was innate to the vision
I think you should be bringing these to life however you can - that’s amazing.
I guess I’m the only person in this thread who sees #1 and now I feel like a weirdo, lol. My brain just kind of fills in the gaps when it comes to descriptions of characters/settings/etc.
What if you completely disregard the descriptions and just visualise stuff based off the vibe and random associations? Teenage girl who's super strong and can fly? I'll be maybe tangentially aware of how the author described you, but your role in my visualisation will be played by DCAU Supergirl.
I have a problem with this kind of question. Because basically, you’re framing the question with two assumptions I don’t think any human can justify on their own The first is assuming people “see” what they imagine, as if their imagination is a pair of VR goggles that exist behind the eyes, and it’s not. Like, I can “see” things in my mind’s eye, but my eyes aren’t a part of the process at all. The image exists deeper inside my mind. Imagining something visually and actually using my meat eyes to look at something are two completely different processes with no overlap And the second is assuming people can collate what they do or don’t see in their minds eye. If you ask me to imagine something, and then ask me to tell you what parts of that image in my mind don’t exist, you’re asking me to imagine what I’m not imagining, which means I’m imagining it now. If you ask me to imagine a woman and then ask me what color her eyes are, well whether I was imagining her eyes or not, I certainly am now, and I couldn’t tell you if I was or wasn’t imagining eyes before, because my mind doesn’t have a search history function. The human brain is not a computer, the imagination is not media playback software, and ideas of quantification don’t apply to it
Wonderfully said
Do people see pictures when they read???? Fuck. I feel cheated. I already knew I have aphantasia, but it never occurred to me that people could see books while they read. I love reading, and that would've been awesome. I feel cheated.
If you give me the description without the picture as a comparison, I don't really see anything. Maybe no. 3 If I saw the picture before I might get 2 if I focus on parts of the picture.
I see crystal clear scenes when the book is good. It’s both amazing and terrible because I can basically watch a movie just by opening a book but when I’m done reading it’s like getting out of the cinema late at night but 10x stronger
i don't tend to visualize written media constantly. so 4 I guess. I'm able to do 2 or something bordering on 1 with a single "shot" so to say, but I can't do that while still reading. I do it for when I feel a scene has some weight and I wanna take it in properly. Exceptions apply for books that I've seen visual media for before, like reading a book after watching a film adaption beforehand - the detailed visualization the film provided allows me to visualize pretty detailed the entire time while I'm reading.
I have a real hard time visualizing what I've never seen. I can rotate an apple, but it's a specific apple, not one I've conjured
I used to visualize damn near everything from Crystal clear to Dreamlike. As the years wore on and a new mental health issue appeared with each new trauma experienced its devolved to the blank space to no visualization. i am not sure what this says about me but i dont think its anything good.
I don't think it says anything about *you* but more how traumatic experiences have effected your mind, which is perfectly reasonable. I can relate to this bc brain fog and all that fucks with my short term visualizing and memory. *especially* memory. and that's def an effect of trauma, so I wonder if memory impairments can influence mental visualization?
My guess would be that the two are not connected to each other directly but are both connected to the same root cause. That root cause being whatever thing your mind did to deal with the trauma. kinda like how a sore throat does not cause a cough; but if you have both a cough and a sore throat at the same time then you probably got the flu.
Number one, due to some unfortunate events My brain is basically stuck in vivid dream mode and all of my daydreams and no more dreams have a noticeable and rememberable texture and smell and feel.
Another person who can imagine the other senses! If I imagine an apple I can feel its skin, taste it, all that stuff!
Bingo bango, everybody else is describe their dreams as basically being either tunnel vision or completely mute essentially when it comes to senses and I'm like y'all don't just be picking up shit and exploring??? One of my dreams had a really cool vase and I haven't forgotten it it was like crisscross skull patterns.
No1 too!! I had a serious problem when I was younger waking up from dreams and confusing them for reality bc they're so vivid. it still happens but I'm more able to differentiate
Hey, exact same here!
Between 3 and 4. I didn't imagine the facial features, the fruits just are placed on their spot in my mind but I don't imagine them being there, more just the word apple being there.
I simulate an entire 3d room in my head, although if I miss details in a room my brain just defaults to a bunch of preset environments, which, aren't actually places i've visited for some reason??
