I've always suspected my wife has this, and I just inquired. She said she can't picture faces or things, but can recognize them. Her memories are more like feelings. I asked if she were separated from our daughter in an apocalypse, if she could remember what she looked like. She said, "I have no idea what she looks like right now."
Now she's in kind of a dark place.
I can't imagine my families faces, and I prob couldn't even manage a photofit of my own face to be fair. Its strange when you first realise this isn't standard for most people and its actually a thing.
Put photos in a necklace for your wife or something similar if it bothers her.
That would actually be a really thoughtful gift, OP should do that.
It's hard to imagine... not imagining images. It's such a weird perspective to think about.
This matches my experience. Everything and everyone has a feeling, not so much a word, or an image, or a number, but a simple to recall, and hard to explain feeling.
If she's still in that dark place, ask her whether she can recall what your daughter's "feeling" in her head. If she's anything like myself, that feeling is the sum of her relationship with your daughter all in an instant. Not only is that something you probably can't do that she can, it is an interesting way to perceive others. It helps a lot with code switching too, that same feeling of someone else also sets the tone with which you can effectively communicate with them in my experience, though it doesn't work on everyone.
This is the level that I am at and it's hard to explain to people that, "no, I don't remember so-and-so's smile on their birthday." Like the feeling of the experiences are there and an analytical capture is, but vision? Gone the second I don't see it anymore
It's possible that she hasn't got aphantasia, but something called face blindness (prosopagnosia). The Wikipedia might be an interesting read for you guys!
I was a decently rated chess player (nationally) in my youth and I have level 5 aphantasia i.e. I see nothing at all.
While I absolutely cannot play or picture game states without a physical board in front of me like most pros can, I had no great difficulty otherwise.
I practiced with a friend at the same general skill level that was very good at playing sans voir, which incidentally is how I realized I don't have the same mental imagery as him. This was ~25 years ago, and I didn't run into the word aphantasia until around 2020.
Wait, how do you get ranked for aphantasia? I did sure have it but have never had a name for it
As I understand it it's simply differing amounts of realism in one's recall.
I did discuss it briefly with my physician but he more or less shrugged it away as a novelty that can't be helped. He showed me the chart on Wikipedia and mentioned the lack of information about it in general but also that there might be some overlap with autism.
I have a feeling that it'll be a while before it can be adequately explained.
Aphantasia is a condition that prevents people from creating mental imagery . It is rare, affecting only about 4% of the global population..... My visual memory is like looking through a frosted window. I see some colors and blobby shape and that's about it.
4% is a pretty big chunk of the population. That's 1 in every 25 people. Which makes it all the more insane that nobody realised it existed as a condition until just a few years ago.
It really depends on how you define aphantasia. Often the VVIQ score is used, a vividness score ranging from 16 to 80.
About 0,8 % of people have a score of 16, and 3,9 % have a score <= 32. The figures are from one of the more recent studies. Other studies report similar figures, for example one study by Zeman found 0,7 % with a score of 16.
About ¼ of all people with visual aphantasia also have multisensory aphantasia (all classical senses and emotions).
I don't see things in my head, it's still blank but i can imagine the concepts. Do i have aphantasia? My dreams are vivid tho
Probably! Aphantasia isn't binary, it's a spectrum. And like you, I can dream, I just can't visualise stuff in my head while awake.
Any mental imagery in general? Like through mind's eye? Dreaming? I had a mind palace (like no joke) it took me years to build into something I could use, and I had a few seizures in relatively quick succession and I cannot imagine images with nearly the same clarity. My dreams are like trying to swim in molasses while wearing scuffed scratched glasses, and I haven't been able to access my mind palace in years. Any time I close my eyes I just see vague blurry shapes and colors, there's an environment there but I can't see it. Now, I can still see faces and remember them, but imagining in my head kissing my girlfriend is impossible. Her face warps and melts and my mental vision goes fuzzy.
Aphantasia is not actually a real condition btw, the whole "imagine an apple" discourse is completely lacking in rigor. It's like the online ADHD discourse, or MENSA. It's a way for boring people to talk about themselves to each other. (Like most of Reddit and Wikipedia.)
This happens to me periodically and I seriously think it means we just need more potassium, less sleep disruption, and more time in nature to absorb green colors (soothing in memory, gives you good dreams) and exercise the eye muscles with long distance focus.
