Ask Lemmy

I've put some effort into improving my visualization since learning about aphantasia. Upon reading the prompt, I was able to imagine a colorless ball, but with shading to indicate a 3D shape, like a preview render in a CAD program. That's progress! It didn't have a size inherently. For the table, I could picture a white, rectangular plane hovering in a black void. If it was a normal dinner table size, then the ball was something like a softball or basketball.

And that's it. That exhausted my ability to visualize. No person, no push, no motion. Best I can do is to see the white rectangle after the ball has rolled off of the edge.

The ball was red, like a red rubber ball. The person was sort of indistinct from the neck up, it was more like my view was focused on the ball itself and didn't see a face, but it was a man, wearing a white shirt and dark tie, and dark pants. The ball was about the size of a baseball, wasn't completely smooth and shiny, sort of a matte with a slight grippy texture. Table was square, wood, like a medium brown color. The ball rolled off the table and bounced a few times.

All these decisions were automatic when reading the prompt, it's what I saw.

I've just become aware of aphantasia myself, I have a few family members who have it apparently. I was talking to my BIL about it the other day, I was saying how I'm a big fan of reading, but I mostly read nonfiction. He said he doesn't read much, mostly biographies, but fiction doesn't do much for him because he can't picture anything in his head. I can picture everything in great detail when I read fiction. Its interesting because our minds work very differently

The ball had no color, the person had no gender or specific form other than vague shapes (the hand and arm being the most visualized), no memory of deciding any specific clothing, the ball was the most fleshed out part where it was the size of a softball. The table was square with vaguely wood coloring. The size was about 2 ft by 2ft maybe 3 ft high.

I did not already know most and I did not retroactively change them. I gave answers as I remembered my visualization.

The ball was blue and kind of glossy, clearly made of plastic.

The person was a scruffy looking femme character in black and white. I just subbed in a character from a comic post above this one.

The ball was about 50% bigger than a baseball.

The table was a round coffee table with that fake wood texture paneling you see on cheap furniture, you know the type? It was a muted brown color.

I did know that I was probably expected to visualize details on the described object, but not the person or table!

• What color was the ball? Grey.
• What gender was the person that pushed the ball? No idea, was there even a person? Couldn't really get it to move more than just rolling along.
• What did they look like? Se above, I've no idea as I couldn't really image a person.
• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? Like a palintar in lord of the rings (commonly known as a "seeing stone" I believe?).
• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Couldn't image a table, it just kinda layed in the emptyness.

TDLR, can't really image stuff and really can't image people, who especially not faces.

Both my partner and I answered the same.

The ball was the size of a tennis ball, no colour.

The person had no gender or any distinguishing features.

The table was a standard kitchen table.

Neither of us knew what the test was about.

Wait a second.

• The ball had no color at all
• The person who pushed the ball didn't even exist. It just got pushed by some invisible force. Naturally, they didn't have an appearance.
• The ball was like... Small I guess?
• The table had no properties at all.

Do people really usually have a more vivid picture in their heads? It's always just concepts with me. I'm confused.

Small tennis sized ball whitish color on a whitish classic rectangular kitchen table. But the table is zoomed in quite much at the start so you only see the overside of it.

No specific gender, very neutral. Like a videogame character with few colors, white mostly. Now the scene is zoomed back to let you see the person walk up to the table.

Did not know. But when i read the others answers mine turned into a 1990 MTV music video where objects are immutable but displayed in lots of different ways, colors, textures, ... I also exploded it when the pwrson touched the ball for fun.

I have worked a lot in video games and scientific visualisation, so the test looks like something I'd make in a 3D engine I guess, least information possible to show the important things, the ball etc.

I can imagine and see about anything, colour, texture, forms, people, movements, but the more details the more zoomed in it gets. I can imagine you as lofi-girl looking at your phone, but expeession like "what the crap did I just read" imagining you reading this for example.

HTH

A colorless ball is pushed by a non existent person and rolls slightly at a linear speed and then ceases to exist. The ball had no size and I don't remember the table existing.

Huh. The person was off-frame. And I'm pretty sure i retroactively chose a color for the ball.

I think I might have a black-and-white imagination.

Color - none (I hate not being able to visualise color as I hate doing 3d texturing work in blender and I would like to be able to enjoy it)
Gender - ambigious
Look - lack of info
Ball - unpleasant to touch, got pushed from the top, palm sized, it made a sound, the scene looped before the ball fell off the table, in the next iterations the ball was made of foam, and lacked sound, the camera spunn around the table.
Table - four legs, square, standard height.