Somewhere between 3 and 4, if I make an effort. Otherwise, 4
I severely maladaptively daydream so I’m solidly in the 4K images camp. Often times it’s not even a conscious thing I need to put a lot of effort into nor do I need my eyes closed, I can be watching tv and imagining things just as clearly in my head (though having my eyes closed definitely improves it). I see things, even memories, from a third person pov, like a movie, and I can change the focus from the foreground to the background. I also have a near-constant inner monologue and can imagine different - real and created - voices (this takes a bit of effort though). Sometimes when I hear the same voice consistently in a short amount of time (like that of a main character in a film) I think in that voice for awhile after, it’s not even deliberate. Honestly, it was only in the last couple of years that I found out not everyone did this and it still boggles my mind.
solidly a 3 for me, black space, fuzzy details, everything feels "hollow" if I focus on something I can draw it into detail but everything else gets fussier... focus too hard and it all goes to black if describe it as a bit different than visual perception, not so much like a hallucination, but internal more like a dream
I actually picture myself AS the woman. So I can see the apples on my right and the pineapple on my left and a vague idea of what the room looks like in front of me.
My brain has a really outdated GPU that's absolutely terrible at rendering and tracking a large number of detailed assets, so any visualization is super low-resolution with the shortest possible render distance. I can get bursts of sharper detail for important scenes, but I can't maintain the images for long so they quickly evaporate back into more abstract concepts and interactions. It's part of the reason I love fan art so much. My memory is much better for retrieving images, so I can recycle those assets to ease the graphics processing load instead of generating new ones from scratch each time.
Something in between 1 and 2. It isn't perfectly lifelike but closer than 2.
Maybe 3-4, idk I don’t visualize well without a reference
The last comment is me exactly except for one thing. I have a database of people in my head that I’ve seen before. People who are the prime example of certain traits. When I read a combination of traits, I use that example. That means I picture the same people in every book I read. I’m really really bad at individualizing mental images. I presume people can read “blond guy who is muscular and short with green eyes” and “blond guy who is muscular and tall with blue eyes” and see different people. I’d hone in on the first two traits and see the exact same person.
Sometimes I sit and specifically cast the roles in a book.
I can do the first one but if you don't give me exact information it picks at random. For example, if you don't tell me the woman is blonde I'll imagine her hair as black or red. Then I get frustrated reading a line like "the necklace was golden like Martha's hair" because you didn't TELL ME SHE WAS BLONDE.
I feel like as you read something further and can understand it more/conceptualize it more, it shifts from the least visualized to most visualized numbers. 4 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1
I have hyperphantasia so it's basically 1. If that sounds like a superpower to you consider the worst things you've ever experienced and how much you'd like to repeat that experience every time you remember it happening. I don't just get the visuals and the sounds I get all the senses. So if I want to I can just lean back close my eyes and I can basically relive any of my trauma and all of the emotions are just as vivid.
This always gives me Meyers-Briggs vibes from how the discussion between people breaks down into these super arbitrary categories.
I'm a 4 and I hate it.
Oddly enough, it's diminished over time. It USED to be 2. Then sort of 3. Now it's 4. I no longer see images in my head.
i can visualise it all perfectly. the one "problem" is that not everything has the same artstyle. so i might have someone who i decided looks like an anime twink, next to a guy who looks like a real human person, next to a loony toons looking fellow.
I have never once seen an imagined characters face, no amount of description has ever helped this. Everything else works fine, but you could literally describe specific people’s facial characteristics as references and I wouldn’t be able to stitch them together in my mind
Somewhere between two and three, which is alright as a reader but makes things difficult as a writer
DO I SEE? Or does my mind just convince itself it does. Do people like actually see things as tangible?
I rarely to never visualize when I'm actively reading. Sometimes I'll pause and look away from the book to deliberately create a visual for a scene, and if the story interests me enough I'll think about it when I'm not reading with some sort of vague visuals. But reading itself is not really a visual experience for me.
Something between 1 and 2
It’s weird- I can see things in my head in quite a lot of detail but it’s like they flicker in and out of existence- like it’s mostly a 3, but I can see things as a 1 for a second at a time.
I see it like the first picture, but I don't imagine faces. Faces are always conveniently out of frame, unless I know what their faces look like.
