Aphantasia

[Newrumpus]

Recently, I discovered that I am aphantasic. I had never heard of this until recently and after hearing about it I have become interested in the experiences of others.

To save anyone googling, aphantasia is mind blindness or lack of visual imagery. When someone says ‘Imagine an elephant’ I think of an elephant but I don’t see one in my mind.

Does anyone else have experience of this and how did you discover it?

@ReneBumsWombats - sorry - my previous post was for you

I have this!

When I was maybe 2-3, I “read” a decent length children’s book, from memory. I obviously couldn’t actually read, but I remembered every single word, I could trace my finger along when the word was said, I knew exactly when to turn the page. I remember “reading” many books pre school age in this way, but this particular book was probably the longest, and my parents friends were flabbergasted that I could “read”

Funnily enough I did read pretty young, and I have always been quite a skilled reader. Now, I can skim read things with high accuracy, and remember where specific points are made. It came in really useful at uni where I could skim read 2-3 journals within maybe half an hour, and then just go back and find the relevant parts when required. This is probably why I’m a huge procrastinator.

I also think I might have slight face blindness. I really struggle with linking faces to names. For example, if I see a kid i taught a year or two ago (I’m a high school teacher); I can tell you loads about them - eg, they liked cheese and onion crisps, they really enjoyed a certain part of the course, they got 9/10 for their first piece of homework, etc. - but I probably can’t tell you their name.

I have both of these. Also the photographic memory thing. When textbooks/journals were on paper, I knew that certain information was a third of the way through, half way down, on the right hand side. I recall much less when I'm reading on a screen because there isn't a 'landmark' to rely on.

I'm dreadful with navigation. I used to have to line maps up with the road, so that I knew that I had passed road x and was on the way to road y. Even now, on really familiar routes, there are times where I just can't remember which way to go. It took me forever to learn which towns were East-bound or West-bound from each other. I went to university in town A and town B was 30 miles beyond it. I had to teach myself town B as a new route, saying "Go to town A but don't turn off and keep going for 30 miles".

I’m terrible at navigation but great at map reading. Which is a bizarre combo.

How does that work? What's the difference?

So intriguing, all these different ways of thinking.

Okay so give me an OS map and I can accurately picture the landscape based on map features, contours etc.

Ask me how I get to work? Literally no idea. I’ve worked in the same place for 5 years, I work in person every day, 5 days a week. It’s relatively close (6 miles) - I got a taxi last week, his sat nav didn’t work and I had to use google maps to direct me.

It’s the same if I’m in a bar and moving to a new one two streets back - I literally don’t know what direction to go.

I still don’t know where all the classrooms are in my school. So if I’ve to go to room 11, I have no idea where in the school that is.

I can never remember my way to my room in hotels. I can never find the car in car parks.

Finding out that other people could actually see pictures in their head was a pivotal moment for me. I couldn't have been more shocked if someone had told me aliens had landed! A previous poster mentioned early reading and aphantasia. Perhaps later readers have longer exposure to using their internal visual imagination than early readers who move quickly to having ideas presented to them in an external written format and that's why the later readers' visual imagination develops so strongly. I also read that trauma can cause it. It's the brain's way of protecting us from seeing what we don't want to see. This makes sense to me.

I have an absolutely constant inner monologue and was mind blown. I think purely in words, for example I never understand when people read a book and then complain that the movie characters don’t look how they imagined. If I read a book, I don’t picture the things I’m reading about. Sometimes this can make books hard to understand unless they really build up WHO a character is, rather than just what they are like. I have only just realised this.

Just spoke to my partner and he told me I just have a really bad imagination, which is strange as I think I have a good imagination and I’m quite a creative thinker, it’s just my thoughts are in words and not pictures.

Weirdly I can do something where I take a snapshot of a moment in my brain and “store it” - my brain sometimes does this with mundane things too. Weird, unconnected things bring it back. Like if I smell the pink soft and gentle deodorant; I have a vivid flashback (visual) to walking down a particular part of a pavement. I’m listening to brimful of asha on my blue iPod mini with gummy earphones. I’m wearing converse, grey cords, a stripey polo shirt and an orange v neck jumper. I’ve got long fake pearls on, chipped black nail polish, and my hair has chunky highlights. It’s mid may. I’ve got a ploughman’s sandwich, 500ml cola and a wispa for lunch. I can even feel the cords rubbing as I walk. I’m completely transported back to this completely mundane moment.

