To ask if you see pictures in your "mind's eye"?

[MakeItRain]

I was reading about "aphantasia" and realised that it applies to me to a large extent. It's when you have no visual pictures going on in your head. So if someone says "imagine a beach, what can you see?" I was shocked to realise that some people can see the whole beach with colour and detail. Where even is this picture? I get a sort of vague sense of sand and waves, but no detail or colour. I realised it's probably linked to my appalling ability to recall faces.
What do you see if you're asked to "imagine a beach?"

Yes I can see it all and in lots of detail.

What I have learned over the last few weeks is that I can’t do the working out for maths. I just ‘know’ it and can’t explain the patterns.

When I read a book words automatically translate into a movie.

Yes! It’s a relatively recent realisation that not everyone does this.

Dowser I think we're opposites

Isn't it weird?? I just assumed everyone thought/saw/imagined things in the same way.

There must be a "happy medium" somewhere, but it's not me!

You've blown my mind. I didnt know people could see like that in their heads! When i imagine or remember things, like my toddler or partner for example, i just get feelings and impressions. I cant picture things at all.

My memory for everything is appalling. Directions, films etc. I also cant recognize faces until I've met someone many many times. Business meetings are awkward. But I knew this is not a particularly uncommon thing.

I can picture things but the image won’t be as crisp and vivid as in real life. It’s like in a different medium to seeing things with your eyes.

I'm autistic and I don't see things when I imagine them. It's more like I'm familiar with the way the data stored in my brain for that item feels.

Like if I imagine one of our plates, I don't have a mental image of it, but I feel a sense of recognition like I would if I were actually looking at the plate.

Also, I hate book adaptation into movies cause my inner mind movie is always better than the actual movie 😂

I’m the opposite. I ‘see’ everything (not mystic meg style! ).
Numbers especially and calendars. I have a very particular picture of the ‘year’ in my head and seasons / months have a particular space.

I'm like this as well!

For the people who can't picture things, does this apply to memories as well, or just imaginary things? For example, if you were asked to remember a significant event in your life, do you "see" it? If not, how do you remember events/details?

I'm the same as you OP if I try to visualise a beach the best I get is a vague memory like a picture just out of your line of sight. It's really annoying that other people can picture stuff.

I am also terrible at recognising people faces, I started a new job last year, there's 150 blokes who wear pretty much the same uniform, if 2 are roughly the same height and have similar age then I will get them mixed up, even though when stood next to each other they look absolutely nothing alike.

I can create a better picture if I'm reading a book, but on my own with just my imagination I can't create much of a picture. I'm also useless at recognising faces.

My mind’s eye is very visual. As a child I would be really surprised when I saw a film or TV adaptation of a book I had read, and the characters didn’t look like they did in my head. If you asked me about an event that happened ten years ago I could picture it perfectly, right down to what people were wearing.

My DD 17 is like this, we only found out 18 months ago. She has no mind's eye whatsoever. Some people also have facial recognition problems with this as well. It's not as unusual as you think, there have been several threads on here about it. Still can't get my head round it though - its definitely had an adverse effect on her education.

@FightMilkTM and @Meredithgrey1 - it's space-time synaesthesia.

I have the months going in a vertical circle so that September is right in front of my chest and January is up behind my head (I don't think the gaps are equal...) whereas the week is laid out in front of me, Monday on the left Sunday on the right - and obviously it has to do an escalator-style hidden return to get back to Monday

One of my sisters is aphantasic (I don't think she has any more ASD traits than the rest of us, quite possibly not as many...)

@Lifeisgenerallyfun I'm exactly the same!

@Judystilldreamsofhorses I am like that too!

OK, bit of a revelation here, but DH has no imagination
I've only known him 17 yrs you'd think I would have noticed
Ask him about the beach, and it's basically "some sea and sand" and that's it!

@merryhouse this is doing my head in, I am like THAT as well!! I "see" time lines all over the place in my head, I count numbers on a ladder, see my life laid out along a line with significant events as a "marker" - but my DD has never been able to grasp the passage of time; when she was little she struggled to learn the days of the week, she still constantly asks about seasons and only stopped asking about the order of months a few years into secondary school.

This really bothers because I'm not sure if I see things or not which sounds ridiculous.

I suspect I just know what things look like so I think I see them but really I'm just remembering them. When I read a book or listen to a play I could describe what I thought the characters look like, I'm not sure I see them though I think it's just a feeling.

I can, I use it as my primary source of memory, if I'm looking for something I can bring back the visual memory of where I last saw it if you know what I mean? I can see it and then try to work out where that place is. So like looking for keys and I recall the sight of the keys in a dark place with a bank card and a dog lead and from there work out it's in the kitchen draw.

I can also project images in front of me, I use this mostly for math, I put a white board up and write on it. Or I can rotate 3d images. Bit out of practise with that though, used it most at school and dont do it much anymore.

I cant draw for shit though.

I'm autistic, think its connected. Cant remember what my husband literally just said to me though 🤷‍♀️

Oh, and my inner pictures are never as good as the film or tv, purely because I have a very narrow space. I mean, obviously I don't know all the period details either - I'm thinking especially of Dad's Army, which I originally heard on the radio - but practically everything takes place in a really small area. I was intrigued to discover when I had 40-degree flu that I was imagining Vast Landscapes.

No, I literally can't see pictures in my mind even if things I know!! I can sense them, I can feel them, smell them, hear them but for the life of me I couldn't visualise an image if my life depended on it. I was freaked out when I realised other people could (a bit like the fact that some people gave no inner voice 😱)

A strip of yellow and a strip.of blue. Hmmm??

I can't even 'see' my husband's face in my mind's eye, or my children's

Me too.

I love reading but find very descriptive passages tedious. I like dialogue and action.

I have a very poor memory generally. This struck a chord with me www.bbc.com/future/article/20181112-severely-deficient-autobiographical-memory-is-surprisi?ocid=ww.social.link.facebook

Do you perhaps have "prosopagnosia", @MakeItRain?

@notso Yes, same here! I am trying to work out if I’m really ‘seeing’ things. I can’t be certain. It has a different quality to the visual you get when using your eyes.