Some people can't see mental images

I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.

I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer.

——

“So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?”

Yeah!

“And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?”

Yeah, you don’t have that?

“So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“

Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it.

——

…and around we go.

Personally, I can see images when I dream, but I don’t see anything at all if I’m conscious and closing my eyes. I can recite the qualities of an object, and this generates impressions of the object in my head, but it’s not really seeing. It’s vibe seeing.

For me it is like a different "space" for mental vs real images. It is not the same neurons, I would guess.

The real images are (and feel) outside of myself (obviously, you may say). The mental image feels very close and kind of "inside my mental space", in a dark space. It is far from how I see with my eyes on all levels, very basic. It is more conceptual, that concept given some vague form, not "pixels" (not that the eye is like a camera sensor either, it is much more complicated, a lot of pre-processing taking place right in the retina, which developed from a piece of brain in very early embryonic development). The better I know the object the better this internal concept-image, but far from what looking at the real thing is like.

I am able to visualize, that's why I could write this, but I think my ability to do so is near the bottom. It is vague without details unless I concentrate on them specifically, and it is very dark in there.

On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia I am between apple #3 and #4 in that picture. When I read novels I develop barely any internal imagery, only barebones conceptual ones. Sometimes I look at fancy visually stunning movies, Youtube videos, or graphics sites on the web specifically to "download" some better images into my brain. Mostly for fantastical landscapes and architecture.

The Lord of the Rings movies, for example, completely replaced all internal mental images I may have had, even though I read the books long before those movies were made. People like me need graphically talented people around, or my mental images will be very much limited to drastically reduced versions of what I see in real life. (THANK YOU to all graphical artists).

It's the same for me, in terms of it being dark and fuzzy unless concentrated on.

but I really do notice this sort of ability when it comes to memory. When I am looking for something, I can often visualize a scene of where I saw it last. This is not always helpful for actually finding the object, but it can be! When trying to recall a meeting, I can recall materials I saw (bits of text on slides, images, etc).

I'm fairly good at remembering faces, and if they're next to a name when I see them, I can even associate the name! The flip side, of course, is that if I don't see the name, I won't remember it.

I find it implausible that people really have extreme, detailed imagery. Not that they can't do it on demand, if desired. But if every time they imagined something, it instantly appeared with all possible detail - that's just tremendously inefficient.

I think of it as more like Level of Detail in a 3d visualization. So when you ask people how much detail they imagine, their response strategy might determine most of the variance. (Some think you mean "what is the ultimate limit of your viz", and others think you mean "what detail is in a no-purpose-given, speeded-response viz".

What about people who can look at something and then draw it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire Do they have to recall specific areas, or do they perceive the entire thing as a fully instantiated mental image.

Glad that you used this exact example! This guy doesn’t have a photorealistic memory. At least it’s far from as good as it’s claimed to be. He’s an artist proficient in a particular style - better than most, but not superhuman. When he’s not drawing from a direct reference, he’s simply making up details based on assumptions, not on photorealistic memory. Here’s a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyPqQIHkasI

He looks at a city and then draws a picture of it. It’s very detailed, so we assume he remembered all of it and recreated it accurately. But if you compare any part of it it to the actual photo of the city he saw, you’ll see that he only recreated it roughly — some landmarks, the general shape of the coastline. He probably got the number of bridges right.

But you couldn’t use this as a map. If you were trying to find a particular building that isn’t among the top 15 most memorable ones, it’s probably not in his drawing, with a completely random building taking its place instead. Every part of that drawing is filled with mistakes and assumptions that would never be made by someone who could actually see the landscape in their mind like a photo.

And it’s the same with every other claim of photorealistic memory - it’s always some kind of trick where people have a decent but realistic level of memory. And then they fill the gaps with tons of generated detail that we either can’t check, or wouldn't bother to check.