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Wait. I'm a 1. I didn't know there were people that can't visualize.
I mean, it makes sense I guess. Vision isn't the only way to perceive something. Feelings, sounds, smells etc are just as valid.
I would love to know if you’re good at drawing and the like? I am a 5 on the scale and I have always excelled in school and university, but I can’t draw worth a damn. Hell my handwriting is pretty bad too.
I am a very visual person and I can picture stuff very clearly in my mind. I can't draw for shit, to the point that it makes me mad sometimes because i can imagine something visual but i can't put it on paper, or it looks nothing like what I imagined.
Me too. Part of the issue is that deconstructing a perspective does not come naturally to many people, they [I] instead imagine the object in a more 3D sense instead of the sight of the object itself.
Yeah, but even for more "cartoony" or 2D-looking stuff i have trouble doing it. It takes practice, as with everything, i suppose.
I'm partially in this camp too, it used to be very irritating, but I have learnt to take it much more slowly, and try to picture object from a fixed angle. From there you can zoom in to specific areas and think about lighting, shadows, etc as needed. I initially was never patient with myself enough to actually use my imagination for drawing, but after I took more time I found it is a really powerful tool. As the other commentor said, you have to be more strict with yourself. Normally I could have a mental image and fly all around it and view it from many different angles. Putting it down on paper requires concentration to fix it in a certain configuration and keep it constant, so you can record it. I really recommend giving it a go. Imagine some simple objects and see if you can render the shadows in your head. Then see if you can draw them. Be strict with your imagination, don't let it run away.
Be strict with your imagination, don't let it run away.
sweats nervously in neurodivergent
In all seriousness, thanks for the tips! I'll give it a try, and let you know how it goes!
I would also call myself a 1, but I am not even remotely good at drawing. I also wouldn’t say I can “see” things in my mind like I can with my eyes, it’s more like I can imagine the way something looks in the same manner as remembering a vivid memory.
My internal monologue is constant though. Every time I read something or think of something is like that cartoon inside out. I have a mini me that lives in my head.
You’ll get a kick out of this, I don’t see my memories either. If I try hard I can remember some visual details like “you wore a red shirt” or “the car was a Mazda” but I’m not seeing it. I’m remembering it all in words.
I'd say I'm like a 3 on the scale. I've never practiced drawing much, but when I was drawing from a reference I've made some half decent sketches. Drawing off of memory though, I'm completely useless. So there might be a correlation here.
I'm in the same boat. It was always frustrating that I had no way of accurately putting what I saw in the brain on paper.
Some incredible artists have aphantasia!
By 1, do you mean you can picture all the details of an image in your mind, or do you mean you can turn visual hallucinations on and off at will? Many people who say they can't visualize anything are unwittingly just saying they can't hallucinate, because they think you can.
I don't think anyone is saying that the ability to hallucinate at will is even on this scale, that would be some kind of 0 out of the 1-5. I can visualize in detail inside the confines of my mind, but nothing I imagine ever breaks containment and escapes into my perception of the real world. I can use my imagination to picture alterations to the real world, but this is easier if I close my eyes and imagine a scene that's the real world I was just looking at plus the alterations. The alterations will never appear in my visual field. I consider myself a 1, full apple.
I do sometimes get very mild auditory hallucinations, like perceiving indistinct voices or the murmur of crowds in white noise, but that isn't an active process, just my brain searching for signal in literal noise.
I've heard that some people with perfect recall/"photographic memory" can hallucinate at will, though, and that's how their recall works? I dunno, could be miscommunication along these same lines.
Maybe people aren't saying "I can personally hallucinate at will", but many people saying "I can't visualize images" think that other people can hallucinate at will. The twitter poster even says "the way your eyes see?" which is pretty clearly asking if people can hallucinate.
Depending on how someone comes into this discussion, their prior experience, and the particular language they come across, it's easy to interpret these images as representing... well... images. People who say "I'm a 1, I'm a 2, 3, 4" are probably just saying they can think about and recall the shape, texture, color, etc of things, and can't actually see shit. Having a scale of "good image, bad image, outline" was probably meant to be very abstractly tied to this ability to think about those details.
I think if you took a group of completely neurotypical people, whatever that means, who all have EXACTLY the same sensory experience, they would start labeling themselves on every part of this chart and completely misunderstand what everyone else is saying about their perception. You'd have 1's and 5's despite no actual difference.
Ah, I follow, though I'm not sure I agree with your supposition there. I think we have language that can communicate varying levels of interior imagery, but I do think the people who are aphantasic are at a disadvantage in imagining what other people have going on inside their heads. Someone with robust interior imagery can just ... imagine nothing, and while they might not get it exactly 1:1 with the aphantasic's experience the general idea is still conveyed, but the aphantasic has absolutely no frame of reference for vibrant interior imagery and has to rely on approximations to understand.
Sure, maybe "neurotypical" people would all have the same visualization ability, but I think if they could discuss the concept and their experiences enough they could reach a shared understanding of what their visualization level was.
By 1, do you mean you can picture all the details of an image in your mind, or do you mean you can turn visual hallucinations on and off at will?
I suppose that's strictly true for me even though real visual input completely overrides the hallucination. It's like comparing the Sun with some random star. However, there was that one time I smoked way too much weed, which had an effect of greatly augmenting my mind's eye so it became comparing the Sun with Venus. Visual input was still at the forefront, but you now had the mind's eye image of the object being superimposed on the actual object.
If you're talking about just being amused by the floating images when the eyes are closed, yes I've done this countless times. I don't see this as any different from replaying movie dialogue or imagining eating something delicious.
I would love to know if you’re good at drawing and the like? I am a 5 on the scale and I have always excelled in school and university, but I can’t draw worth a damn. Hell my handwriting is pretty bad too.
When I was on Twitter I saw an artist claim they were a 5 the last time this discussion spawned. They said they used a lot more reference images than other artists.
I would love to know if you’re good at drawing and the like? I am a 5 on the scale and I have always excelled in school and university, but I can’t draw worth a damn. Hell my handwriting is pretty bad too.