5: when I get verbal instructions to do a 3-D thing I'm utterly blank. OTOH, my brain does 2-D maps and carries those pictures in memory effortlessly.
Brains really are weird. And squishy.
1.
I also literally see words a lot. I'm a writer. I remember poems or, say, Shakespeare typically by literally seeing it on a page. (I do *not*, however, have a "photographic" memory or even an especially good memory.) I remember a lot of songs through aural memory, but visualize words, too.
Yeah, same. And it's also why I often don't enjoy visual adaptations of books, because it does not match what I had been visualizing the whole time. Not fair to the artists, of course.
Exactly, the visual adaptation never seems as good as what plays in my head, but of course, I build the world in my head, consciously but mostly unconsciously, to what appeals to me. I physically react to what’s playing in my head; fear, scared, joy, etc. It can be stressful sometimes. 😂
Yes, you're right. Someone—JScalzi?—posited that the reason some people enjoy rich, immersive description in novels is because of the author's ability to paint a vivid picture in words (no matter where the author is on that scale!)
I'm fascinated by the different ways people perceive, and how our own brains can change over time/circumstance. When I was in chemo, I had a lot of brain fog. Didn't have voices in my head (the way I usually do). But I started seeing more images, lots of images.
I would love to find words that are equivalent to “visualize” but refer to other senses. For example, I often “visualize” movement in my head—but I’m not seeing it, it’s more of a kinesthetic feeling.
This scale does not map onto my experience. First of all, I don't routinely visualize when thinking but can do so when specifically called for. Second of all, the visualization is clearly a 1-style apple, but foggy--like a high transparency setting or looking through parchment paper or something.
I'm a 1 so much I zone out right after someone describes something because I'm busy seeing it. Started when I was in elementary school, trying to better grasp my reading. I'm a slow reader now because I'm also busy building the movie in my head.
If I concentrate, I can imagine an apple with green spots, a soft dark splotch on one side (because I buy apples from the discount shelf) and one of those labels stuck in the well the stem is in. The label is slightly wrinkled.
My brain can do the idea of an image, but not an image. It's really not even a sketch, but it's not nothing. If I try really hard, it ends up with a pixelated, funhouse-mirror, cubist version. It seems to process different aspects of shape and color separately and to be unable to combine them.
Didn't encounter this in until discussing with students what they visualized at the start of Butler's KINDRED, when she complicates cues about the characters' race. One black student said he always defaults to seeing whites. A white kid said he always saw stick figures, and the room went quiet.
full-on five, nothing but sparkly darkness in here, but i can "feel" what things should look like with my mind. this is my mind horse (there was a bit of reference for the cat)
2-3 for me. Interestingly, I am pretty sure my mum is 5+, she can do things like hold up blueprints for something, and completely see what it will look like. She is surprised that other people can't do this.
I think I’m a 1. I had a teacher in 2nd grade who told us to picture the story in our minds. What great advice for a child! Since then, I always have. I think that’s why I wanted to be a writer—so I could transcribe the pictures I see in my mind.
This scale is seriously flawed. 5 is a condition known as Aphantasia which is defined as the ability to see colors or images in your head. Most without Aphantasia can see color. Seeing less clearly is not necessarily lacking color but rather increasingly lacking in definition.
I’m, like, a 1, I guess, except I don’t see the apple as flat. I’m aware of its shape and its whole outside, as though I’m seeing its entire surface at once, if that makes sense.
Color for me is always there, so the scale doesn't quite work for me in that respect. But I feel like I have a 4 going on most of the time, and then I can sharpen the blade, so to speak, and things crystallize into a 2. But I have to focus directly on that, or it slides back into a 4.
If it's a mechanical thing, I can go further than 1. I can turn "an object sitting on the table" into an "exploded view" with parts diagram, held entirely in my mind.
I like to joke that i just have a CAD program built into my brain.
I'm somewhere between 1 and 2. Like, I can see the whole apple as shown in 2, but to get the level of detail in 1, I have to let go of the whole picture and "zoom in" to just that part.
5. Whenever people said things like "Picture in your mind" I always thoughts they were speaking figuratively, not literally. When I close my eyes I see NOTHING.
Unless it's really bright out. Then I can see the veins in my eyelids, which is always cool. 😂
I can't watch horror films for this exact reason. It makes being a writer an absolute blast, though, until I remember that I'm still the only one who can see and hear it because it's all still in draft form.