Downvoted for telling you how to dream more, stay salty!
A friend of mine has aphantasia. It seems like she has trouble with some board games but not with others. If she can stare st the layout of the board she's usually fine. We've never played chess.
In addition to not being able to see anything in her head, she also cannot hear her own thoughts.
That last part is particularly interesting... So maybe it's not just visual reasoning.
I think most aphantasiacs can't hear their own thoughts, but I might be wrong.
She's like the Helen Keller of thinking
I have a middling case of aphantasia. I can create a basic image, blurry shapes, low detail, etc. with a lot of focus and concentration. I struggle immensely with faces I haven't seen a lot, and spatial orientation. Beyond that, I simply think in terms of words more than images.
As far as chess, this means I'm logically thinking out the moves, rather than mentally picturing it. I tend to get a bit overwheled trying to internalize the new board state after more than a couple of moves. I also don't play chess much, though, and would probably simply train that ability by playing more, just like someone without aphantasia will train visualizing more board shapes ahead.
I just wanted to say I'm almost exactly the same way, and it's kinda cool to see someone else stuck in this halfway point, lol. The way I describe it is that I can picture the concept of something in my head, but the moment I try to focus on any details, it gets warped or corrupted or simply won't manifest any more detail. Same on struggling with faces/remembering people, not so much on spatial orientation.
While I haven't played chess in a long while, I can kinda draw off my experience with similar games and logic problems I've worked on. I can kinda hold the concepts in my head, but not really visualize it. So I'll not be envisioning the chess board, but I can still easily puzzle out "if I take this pawn, that one will take my rook, then I can take it with my knight", etc.
Yeah, pretty much the exact same thing for me. I describe things as, I can get a single detail to pop, but then I lose the overall composition, and when I scale back to the whole image, it's a different image.
Do you dream?
god yeah, i have aphantasia, but i also dream, so i often experience these unquantifiable dreams, which often bleed into reality, because my brain has never experienced anything other than "physically observing the world" so anytime i dream half the time my brain is just confused as fuck and considers it to be a real event that actually happened, because fuck it why not.
That has been the source of confusion more times than i'd like to admit. My more wacky and obviously not real dreams help a lot with that though.
it's weird as fuck waking up, and having no mechanism to recall something that "happened" you have this like, weird fleeting state of emotion and vague comprehension of what happened. But no way to visually process it.
Yes, actually. Very vividly.
Well I don't play chess in my head. That doesn't stop me from being a reasonably decent chess player when there's a physical board in front of me. I'm not sure why aphantasia would be considered relevant to chess?
Do you have it? I'm just curious how someone would plan multiple moves ahead without an image of changes to the board in their head.
"Well, if I move the bishop here, then it's pinning the knight to the king. Then I can capture over here, threatening a fork." etc.
I do. Feel free to ask further if you have more questions.
Basically, when I'm playing, and trying to look multiple moves ahead, at least for me it's like a logic tree. Exactly like what you described. I just don't visualise any images. To me, I'll keep track that the bishop will be on this spot, this spot will be empty, etc etc. I just need memory for that, it doesn't involve any imagery.
You have an abstract concept of the board in your head. The logical connections are still there, there's just no image of a chess board that represents the moves. Basically the same way a computer thinks without images, too.
this was always my take on this discussion as well.
i think this whole phenomena is more or less a communication misunderstanding and a matter of semantics. I believe that the people who report not being able to "see the apple" are people more inherently capable of more introspection and other metacognitive tasks. they identify correctly that the "mind's eye" is basically the brain imagining what sensations of vision a particular thing might elicit, the same way we might imagine the sensations of touching something fuzzy or imagine the sensations of tasting something bitter. I think very few minds can "project" visual imagination of an apple before the imaginer as thoroughly indistinguishabley as if you got real sensory input of an apple.
i think that people who claim to really see the apple are taking the imaginary sensation of vision as equivalent to the sensation of vision generated from real sensory input, and therefore presuming that it counts as actually seeing it. and those who claim not to see the apple are likely just noticing the difference and assuming they're lacking because the imaginary sensations and actual the sensory stimulus are clearly different things.
we have a word for when people actually see things they cannot ordinarily distinguish from reality, even if they're aware of them as such: hallucinations.
