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juushikaFinally remembering to crosspost this from tumblr! I've mentioned my inability to visualize in passing a number of times—it's one of those quirks of my brain which I take for granted but which hugely impacts how I navigate the world, like the dyscalculia and cat-thing and the general crazy; and every few years or so I google those things, and it seems that since the last googling and this one, someone gave a name to the thing!
aphantasia has a name now!!!
I haven’t been this shook since I googled “number specific dyslexia” (it’s called dyscalculia which, yes, ty, is obvious in retrospect)
for the longest time I thought people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about visualization, because I can also imagine the concept of something; I talk about thinking in sentences because I can give things descriptors, I can absolutely think about things. I’ve just never in my life voluntarily seen an image in my head.
(I have involuntary images—I absolutely dream in full image & color (and sound and smell and sensation). I occasionally involuntarily visualize when falling asleep, and I hate it!! my whole life, everything I’ve seen or “seen” when awake has been Real, or at least In Front of My Eyes; I have no visualization-is-normal buffer for fake images—so my brain process the flashes of visualization I occasionally experience when entering sleep state as Also Real, and it’s profoundly unsettling when it’s shit like “probably a monster”)
(for this reason, I’ve intentionally never tried to train myself to visualize, or to encourage near-sleep-state visualization. my mental state isn’t stable on a good day; I don’t want a richer and more suggestible imagination)
I’m also partially face-blind & as mentioned dyscalculic, which I find have some overlap in both origin and effect (like: spacial reasoning is hard when your brain doesn’t numbers, and made harder when you’re brain doesn’t images—no tools to cross-check/estimate)
fwiw, I largely compensate with kinetic imagining; I can’t visualize a square but I can imagine what it would be like to draw a line around a square. I also use this as a memory aid—I don’t imagine what things looked like/what I saw; I imagine associated movement/what I did). I can also imagine sound, sensation, taste; everything but sight; I just don’t find them useful in compensating for lack of sight.
I started to figure out that most people literally see pictures in their head and giving voice to my experience when I was ~20; I’ve encountered one (1) other person with aphantasia. but in 2015 someone did a study and gave the thing a name! apparently it effects 1-5% of the population; like most things, it occurs to a degree/on a spectrum—some people have weak images, some people don’t even have sound/sensation images or memory. it seems to be largely congenital, but some people develop it
this article is my favorite for summing up definitions/most research, and explores some of what I’ve discussed above, including alternate forms of processing visual information.
aphantasia is crucial to how my brain works; it also has a significant impact on how I read. I don’t skim over visual descriptions, but I may as well—they have zero impact on my reading experience or concept of a book. “show, don’t tell” methodology is a pile of garbage when creators interpret it literally—descriptions should be multi-sensual (I love authors who include scent in particular), but more than that should be given some sort of interpretation. “the room was 15 feet tall and 45 feet long”? I have no idea what that means. “the room was empty and vast, dwarfing its occupants” gives me a way to interpret the information & builds atmosphere. contextualize! please!
this is absolutely the reason I don’t read most horror (especially the supernatural horror which I theoretically enjoy—as opposed to crime/murder/psychological horror, which I find tedious in book form). a lot of it is people seeing scary stuff and I don’t … visualize the scary stuff, so I am not also seeing the scary stuff, so it is not scary. give me a Caitlín R. Kiernan (interpretations of scale, multisensual descriptions, psychological effect and a strong interior view) over a Clive Barker (“he saw a gigantic wheel constructed out of living corpses”—okay, I have literally no concept of that, but sure, sounds cool) any day.
it’s less that I think authors should cater to this admittedly-minor population of which I am a part; more that it legitimately makes for better writing which is accessible to more readers & makes for a richer experience for normative readers.
(the “everything I see is real” effect has a minor positive effect on visual horror—there’s still that cognitive dissonance, I still see the limitations of special effects, but I benefit (in the sense that I am more scared) b/c my brain has little buffer re: not everything it sees is real)
massive tl;dr: this can’t-visualize thing I’ve experienced for my entire life has a name & some studies now! it is real! if you find weird-brain things interesting, you might want to google it.
aphantasia has a name now!!!