2 or 3 but depends how consciously I try. (I can also actualise some touch sensations if I try hard, eg imagine the feeling of my fingers with sand running through them, but that takes a lot of effort)
1 to the point that it's a problem and I have to seriously consider if what I'm remembering is actually something I remember and not just something my imagination has put forward.
This. I have an extremely strong "memory" of waking up on Xmas Eve, walking out to my grandparents' living room b/c I heard softly ringing bell chimes, and _seeing_ Santa's sleigh & reindeer fly across the sky towards Mount Mansfield. I know it was a dream, but can't distinguish from actual memory.
I've had these too. But I don't have either the visualization ability other people are talking about, or a second voice in my inner monologue. Very confused at the moment. I'm starting to think I only visualize in dreams.
I vary between 2 and 4, depending on my ambient level of concentration/distractedness and how compelling I find the image. I do have trouble maintaining a mental image, though -- when I picture something at 2, it's in momentary flashes my mind's eye cannot easily maintain.
This has come up before and I cannot fit the scale because my very vivid visualizations don't look like that at all. It's like it happens with a different direction of light, or in a different dimension.
This is really interesting because I realized that I go through all these stages in my mind, from conceptual thoughts to the full blown visualization given a little time or concentration. My problem, as an artist, is my weak ability to translate what I’m visualizing accurately. Photos are easier.
It depends on the task. If I write fiction, I also live the emotions and it is a 1. If I prepare to speak to someone and think of arguments, it is a 5, but if I remember stuff for said arguments we are back at 1 + emotions
a 2 for me, but I haven't illustrated anything in so long my from-memory anatomy is poop, though I remember being in high school doodling in my sketchbooks and just re-creating video game scenes and characters from memory, since I didn't have access to reference material
1, though I suppose it depends on the varietal of apple. Much easier to visualize a specific Granny Smith or Cosmic Crisp than, say, a Gravenstein or Fuji.
prolly 2-3. i don't think i see things photorealistically or if i do it's very rare. i think more often than not i'm brain visualizing things in more shadowy forms unless i'm focused thinking on it, then it's more detailed.
I guess I'm at least a 2 or 3 for most things, with a 1 for some things like visualising a mechanical mechanism, and even electronics, which some people think is weird, but its not seeing visually exactly, but I think of it like seeing, I'm sure there's a term for that.
Imagining it in the form of flows/connections? I often do similar things to keep track of bits and pieces when trying to solve various problems. It's like a kind of visual mental checklist
Its hard to describe. A bit like you would mentally see how a lever works. You don't need to actually visualise a picture of it to "see" it. For me anyway. Its the same with electronics, a transistor can be thought of acting as a lever. Current in a resistor is like water flowing through a narowpipe
Personally I sit somewhere between a 1 and a 2. It’s m useful as I can draft to a certain extent before I even put pencil to paper. It’s also equally frustrating as what comes out is never exactly what’s envisioned. Sometimes better, often not.
i don't think this particular "1-5 apple" scale is useful to me (1 is just 2 with more shading? like... does that just mean what you visualize is more "solid"?)
but i can definitely visualize things, and it's been both extremely helpful and occasionally frustrating when it comes to making art
It’s difficult because I treated it almost allegorically but the difference is in detail. A level of visceral understanding? Gah it’s hard to put it into words. I understand what the scale is getting at where 1 is fully realised image and everything higher loses some level of detail.
1 or 2. I think it's one of the reasons I'm fine with long road trips. I can drive and remodel a condo in my head at the same time. Nebraska just flies by.
I think fast so I have to say 4. More like wisps of ghosts or visual flashes. It seems full visualization would slow down my thinking. Like moving my lips while reading.
2, probably, but there's a semantics problem with this whole thing. Of course you don't "see" it; that requires electromagnetic waves reflecting off some surface onto your visual cortex. Instead, It's just imagining what it "looks" like.
Depends on how strictly you use the definition because "seeing things" is definitely used for hallucinations. It's about if the part of the brain that's consciously aware of imagery can perceive it
Technically, I suppose, everything one sees is in one's head. I've hallucinated before (bad experience with Seroquel) and it was different than what I mean by being able to "see" things in my mind. Seemed more "out there" than a mental image.
I can visualize 1 and 2, as well as this chart, and John Green's profile picture. I can also visualize using 1 to draw an apple with pen and ink on paper. This may be from a lifetime of drawing and memorizing everyday objects for later reference. I don't think it's innate, but an acquired skill.
