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If someone says "think of an apple" out of the blue, I'm a 5.
If someone says "visualize an apple" I'm a 1-3 depending on how focused I am.
I've always thought this is because I have always been a big reader, and as a consequence, a bit of a speed-reader so it is like my brain is constantly set to "important information only" and I have to mentally set it back to "actually visualize it" because I tend to do the same thing when reading. I can be sitting here and read "Purple lightning split the sky and the ring of white roses was illuminated in the flash of light. I stood there, frozen, as I realized some of the roses were flecked with blood." & at normal speed, my mind will be like a strict 4-5. I can 'see' the scene but it isn't really complete or detailed.
Something like "Sekiro felt the rusted blade part the air behind him and twisted his body at the last second, moving out of the blade's path as he swung his hammer upwards into his attacker's chin" is even less likely to be visualized at all but if I read it even a bit slower - or just take a second afterwards, suddenly I become Sasuke in the Forest of Death
I can visualize an apple pretty easily but if asked to think of an apple my brain presents a big map of apple-related concepts that may not have visualizations attached. Like I can think of an apple's color, texture, shape, flavor, temperature, an apple on a tree, links to memories of picking apples, foods that have apples in them, and so on.
I've always explained it as how words are representations of abstract concepts, and my brain presents the concepts directly rather than the word labels.
You just described how I tend to think/visualize stuff by default in a much better way!! The 'map of related concepts' is absolutely me whenever I'm asked to think/visualize something out of the blue and probably why whenever I am asked "imagine X" I tend to immediately go 'okay, what am I imagining about X?' and consider that a 5 lol.
This is a great way to think about it. I’ve never understood until now when people said they saw a movie in their mind when reading.
But with the above framing of slowing down extremely to visualize it, I took a relatively long time trying to make a mental picture of that passage instead of speed-reading right through it. It’s still a bit surprising that people read an entire book that way, but that helped a lot.