So I just read something and that makes me wonder...
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So I just read something and that makes me wonder...
Do people with aphantasia (like myself) more often have an inner dialogue that is "speech-like", you know actually speaking words in a language
Or (like me), more often just "vibes" and their inner thoughts only becomes language once these need to be expressed
(I also added the options for people who have no aphantasia [have phantasia I guess] so we can compare results
)Boosting is appreciated
️@hvangalen Since I learned of aphantasia, I've thought a lot about how my mind works. Yes, inner dialogue, heck, even back and forth between groups of individuals, rehearsing how I think people might behave because that's how my brand of shyness and autism works: defusing unexpected behavior, preventing startlement and freezing up, by calculating what could happen. The written words that show on the page mimics my inner world. But do I hear distinct voices of the people I rehearse on that inner stage?
No. Not really. Recognize?
Yes.
Which leads to the visual, to the mental images. I can, for example take a book and rotate it is my head. I can take a cereal box and turn it to read the opposite side, the bottom, doing it mentally. I can imagine a fighter jet, seeing the nose cone, yawing it around, seeing the exhaust, flipping it, seeing the weapons under the wing, the flaps. Do I see actual images?
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I have what is called visual intelligence. I understand aesthetics, symmetry, composition in a snap. Photography is my art form. But do I see mental images? That's what discussion with people like @ElyseMGrasso made me realize:
No pictures.
No mental images.
It's all recognition. I recognize what I'm looking at internally. Like turning my iPhone around as I thumb type this to see the camera package, and that the exterior is orange. I'm evoking a mental pattern to match or a mental logically imagined structure, and feeling that I am seeing, hearing—but not really either seeing nor hearing. It's recognition.
My dreams, however, feel truly visual, vividly colorful, tangible. But I've read that' is the mental process of the brain exercising the visual and sensory processes in order to write memories into "permanent storage." The visual sensation might be phantom sensation because the REM state activates parts of the brain imagining does not.
Anyway, that's my theory of my visualization at the moment. Hope this impromptu essay is helpful at some level.
#actuallyAutistic #aphantasia #writer #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
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@AbramKedge @hvangalen Do you have stereoscopic depth perception? I have a near eye and a far eye, and never the twain shall meet. So visual data lacks some 3D-ness, for me, but the world does not.
A word that keeps coming up when I try to think about how I organize the world is 'kinesthetic'. It's not the right word, but it's less wrong than some alternatives. I feel like people who focus on aphantasics' visual cortex and ignore -- I don't know, the spine? maybe? are sort of missing the point.
@ElyseMGrasso @hvangalen I do, even though the right eye is increasingly useless.
I'd love to be able to somehow experience how you plan and refine your spatial organisation. I bet that quietly observing your choices would convey a lot about your inner processes - or perhaps not! It's like reverse engineering a very different world, all the context would have to be reconstructed.
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@hvangalen Since I learned of aphantasia, I've thought a lot about how my mind works. Yes, inner dialogue, heck, even back and forth between groups of individuals, rehearsing how I think people might behave because that's how my brand of shyness and autism works: defusing unexpected behavior, preventing startlement and freezing up, by calculating what could happen. The written words that show on the page mimics my inner world. But do I hear distinct voices of the people I rehearse on that inner stage?
No. Not really. Recognize?
Yes.
Which leads to the visual, to the mental images. I can, for example take a book and rotate it is my head. I can take a cereal box and turn it to read the opposite side, the bottom, doing it mentally. I can imagine a fighter jet, seeing the nose cone, yawing it around, seeing the exhaust, flipping it, seeing the weapons under the wing, the flaps. Do I see actual images?
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I have what is called visual intelligence. I understand aesthetics, symmetry, composition in a snap. Photography is my art form. But do I see mental images? That's what discussion with people like @ElyseMGrasso made me realize:
No pictures.
No mental images.
It's all recognition. I recognize what I'm looking at internally. Like turning my iPhone around as I thumb type this to see the camera package, and that the exterior is orange. I'm evoking a mental pattern to match or a mental logically imagined structure, and feeling that I am seeing, hearing—but not really either seeing nor hearing. It's recognition.
My dreams, however, feel truly visual, vividly colorful, tangible. But I've read that' is the mental process of the brain exercising the visual and sensory processes in order to write memories into "permanent storage." The visual sensation might be phantom sensation because the REM state activates parts of the brain imagining does not.
Anyway, that's my theory of my visualization at the moment. Hope this impromptu essay is helpful at some level.
#actuallyAutistic #aphantasia #writer #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
@sfwrtr @hvangalen @ElyseMGrasso 100% applies to me. Great job describing it. Same thing with dreams, they’re very vivid. The rest of the time it’s patterns (like going from A to B) but not something I can really visualize.
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So I just read something and that makes me wonder...
Do people with aphantasia (like myself) more often have an inner dialogue that is "speech-like", you know actually speaking words in a language
Or (like me), more often just "vibes" and their inner thoughts only becomes language once these need to be expressed
(I also added the options for people who have no aphantasia [have phantasia I guess] so we can compare results
)Boosting is appreciated
️@hvangalen @mayintoronto this is helpful to me: in my Internal Family Systems work with clients, aphantasia changes how I guide the work. I was not aware of the inner-dialogue possibility! My own inner world is very visual/vibes, it's good to know what to ask, about how others experience it.
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So I just read something and that makes me wonder...
Do people with aphantasia (like myself) more often have an inner dialogue that is "speech-like", you know actually speaking words in a language
Or (like me), more often just "vibes" and their inner thoughts only becomes language once these need to be expressed
(I also added the options for people who have no aphantasia [have phantasia I guess] so we can compare results
)Boosting is appreciated
️@hvangalen my inner thoughts are almost entirely voiced
Picturing things in my head is an extreemly active skill to use and is at best an animatic with little visual detail
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T tofticles@helvede.net shared this topic
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So I just read something and that makes me wonder...
Do people with aphantasia (like myself) more often have an inner dialogue that is "speech-like", you know actually speaking words in a language
Or (like me), more often just "vibes" and their inner thoughts only becomes language once these need to be expressed
(I also added the options for people who have no aphantasia [have phantasia I guess] so we can compare results
)Boosting is appreciated
️@hvangalen I think the 'no aphantasia' is kind of a finnicky double negation
How we process thoughts are so interesting and funny and weird, so hard to Imagine what it must be like in someone's head when that person's thought process is so different from ones own.
Like, if you have aphantasia, can you imagine what it must be like to not have it? I would think not, but having phantasia doesn't mean I can imagine what it's like not to have it, either!