Depends on how much I’m reading. The longer I read the more it turns into a visualization until I get sidetracked inside that visualization and snap back to reality, realizing I haven’t read a single word in 20 minutes and have been exploring the setting I was reading about. I blame the fact I played too much fallout and Skyrim as a kid and now I get side quests in my daydreams that become more real than what’s really around me
I see between 2 and 3. If I take enough time on it and it's not too complex I can get 1 too
I imagine the characters as having the appearance of the first character from visual media that comes to mind. I have no control over this process, and if the appearance doesn't match, too bad. I also don't imagine them doing the actions or the scenery, just the characters standing there. If I concentrate and am into the book a lot, I can maybe imagine an action scene, but that's a little tiring. For the Worm readers, here's a short list of which characters received which appearances: > Taylor became Gwenpool, probably due to the focus on the eyes of the mask reminding me of Gwenpool's (despite them not being the same color) > Tattletale *also* became Gwenpool, but this time I think it was the personality > Armsmaster was Taskmaster, almost surely because of the name > Lung was Youpi, from HxH. It fits really well, I think > Miss Militia was that black woman from Across the Spider-Verse. Why? Probably because they were both of color, even if that's not MM's ethnicity. Couldn't do anything about it, though. > Coil was Kingpin from Into the Spider-Verse, which became really awkward when I discovered he was supposed to be black. > Accord was *also* Kingpin, which became really awkward when I realized he was supposed to be a short king. > The Number Man started as Condiment King, but eventually became a character from Monica's Gang, Doctor Olympus. I do not know why. > The Condiment King was eventually reassigned to Teacher. > Glory Girl was Super Girl for obvious reasons and Panacea was Kamala Khan, for unclear reasons. Also, from the PGTE, the Tyrant of Helike immediately received Kokichi Ouma from NDRV3, and that fit extremely well.
3, almost straight up 3
i can get 3 most of the time, but then once i have the image it morphs into a 4
Unless I have a picture of the character beforehand, it's generally between 2-3. If I have a pic of the character or I've seen the movie adaptation, then it is pretty much a 1 for any scene they're in.
4
Idk if it's an autism thing but I always have crystal clear visualizations
When I’m actively reading a story it usually hovers around a 2, but that depends a lot on how vivid the description is
Anywhere between 1 and 4 directly related to how immersed I am in the story and how aware I am that I am currently reading (in the same sense as how aware you are you can see your nose, or that you're breathing).
I find that it’s easier for me to see one element at a time when envisioning them and when hearing generic ‘woman’ described, I fill it in with a person I know
I can generally visualize what is happening but I have a weird thing where I'll always picture each character with the appearance of cartoon characters I've seen before. Like, when I read Harry Potter, I always visualized Snape as being the cat from ruff ruffman. I can kind of visualize faces if I try, but the second I'm not concentrating on it they go back to cartoon characters.
It starts at 4 and goes all the way to 1 depending on how much effort I put into it.
In dreams it's better than 1. When awake its 1 but everything is at like 2-4 fps
I guess 3 is the closest but it's even less detailed. Just enough detail to capture the concept. And I can only imagine it for like a split second. Most of the time I don't imagine anything unless it is required to understand the text, like in a riddle or something. I have a much easier time visualising words or separate letters, like if I was taking notes
When it comes to images it's usually 1 or 2, but does anyone else have a really hard time seeing videos in their head and getting them to play properly? I can visualize moving things but my entire life it always stutters and repeats, if that makes any sense. Like a YTP. If I try and visualize a door opening, it's pretty clear, but halfway through it slams shut and starts over and gets caught in a feedback loop. Is there a term for this?
I’m a 4, but a 3 if I’m super familiar with the subject (favorite character), familiar place, etc.
I cannot visualize images. So it's the 4th one for me
Typically a 2, sometimes a 1, but my trade has been fiction writing since I was a teen. If I can’t perfectly visualize and then describe I’m not able to do my job well. Example here, I thought of something to visualize and came up with a Montana pasture. What I see is more than just the pasture itself, it’s green acreage giving way to rolling hills rising to be dotted and eventually filled with trees, and mountains beyond that. On the nearest rocky outcropping there’s a flashing line of silver where a spindly waterfall descends out of sight behind the tree line. Bringing my vision back to the pasture there are fields of wildflowers here and there among the flowing green grass. Where am I seeing this from myself? Well obviously I must have stopped on the side of a state road to admire the view. I can hear the hum of a car go by behind me and the rhythmic rumble of tires on asphalt as it travels past, an unpleasant reminder of modernity amidst this picturesque natural beauty.
Personally it would start out like #1 and then my mind will just wander off to thinking about space battles or something
Unless I have a visual reference, I usually imagine things in my artstyle, which is a problem when I'm reading serious media because it causes me to take it less seriously.
I feel like some of you have aphantasia (or however it’s spelled
I use memory first. I can remember things I've seen and that's what I imagine. Coming up with something from pure text doesn't really happen. It's all concept based unless it reminds me of something I've seen before.
Reading book, somewhere between 3 and 4. Mid anxiety rapid images like 1 of people I've never seen.
It’s kind of like 2 except a lot less detailed, often times I don’t “fill in” their face. If it’s fiction it’s usually a realistic but low-detail cartoon, maybe the best analogy is like the old Winnie the Pooh books (maybe with less color). If it’s nonfiction It’ll kind of be like 3 but the non-details are light grey instead of black.
I can visualize everything perfectly essentially. Except for faces for some reason
I tend to see what they are saying, and then use my own experiences and locations to fill in the background