I've never read anyone say what they mean by "visualize" when they say they "can" or "can't" "visualize". The people who say they don't "see" anything, don't explain what they mean by that, and the people who say they can visualize use the word "see" without explaining what that means. My suspicion is that people are referring to different things. No one is born "literate". They learn to read. Since people are forced to learn to read, it's treated like an ability, rather than a skill. No one is born "able to" ride a bicycle. They learn and often are forced to learn to ride a bicycle. When someone "can ride" a bicycle, it means they developed the skill to the point where they don't need to think through the steps of riding a bicycle, because it becomes part of muscle memory. The "literate" person or "bicycle rider" is different from other people by degree. People are better or worse at it, not able to or unable to. If you draw, you are visualizing. If you describe something, you are visualizing. If you can recognize a letter, then you can "visualize". I've watched videos of people saying they have Aphantasia, demonstrating how they visualize, without realizing they are visualizing, apparently.

What specifically do you mean by "visualize"?

August 12, 20241 min readByKenned Doll

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Katia Perreira•recently•edited

I think the inherent problem with the whole spectrum is that we cannot actually know how other people experience. I never had to take a quiz to know I had aphansia. I’ve known it my whole life. I would never say I struggled with it, or anything like that, but I have some core memories of trying to explain that I can’t imagine, and being brushed off. I didn’t know people could imagine things with their mind. Aphantasia gave me a word to explain my experience, and the word gave me space to talk about it. But for someone who can visualize, it’s baffling to imagine people who can’t, but it’s equally baffling to people who can’t visualize to “imagine” people who can. I think senses like hearing, tasting, seeing, we can, through technology, experience what it’s like to lose these senses, but we can’t share the minds eye experience one way or the other. I have often wondered if it was a semantics things. If we are just explaining the same phenomena from different angles, using different words to say the same things. But when I talk to people who can visualize, I can tell you that I have never had the same experience on any level. But it is a spectrum so if people take a test that reveals to them they have some form of aphantasia and they are surprised, then I think you will get some of what you say “people visualizing without realizing they are visualizing.” But there do exists people who simply cannot.

Kenned Doll•recently•edited

I hope not replying twice. Thanks everyone. The visualizing the invisible article is interesting. After asking around the internet, the question I’m left with, is: how is it decided that Aphantasia is a static condition one is born with, vs a difference in experiences one has since birth? I have done visualization exercises, to improve my visualization for a long time. Mainly visual visualization. I practice with my eyes open, so it’s clear what I am seeing and what I am imagining. I have no stake in either view of what visualization is, but I often read artists lamenting their aphantasia, and since people say “see”, I wish they could hear that it’s not seeing (and that I’m not expressing an opinion either way).

Alice Grebanier•recently•edited

You might be interested in an article published on this site a couple of years ago by Melanie Scheer, titled Visualizing the Invisible. She also gave a talk. At the bottom of the article, there is a link to a video of her presentation on YouTube. https://aphantasia.com/article/strategies/visualizing-the-invisible Her focus was on how people experience their own mental imagery. I was struck by the wide range of variability, not just in clarity or vividness of the mental images, but of where they were "seen" (in front of the person, at the back of their head, above their eyes, etc., etc.). We cannot actually get into someone else's mind and experience what they experience, and so we tend to think that other people must be fairly similar to us. I don't visualize, and I realize that my mental experiences are different from most other people in that respect. But I had no idea of how much visualizers may differ, one to another. I would argue that some of the examples you give of visualization may not depend on mental imagery. A drawing is not a mental image, though mental imagery may play some part in how it is created. The drawing is a physical object that anyone who has vision can see. But the process of making a drawing may also depend on having reference objects or photographs to use as a basis. Or, someone who does not have mental imagery (or even someone who does) may make some marks and then respond to what they are seeing as they add more marks to create their drawing. No matter the process, the drawing itself has a physical existence that can be shared with others in a way that mental imagery cannot be. Also, when we can describe or recognize things (a letter, a face, a scene, whatever), that will rely on visual knowledge, and my guess is that the knowledge is the source of mental images that may be generated, not vice versa. I can remember and recognize many things and provide pretty detailed descriptions of them, just as a visualizer might. However, for me, that is never accompanied by any kind of projection into a quasi-sensory mental experience. I just know what things look like without "seeing" them.

Jonathan Bates•recently•edited

The best explanation I can give in terms of a definition of "visualise" is to compare thinking about a physical thing like an apple or a face, to thinking about an abstract thing like democracy or happiness. When people who can visualise things think about an abstract concept, they would not (as far as I know) conjure up a picture of, say "democracy" in their mind's eye in the same way as they can an apple. They have to use a linguistic description of democracy to think about it in a non-visual way. For somebody with aphantasia, that "non-visual thinking" is what they also use concrete things like apples or faces as well. I think about an apple, it's shape, the light reflected off its surface, the stalk, etc. in the same way as I think about democracy, the practice of voting for government offices, the representation of regional interests at national level etc. But I am not conscious of any picture in my mind of either an apple or democracy. Not sure if that makes sense?

Kenned Doll•recently•edited

That's very interesting. What I read about aphantasia helps me, even though I visualize. I try to construct memory palaces and much of that experience for me, sounds like what you are describing instead of seeing a picture. I went from tracing over things mentally, in order to form an image, to being able to do that without tracing over it, like the point when you are able to ride on a bicycle. Both are useful for exercising memory, for me. I came here today because something like that was the topic in email from this place today.

Michael Peele•recently•edited

I always assumed that when people "imagine" things that they are speaking theoretically using the word "see" because there isn't another word for it. And, people who really do see things must be crazy or ill or something. Like hallucinating - I'm fairly sure I can't, and that might be some superpower.

Stacey Dugan•recently•edited

That is an excellent description.