@gyokuto15 · Joined April 2026
On “Being a Premature baby and aphantasia/Sdam”
I was also born prematurely, and I have aphantasia too. I can't form visual mental images either, but I haven't personally experienced my aphantasia as a major difficulty in my life. That doesn't mean I never struggle with anything. I sometimes have a negative inner dialogue that goes on and on, too, and I know how exhausting that can be. I think who we are, what we struggle with, and how we experience life are shaped by so many different factors. Our individual traits, our environments, the experiences we've had, and the challenges we've faced all interact in complicated ways. Aphantasia is one part of who I am, but it's only one part. Your experiences are real, and I don't want to minimize any of the difficulties you've described. I just think we should be careful about attributing too much to any single trait, whether that's aphantasia or being born prematurely. And there's something I especially want to share: having aphantasia doesn't mean you can't have a happy or fulfilling life. I don't think the things that make our lives difficult and the things that make our lives meaningful can always be neatly separated, either. Sometimes they may even grow out of the same complicated combination of traits and experiences. I'm not saying this to dismiss what you're going through. I just wanted to share a different experience from someone who has these things in common with you. I hope it offers another perspective, and perhaps a little reassurance.
On “Learning Hanzi in spite of being an aphant”
As a fellow aphant from Japan, I resonated with your experience so much! I’ve always felt that for us, learning Kanji isn't about memorizing a "picture," but rather understanding a logical recipe of radicals. Since our brains prefer structural data over visual imagery, the systematic nature of Hanzi/Kanji actually becomes an advantage. This is exactly why I find that I can read Classical Chinese and even get the "gist" of modern Chinese texts just by following the semantic traces of the characters. Interestingly, though, I struggle with Hangul. Even though it’s part of the same cultural sphere, Hangul is phonetic—it's a "sound script." For my aphant brain, it’s much easier to decode logograms (which are like high-density data packets of meaning) than it is to process pure phonetic symbols that don't have those built-in semantic hooks. It’s fascinating to realize that what many see as a "visual" language is actually a "logical" one for people like us!
On “Can people with Aphantasia perform item rotation/manipulation tasks?”
I approach these problems through pattern recognition. This method works well for me, but in IQ tests, my scores were lower because of the time limit. It takes more time to logically process the patterns than to simply "visualize" them, even though the result is just as accurate.