I think I'm like a 2. I was thinking earlier that I'd probably be a better visual artist if I had more clarity in my mental visualization. I don't know if there's a connection there, but it makes sense to me
I'm a 4 on this scale, I can visualize the bare minimum of details - and that only goes for small things like an apple, bigger scenes or even just characters are completely out of my reach. Ironically I can dream though, but apparently a different part of the brain is responsible for that.
1.5
I see my imaginary apples, but it isnt reality-perfect vision. Yet, I identify apple variety by coloring and size. I can pick it up. Bite into it. I can know it is a pink lady or a gala or a red delicious by the smell and the taste and the crispness of the imagined bite.
1 or 2. When I read a novel, it plays a movie in my head. This can be disconcerting if the novel is made into a movie because all the characters look all wrong.
True with 2 exceptions for me: the movie LA Confidential, where the characters, esp Capt Dudley Smith, were exactly the same as I imagined them in when reading the novel; and the Slow Horses novels whose main characters have been almost perfectly captured by the Apple TV series.
Polar opposite: I have read, I think, all of Elmore Leonard's crime novels (not his westerns). All of the film versions until the mid 90s stunk. Then came Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Jackie Brown. Classics all, really in the spirit of EL, but the characters all different from my book imagination.
I imagine things with vivid visual *detail* but have trouble keeping track of visual-spatial *relationships*. So, if I'm reading about characters conversing in a room, I'll have a very specific idea of what each character looks like, while my sense of where they're sitting is vague and shifty.
In solitary confinement. I trained my mind to play with 3-D shapes. Adding one bouncing ball, then a hoop spinning, then shooting stars, and so on. Later I was able to create 3-D fractals. Finally, I got to the point where I could play Quake II against real enemies! It was so awesome!
1, can imagine the apple, turn it in my hand, cut it in half, rotate the halves, visualize it in different places and lightning... if I let it, my minds eye can kinda "take over" my actual vision for a while. Sort of like how cartoons show daydreams as lil clouds of vignettes?
1, pretty much with any sense except depth perception.
I struggle to imagine distances, after some size it makes me intensely nauseous to imagine things too realistically, especially things that are larger scale
I’m a 1 and 2, 1 requires so much concentration i couldn’t imagine how u function and maintain that kind of detail all the time. I literally have to shut off other sense to hold that detail
Yeah i get that, my sense of smell gets intense the more stressed i get and i can start hurling from strong smells
I am probably overthinking this but i love trying to figure out peoples perceptions and the brain tools they have
Improving my bp has helped as well, and emotional regulation. I don’t get nauseated from over thinking, my resolution drops significantly and at some point if I’m lucky I’ll fall asleep from the mental overload.
Depth perception is a weak point for me too. When I first got glasses as a kid the issue was the two eyes working together more than either eye having problems. Now I have keratoconus in one eye which I’m sure doesn’t help.
I'm going to say a 2 simply because if it's not just a memory I'm calling up, it tends to be "animated" style rather than live-action. Like I'll think of a cartoon apple before a real apple, unless I'm thinking of an apple I have in the kitchen and saw recently.
When I think 💭 f an apple I recall the texture of the skin. I recall the crunch when I bite it. The juice. The taste and smell. The experience of having the apple. Not a picture of it.
The apple is spinning and traveling thru space on a voyage beyond comprehension. Bag chasers plays in the background softly faintly. The apple is going to its people.
1 - people at 5 have what's called aphantasia and some of them have a description in words of the apple rather than an image, source my aphantasic husband
I'm a 1, just give me a mintue to clear away all the other realistic and animated apples from my mind field.
Having led folks into trance states, you have to use all the senses cause not everyone sees with their interior eye or hears with their interior ear etc.. Some folks just know.
I am a 1 but I don't have any inner monologue. If there's words, it's a few words they tend to repeat in a loop. My brain is entirely visuals and emotions
I am a 2.
My son is a 5. It's called Aphantasia, he cannot visualise, and always thought "picture the scene" and "mind's eye" were just phrases.
He finds it weird that anyone else can visualise.
Ist there research about the relation between visualization ability and love for reading? Because I can imagine books are way less entertaining If you don't have an inner movie running.
I’m a 4 or a 5. But weirdly sometimes when I’m falling asleep I’ll get intrusive images that feel more like a 3. BUT I can imagine textures and tastes, and sounds.. I can listen to whole songs in my head as clear as if they’re actually playing. Just no images. And I’m an artist.