This is a good theory but it doesn't really match the actual data. Aphantasia is a real thing-- some people cannot create mental images. A good test for this is the "Visualize an apple... what color was it?" test. You are right that language is a major barrier to describing your internal experience, and this likely causes a lot of false positives and negatives, but there are ways to get around that. Also, I've never heard of someone actually confuse mental imagery for a true visual stimulus, and misrepresenting mental visualization in that way is... strange, at minimum.
I have trouble visualizing faces in my mind. The more I focus on "seeing" somebody's face the less accurate it is.
Can you visualise the correct number of fingers on hands? I fear you might be an AI.
Same for me. I can imagine objects but only very abstract faces
Hypoanphantasia is a thing, it means small anphatasia or rather very weak phantasia. The characteristic is a spectrum, not distinct categories. Very few people see nothing but also very few people see the chess board or faces in great detail.
It's funny, people make aphantasia out to be a huge disability but ironically that just feels like a lack of imagination on their part. The things where you actually need to see images instead of just abstract thinking are pretty rare.
it's not a significant disability frankly, that's part of the reason it's only just now received a lot of study. It's more of a dysfunction than anything.
It is fundamentally a lack of imagination, we cannot imagine things, it's impossible. Ironically, it's quite helpful to some individuals, me in particular i really enjoy any sort of complex stated systems. I can really latch onto those and comprehend them pretty well. I can do artistic things for about fuck all though.
What does it mean to visualize a chess position?
I don't exactly "render" the board or pieces. It's like when you look at a board, and then make connections and feel whatever you feel, I just recreate those things.
I assume it's similar to other people, but the phrase "not being able to create images" sounds like people do "render" things in their head.
It's not the same as seeing it visually, but yeah I'd say it's a mental "render". Sort of like how having a song stuck in your head isn't the same as actually hearing it.
You move the pieces around in your mental picture of the board to reassess what the potential position would look like.
That's so far removed from how my brain actually works, it might as well be magic. I simply stare at the board and make mental notes which spaces would have which pieces, but there's nothing visual to it. Take away the board and I can't do a thing to plan my next moves.
For the record, I also never have any songs stuck in my head. When listening to stuff, I can recognize wrong notes and such, but I cannot in any form listen to music in my head. Heck, I can barely hum the tunes of my favorite songs after listening to them hundreds of times.
It's not the same. Aphantasisa is the total absence of being able able to picture things mentally. I have it to a degree except it takes me some effort to picture things. I can't imagine scenes from books. I get like a fleeting image.
I have this and have often wondered if it works against me. I have also been weirded out that it’s normal for people to actually “see” pictures in their head ever since I found out about this.
Anyways yes. This must be why I am not great at chess. Let’s blame it!
I now have a mental picture of you sitting at a chess board straining to visualize it in your head and losing. At least you are spreading imagery to others.
like people who don't have it? Chess is strategy, not art, or engineering.
Chess is a series of strategic moves. You just make them. Are yall out here experiencing some kind of bizarre 5d chess i've never experienced before?
source - me, i have it.
I just think about what moves they may make from what I can physically see. It works well enough but I'm not good at chess. That's most likely my ADHD working against me though not the aphantasia. Maybe both lol.
Speaking of ADHD, I've been into chess lately and have found it to be a really good way to practice extending my focus and not taking mental shortcuts, like I'm prone to do.
TIL I have aphantasia
I wonder if there are blind people with aphantasia.
I feel like the amount would either be close to none, or most of them.
most blind people who were born are aphantasic i think? Blind people who became blind often aren't.
Don't quote me on it.
They project into the ceiling
That works if you take enough tranquilizers.
For those that don't have aphantasia, can you do a mental face swap or do other "edits" of mental imagery and keep it consistent in your mind?
And for those that do have it, how does remembering pictures work for you? Like the Mona Lisa, or an MC Escher, or the last supper? Is any memory purely word-based or do you get flashes of imagery that aren't really vivid but still there somewhere?
I ask because I'm not sure if I do or don't have it. I can imagine audio much more vividly and rich than imagery, but I can still recall pictures and images as images. I can create them, but if I try to go into detail or make "edits", I start losing it.
for me the only way i can describe aphantasia is in terms of how a computer works.
