I can't find any straight definition of "visualization skills". It seems like some fringe psychology mumbo-jumbo. I can imagine things and I can imagine them moving around however I want. I can imagine a tiger running around on its hind-legs and playing tennis, but I wouldn't be able to draw it. Is that supposed to be a special skill?

I'm not really sure how good they are, it's kind of hard to compare. I don't have aphantasia I know that much. I do day dream a lot though.

>>37494
I suspect I do. Years ago I tried visualization techniques, I practised some hours everyday just hoping I could see something someday, but after some months I noticed that wasn't going to happen. I read tutorial after tutorial and I discovered I didn't really "get" what they were talking about, I just tried to reproduce what they were doing hoping something would happen, but of course it didn't. It's kinda like not being able to see colors or something like that, you can spend years without even noticing you lack something essential. When they told me people could actually "see" things with their imagination I was perplexed, I always took it as some sort of metaphor.
At that time it made me really depressed, now it's just another frustration to add to the pile.

>>37497
If you can hear sound in your head when you think and you have dreams, I don't know why you wouldn't be able to imagine an apple on command. How did you read fiction books?

>>37498
I rarely read fiction books, but I don't see what that has to do with it. Blind people can also read and understand fiction books, even if they have never seen a thing.

>>37499
Fiction books contain copious amounts of description. The point of all that is so the reader can form a mental image and "play a movie in their head", not just understand what is happening. If you don't see anything, you're not reading it properly. Do you have dreams?

>>37500
I don't think I can read properly, yeah. I only get a % of what I'm reading and often I need to read one thing three or four times to catch any information at all. I don't really like to read fiction, the few ones I read are the ones that were adapted to film so I can compare and recreate. This idea of playing a movie in my head sounds crazy, like some sort of special power. I do have dreams, but they are often too weird, impossible to describe, too abstract. I suspect my brain could be absolutely fucked.

>>37501
>so I can compare and recreate
What do you mean by recreate? You have memories, right? When you try to think about something that happened to you, what do you experience?

>>37502
I mean I can remember the movie while reading.
Yeah, I have memories, I'm not like that Memento guy. I wouldn't even be able to follow a conversation if I didn't have them, right?

>>37503
What do you remember about the movie? Do you remember how it looks? How can you remember how it looks, but not "see" it in your head? When you remember a conversation you had in the past, do you remember how the person looked? Can you think about their face?

>>37504
I don't really know what you mean with the movies, I can remember but it's not like I have a DVD player in my head. I can't recognize faces too well, even from people I see often, this has always been a problem since people can get offended if you don't recognize them. Also sometimes I think I'm seeing someone I know when I don't, and that can lead to really awkward situations with strangers.

>>37505
>it's not like I have a DVD player
Nobody does, at least not average people. I''m asking to check if all you remember about anything is a wall of text. So you're not some kind of robot. You can remember an apple and "see it in your head", right? It doesn't have to be in hd or whatever, the point is that it's there. The minute details don't really matter. Now, can you change that fuzzy mental picture int a blue apple? If you can, you're pretty much normal.

The brain is exceptional at forming patterns and filling in the blanks. Thinking "I can see it" is practically the same as actually seeing it if you want it to. If you've seen people before, you can imagine a person and put them in whatever clothes you want and give them black hair and blue eyes. It doesn't have to be crystal clear.

I think you may have been fretting because of unrealistic expectations.

>>37506
I'm not the other poster but face blindness is an actual medical condition.

>>37498
The two are separate I think. I've read lots of anecdotal reports of people who have no problem being able to "imagine" music, but are very weak at visualizing. It's the same for me: I can recreate in my mind music with incredible fidelity, but my visualization skills are very weak. If I "imagine an apple" it's basically just an acknowledgement that an apple exists, and any attributes are only added when I consciously decide to add them. I'm also not good at remembering faces, and I couldn't describe how my favorite characters' appearances looked like outside of basic things (e.g. potato-ish head).

I do have dreams though, and they are quite vivid and lifelike (I've also had occasional lucid dreams). I don't think aphantasia requires inability to dream though. And conversely, even though I can't imagine specific scenes or images I nonetheless seem to be able to have "spatial" visualization in the sense that I can "imagine" (not vividly mind you, it's more just being able to recall and being to conscious recognition) being spatially oriented in some room and then walking around it. For instance, "imagining" being an ant on a square and visiting all four vertices.

Maybe I only have mild aphantasia, since I can still for instance "imagine" geometric shapes and perform transformations on them (rotate them, flip them, etc.). It's a lot harder to do these visualizations in 3D though (visualizing a pyramid and then strains my imagination, and I give up at doing anything more complex like coloring the edges of a tetrahedron).

>>37501
>This idea of playing a movie in my head sounds crazy, like some sort of special power
That's what I'm able to do with songs at least. In a perfectly silent room with enough focusing it almost feels like there's an actual speaker playing it (albeit subtly). Maybe everyone can do this though since auditory aphantasia seems to be rarer?

>>37500
I don't like reading fiction either. I never understood why they focused so much on adding irrelevant details describing the setting.

>>37506
>is practically the same as actually seeing it if you want it to
I think there's an actual difference. Again because I can "render" music with great clarity I'm aware of the gap between my visualization skills with images and my (audio-lization)? skills with audio. I can do the vague "fuzzy picture" but it's more like a picture-of-a-picture than something direct. I think aphantasia also has benefits in that people are less affected by "traumatic" images. The term "flashback" has never made sense to me; I can look at pictures of death or gore and a few hours after can't really visualize it again.

I don't think being unable to strongly visualization is something to fret over though. If you're a musician, being able to conceptualize audio would be useful. If you're an artist being able to visualize is likewise helpful. But otherwise it doesn't materially affect anything.

Pretty good. They could be better but I visualize scenes in a real enough way that when it happens I get a sense of presence in that scene. I need to learn how to paint, I'd be a damn good painter. I picked up drawing rapidly over the course of 2 months once and was starting to get the hang of human form from still-lifes until I got to depressed to keep going

>Does anyone here have aphantasia?
I have total aphantasia, can't see images, hear sound, smell smells, taste tastes, feel textures, it's fucking awful. Only fucking thing I like in life is escapism and my stupid fucking worthless brain can't fucking imagine shit while every other riajuu cunt can. Don't know what I did in a past life to piss off kami-sama but it must have been bad for this to be my punishment.

>>37834
Well, maybe there will be a way to treat you one day. Have a picture as compensation. At least you're not blind.

Post edited on 1st Mar 2021, 6:37pm