I am almost exactly like you (being assessed for both) but I have no picture!

However I’m really good at stuff like colour matching, interiors, putting an outfit together etc creative stuff

If I’m to think of an elephant I will have to try really hard to recall a particular elephant. So, typically, I thought of Elmer. 😂

This is so interesting to me! I also have a strong eye for colour. I definitely have a mind's eye but I do wonder how good it is really - ask me to picture Harry Potter and I get Daniel Radcliffe, I'm not sure what HP looked like before DR! I can see him, in my head, but I guess it could be argued that he has been given to me, rather than I have thought of him by myself.

I don't think that's true about early readers.
I have great visual minds eye and am hyperlexic. I taught myself to read around 3 years old.
My eldest taught himself at 2 and also has a minds eye (and is also autistic like me).

My daughter could read before she was three, and has aphantasia.

I'm now wondering about my DGD ( her niece) who is also reading at just three.

What do you mean by numbers being spatially located?

@HippeePrincess When I think about the number sequence (1, 2, 3, ...) I see a left-to-right line of numbers inclining slightly upwards and proceding from white light towards darkness, clearly segmented into bands of ten and then blurring out to vagueness at around 100. Negative numbers (proceeding leftwards from zero are kind-of brown and the sequence there is very short before disappearing.

That inner perception is so familiar and dull that I literally hadn't paid it any attention until the questionnaire turned my mind's eye towards it. And even then I thought 'this can't be what they mean' because it seemed so impossible to me that it should be absent for some people.

The angle of the incline changes. Preey flat in the negative sequence and in the early part of the positive sequence, then steepening sharply up to twenty and staying steep until the eighties and getting a bit less steep around 100

Apparently there is a link between aphantasia and good colour-matching skills!

Is that based on a chart you've seen at some time? Because it sounds like a very standard way of presenting numbers.

I can't match/co-ordinate colours for shit. Now I wonder if that's related to a strong mind's eye.

Funny, you'd think it would be the other way round!

@Queenofscones I told you it was dull!
No, I don't think it is based on a chart. It's not like a picture. But I do think that, for people of my generation, number-colours might be influenced by the old Cuisenaire rods they used to use to teach maths.

I have this.
An elephant to me is sort of a fuzzy grey blob.
When I imagine people I just think of sticks with no faces.
I can't 'see' things.
I don't drive and I learnt from childhood to orient myself by memorising lists, left, left, right, pub, tree, garage. Etc.
It's only in recent years I don't feel ashamed and realised that it's ok. That it isn't that odd.
I am highly intelligent and at the top of my game career-wise and last week had an interesting 1:1 with one of my team who is a physicist. We realised when talking that we both have it. It was so cool to meet someone in real life that has this.
We are so cool 😎

Oh just reading other posts, I was a very early reader and I imagine words to 'see things'.
When I am presenting I see the words in front of me.
I am a lawyer and can pick words and sentences apart very easily. Ask me to find my way to work in the morning. Doomed.

I have this too, and face blindness which can be embarrassing at times, and for which, as a school teacher, I have to really try and build coping strategies for.

Recognising I had it came as such a relief!

I have this too.

I think it is more common than we think it just doesn't really come up in conversation, so I suspect the autism link is overstated because people don't normally discuss how their imagination works.

I had a conversation with a sports coach who had struggled with something during CPD where they were being asked to visualise something and he couldn't. Both me and his next client were the same.

The example I think illustrates it is how you would remember what to get from the shops without writing it down. Lots of people visualise their trip round the shop, or how the things look in the trolley, that's what my husband would do, but I memorise the words and repeat them in my head.

I didn't think I have face blindness but maybe I do to an extent. When I see photos of my loved ones on my phone, I see them and remember them. When not in front of me, I kind of forget.
My daughter had a party the other day, 7 girls all looking the same. Awful. I've known these girls for years, but I can't tell them apart. They all have long blond hair. My DH thinks it's awful

I often don’t recognise people I know just on sight (e.g. when unexpectedly bumping into them).

My own sister of 50 years knocked on my door and I didn’t know who it was until she started speaking. It’s difficult to describe. I just have no means of retaining imagery in my mind.