I have a visual encoder that can store images in my visual memory but lack a visual decoder to be able to display any image. like if you could only open a jpeg in notepad. that doesn't mean the information is lost or can't be interpreted, just that my cognitive brain deals directly with the binary format. i understand the attributes like depth or color but if asked to recall something i can only verbalize the attributes. this means i can verbalize visual concepts and memories, but can't generate or visualize them inside my head.
the chess example i wouldn't even consider thinking visually to see the moves ahead but create a list of possible actions. I've always struggled with chess as i don't have the ability to store the depth of actions available.
Thank you, this is a great analogy and tracks exactly with how I would describe my experience.
Reading this post has made me realise that I haven't deliberately used visual imagination in a long time, and I'm finding it harder to do that sort of thing now.
I used to be practically limitless in my ability to recall imagery or change it at whim. Since then I've gotten years deep into a cycle of overwork, distraction based entertainments, parenting, and drinking. Also, a mild case of COVID that left me feeling slightly foggy a few years ago. No idea if that's related.
Did not plan to start my Friday at 5 am with an existential crisis, but cowabunga it is. Time to reclaim the inner empire or go mad in the attempt.
I had the same thing actually, but I got back into books and recovered a lot of it. I did have to initially make myself stop and concentrate on the visuals, sometimes reading descriptive passages multiple times to get the details down, but it comes a lot easier now. Really good feeling too get lost in a book.
As an aphantasic, I remember what I know about the Mona Lisa. I know that her lips are famous, I think her face is placed more to the right, and her hair and clothes are dark. I am not sure if you can see her hands, I would have said you cannot (I checked and I am wrong).
Apparently, I was never aware enough of her hands to know that they were in the painting. And I could not tell you how her hair lies or what her smile looks like.
It is not word-based, but just knowing. I just know the clothes are dark. There is no experience that can be edited.
When I collect the characteristics to write them down, I think in words.
I mean, it's definitely visual, but it's not like I could recall or recreate it photographically.
I remember certain "broad strokes", but my brain just fills in the details with approximations (that are probably wrong). Like, I could tell you which way the Mona Lisa is facing, the color of the background, what her hair and face sort of look like, but without googling, I have no idea what clothes she is wearing.
It's like primitive AI since it's the same but the details aren't there and if the details are there, I'm not getting the full picture. It can instantly swap between the two be they never seem to overlap
So like, I've heard about this for ages but I struggle understanding. I definitely cannot "see" anything when I close my eyes, I definitely cannot "see" anything in my mind/imagination. I can "picture" things but that picture is more or less an emotional feeling about the thing, I can imagine certain parts of it but it's more or less a conversation with myself about what I would see or experience about the thing, as if I were describing something that I'm feeling while blindfolded.
When they say visualize something in your head, do people actually see something as if they were looking at it? Else I just figured that visualizing meant more or less an analogy of how we make sense of the actual experience.
It's not as vivid as seeing it for real, or even dreaming of it. It's more akin to how you can "hear" a song that's stuck in your head.
See, now that's the funny thing. I can totally listen to music in my head, vivid enough that I even unconsciously will start to bob my head or shoulders in time. I get goosebumps the same as I would for a song that's actually playing.
Yes. Although some details might be wrong if my memory of it is lacking, i can quite literally picture an image of the thing i'm thinking of.
An article about it :- https://en.chessbase.com/post/aphantasia-in-chess
They play it poorly. Source: aphantasiac with short term memory disabilities who can't learn chess well bcit's too much visualization and memory
Friend, someone has to break it to you: as you can see by others in this thread and coming from a fellow complete aphant:
No, they don't play it poorly. With chess it's like anything else, a high bandwidth. I can't see shit for example but I can conceptualize really well - don't need no pictures for that.
You have your gifts, I'm certain of that. Don't let the hand given to you by life hold you back! Instead look out for the things that make you capable🤗
Oh no I was specifically thinking of Aphantasia + Dyspraxia&ADHD (and working memory deficite in general) in that comment. I didn't really state it clearly though, I had made it sound like aphantasiacs in general in the first half but that's not what I mean. I quite literally cannot think ahead many moves thanks to that combo lol. I guess that's why there's apparently no chess masters confirmed to have both aphantasia and ADHD though, despite there existing many with the former and some with the latter.
It's actually similar with mathematics, I am completely screwed when it comes to mathematical visualization lol. But otherwise I'm definitely a math person, which checks out for aphantasiacs.