I haven’t been this shook since I googled “number specific dyslexia” (it’s called dyscalculia which, yes, ty, is obvious in retrospect)
for the longest time I thought people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about visualization, because I can also imagine the concept of something; I talk about thinking in sentences because I can give things descriptors, I can absolutely think about things. I’ve just never in my life voluntarily seen an image in my head.
(I have involuntary images—I absolutely dream in full image & color (and sound and smell and sensation). I occasionally involuntarily visualize when falling asleep, and I hate it!! my whole life, everything I’ve seen or “seen” when awake has been Real, or at least In Front of My Eyes; I have no visualization-is-normal buffer for fake images—so my brain process the flashes of visualization I occasionally experience when entering sleep state as Also Real, and it’s profoundly unsettling when it’s shit like “probably a monster”)
(for this reason, I’ve intentionally never tried to train myself to visualize, or to encourage near-sleep-state visualization. my mental state isn’t stable on a good day; I don’t want a richer and more suggestible imagination)
I’m also partially face-blind & as mentioned dyscalculic, which I find have some overlap in both origin and effect (like: spacial reasoning is hard when your brain doesn’t numbers, and made harder when you’re brain doesn’t images—no tools to cross-check/estimate)
fwiw, I largely compensate with kinetic imagining; I can’t visualize a square but I can imagine what it would be like to draw a line around a square. I also use this as a memory aid—I don’t imagine what things looked like/what I saw; I imagine associated movement/what I did). I can also imagine sound, sensation, taste; everything but sight; I just don’t find them useful in compensating for lack of sight.
I started to figure out that most people literally see pictures in their head and giving voice to my experience when I was ~20; I’ve encountered one (1) other person with aphantasia. but in 2015 someone did a study and gave the thing a name! apparently it effects 1-5% of the population; like most things, it occurs to a degree/on a spectrum—some people have weak images, some people don’t even have sound/sensation images or memory. it seems to be largely congenital, but some people develop it
this article is my favorite for summing up definitions/most research, and explores some of what I’ve discussed above, including alternate forms of processing visual information.
aphantasia is crucial to how my brain works; it also has a significant impact on how I read. I don’t skim over visual descriptions, but I may as well—they have zero impact on my reading experience or concept of a book. “show, don’t tell” methodology is a pile of garbage when creators interpret it literally—descriptions should be multi-sensual (I love authors who include scent in particular), but more than that should be given some sort of interpretation. “the room was 15 feet tall and 45 feet long”? I have no idea what that means. “the room was empty and vast, dwarfing its occupants” gives me a way to interpret the information & builds atmosphere. contextualize! please!
this is absolutely the reason I don’t read most horror (especially the supernatural horror which I theoretically enjoy—as opposed to crime/murder/psychological horror, which I find tedious in book form). a lot of it is people seeing scary stuff and I don’t … visualize the scary stuff, so I am not also seeing the scary stuff, so it is not scary. give me a Caitlín R. Kiernan (interpretations of scale, multisensual descriptions, psychological effect and a strong interior view) over a Clive Barker (“he saw a gigantic wheel constructed out of living corpses”—okay, I have literally no concept of that, but sure, sounds cool) any day.
it’s less that I think authors should cater to this admittedly-minor population of which I am a part; more that it legitimately makes for better writing which is accessible to more readers & makes for a richer experience for normative readers.
(the “everything I see is real” effect has a minor positive effect on visual horror—there’s still that cognitive dissonance, I still see the limitations of special effects, but I benefit (in the sense that I am more scared) b/c my brain has little buffer re: not everything it sees is real)
massive tl;dr: this can’t-visualize thing I’ve experienced for my entire life has a name & some studies now! it is real! if you find weird-brain things interesting, you might want to google it.