1 easily if I focus. Things seem hyper real sometimes, including sounds and scent and textures. Most of the time I imagine things a bit simplified and toony. It's easier to visualize whole environments that way. I can imagine moving through imaginary or remembered places or maps easily too.
I'm struggling to align with the choices as presented. I can start at a 1 for a flash of a moment, degrade to a 3 in the next flash, and then I'm left with nada.
When I was younger I assumed everyone could do this, it was only teaching that made me realise this wasn't the case. I 'see' everything, full colour, like a film, and can control viewpoints, if you describe your house I can see it, walk around, fly over it etc. Have always been able to.
I’m often around 2. Most of the objects I visualize in my mind are usually a tad simpler/more naïve-looking but I keeps remembering them quite well. Anyway about people faces I’m sadly a 5, tends to quickly forget how people looks and who it is even very familiar ones. ;o;
On the mental-image scale, 5+ -- there are NO IMAGES in my mind.
.
Internal monolog/narrative, also nothing. I do not think in words; I just have thoughts. To write/speak, I must translate them into words; it's not always easy.
.
Music: I get *inside* mental music. I don't "hear" it, I *think* it.
Comments
Brains really are weird. And squishy.
I also literally see words a lot. I'm a writer. I remember poems or, say, Shakespeare typically by literally seeing it on a page. (I do *not*, however, have a "photographic" memory or even an especially good memory.) I remember a lot of songs through aural memory, but visualize words, too.
What really blows my mind is that there are people who don't "hear" words when they think.
😎👉👉
Solid 2.
Day to day? 3 or so.
Words are poor for describing this.
But I am a very visual thinker.
I like to joke that i just have a CAD program built into my brain.
Unless it's really bright out. Then I can see the veins in my eyelids, which is always cool. 😂
I have nightmares that are so real they literally make me scream. They’re visceral and there are sights sounds and tastes.
Don’t ask me about the nightmare I had one night while my now husband was playing video games over a hundred miles north from me!
I don’t react to jump scares at all.
Think it’s because my mind can come up with way worse if left to it’s own devices 🤣
No visualisation at all. My inner monologue is entirely verbal, although I think the words, I don’t hear them.
or
Am I picturing doing X because I did X recently, or because you just asked if I did X and now I have a vivid image of doing X?
Also a 5 for smell, taste, touch and hearing (with the exception of my inner voice).
Seeing both the skin and the inner scape of flesh & seed
Sometimes struggle to tell difference between a dream & reality
My inner monologue has an inner monologue 😂
Still blows my mind that there are extraordinary artists with full on aphantasia.
but i can definitely visualize things, and it's been both extremely helpful and occasionally frustrating when it comes to making art
Daydreaming brings it to solid 1-2, like I need to turn off my eyes and rely on only brain.
Just like "hearing" a voice. Not literal.
AFAICT, my wife is at 5... which makes her MSME all the more impressive to me.
I see my imaginary apples, but it isnt reality-perfect vision. Yet, I identify apple variety by coloring and size. I can pick it up. Bite into it. I can know it is a pink lady or a gala or a red delicious by the smell and the taste and the crispness of the imagined bite.
1 pretty easily.
I struggle to imagine distances, after some size it makes me intensely nauseous to imagine things too realistically, especially things that are larger scale
When I lived in the city still, it was really hard to deal with all the sensory. Smells, temperature changes, sounds, murals, and much more!
I am probably overthinking this but i love trying to figure out peoples perceptions and the brain tools they have
There is always a conversation going on in my brain
I also visualise abstract concepts as *structures*
The apple is spinning and traveling thru space on a voyage beyond comprehension. Bag chasers plays in the background softly faintly. The apple is going to its people.
i would seek psychiatric intervention if i was a having visual hallucinations in lieu of thoughts.
Having led folks into trance states, you have to use all the senses cause not everyone sees with their interior eye or hears with their interior ear etc.. Some folks just know.
Designing is horrible
Lmao
💀
My son is a 5. It's called Aphantasia, he cannot visualise, and always thought "picture the scene" and "mind's eye" were just phrases.
He finds it weird that anyone else can visualise.
At least I'm good with voices. And memories of textures are really vivid.
It's an incredibly depressing situation and feels like I'm going imaginatively blind.
(Other people CAN'T picture things with their eyes closed? But it's so easy! It looks just like with your eyes open! Whaaat?)
.
Internal monolog/narrative, also nothing. I do not think in words; I just have thoughts. To write/speak, I must translate them into words; it's not always easy.
.
Music: I get *inside* mental music. I don't "hear" it, I *think* it.