The ball was red. The gender of the person was unspecified, they were just a hand coming into the scene coming out of a long sleeve green shirt. And the ball was like the size of a softball. What I pictured was a zoomed in part of a table, Brown, but with two zoomed in of perspective for me to know the shape of the whole table.

The ball was black, made from rubber, tennis ball size. Only a hand was imagined. No particular colour or gender. The table was made from Elm.

So I cheated a little, because I'm at a table right now, so I didn't visualise the table just the ball on the table. It was about tennis size, but no texture, kind of light blue shading into lilac. The person pushing it was really just a hand.

So sounds like the only work I did was imagining the ball. I wouldn't say I knew in advance, and I wouldn't say I chose what it looked like. It just appeared and it was light blue.

Edit: the ball started rolling when pushed, but not long enough for me to know whether it fell off the table or not. But the rolling was just a concept. I can visualise things, but I can't visualise motion. Which I only discovered recently.

Everything was shadows with rainbow outlines, basically.

I think this is a fun exercise, but Idk I'm oblivious to a lot of things excepts shapes and interactions. More telling is my dreams tend to fall into two categories:

Objects without details but with crisp, colorful outlines and dark scenes with illuminated spacces where the more fleshed out areas that are illuminated.

And my ability to imagine is similar- if no lighting condition is given my mental image is shadows with rainbow outlines. If the instructions include lighting the details are more robust: A cat will have a color, a ball will be plain and white and softball sized.

At first I saw something silhouetted on a card table. Then Action entered the story and I had to choose an adventure after being asked what happened.

I figured how it rolls might depend on who pushed it, and I already knew that. Kevin. Why he did it was less clear. Muscle memory placed us at a table in the canteen. Sitting across from him on any ordinary day, some rolled up piece of napkin or a wad of garbage paper might present itself as a projectile to reach him across the plates and glass between us.

Tonight we were in my kitchen, together there for the first time. I'd moved the table into the corner with both leaves open to make extra space for snacks for the party. We pushed the pretzels and empties aside and sat facing each other off the edge of the table, knees nearly interlocked.

My chin was on my hand and my heart was on the ceiling. We were laughing about something when I noticed the toy baseball on the table. The stairs creaked and the sound of background chatter crept in like a breeze that chilled my spine. He flicked the ball, and it rolled fast off the edge then fell to the floor with a flat thud.

The phone on the wall behind him rang, and I clicked to review the test questions.

Huh. So I imagined the ball on the table immediately as a colorless glass sphere on a white table. Before I even read the prompt to push the ball in my imagination I had already placed my index finger on the ball and was rolling it around it place like a fidgit so I just tapped the ball to push it with my index finger so the person who pushed the ball was me (non-binary) for reasons that I was already interacting with the ball anyway. I imagined this in the first person so I didn't really see myself in full. The ball itself was baseball sized and rolled a short distance, stopped and wobbled after being pushed.

I didn't think about what the table was made of but the ball itself was glass that was smooth and cold to the touch. The table was square, waist height and dining room table sized. The room these objects were in was featureless and visualization was instant upon reading.

The blue ball won’t roll because it was on a table of clean laundry

red/blue stripes

none

they didn't

small pool ball

generic Simpsonesque brown, but it stopped existing towards the corners.

1. Red
2. An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape doesn't have a gender
3. An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape
4. Baseball sized
5. Round, four legs, wood.

Haha no, I had to fill all that info in as I answered the questions. I mean, you can't literally see the things in your minds eye. They're more concepts.

I don't literally SEE it like I would with my eyes but:

Red ball

Clown, no idea of gender

Again, clown

Ball smaller than tennis ball, bigger than golf ball

The table I am sitting at and looking at right now.

And no, I can and do imagine how things look. It's a different sort of knowing/imagining than actual physical vision or dreaming though. Which led me to be confused about what exactly aphantasia is.

Answer:

It was a simplistic grescale scenario devoid of unnecessary features. Think a simple and fast 3D render from the 90s or something. So everything was grescale, the person had no gender (or even features), and pushed a baseball sized sphere on a simple rectangular table made of indeterminate materials. Now I can picture something more detailed if required or desired but my mind focused on the mechanics of it all and kept details to a minimum. Asking for these details afterwards doesn't generate them retroactively.

• Small push, ball rolls a very short distance and stops
• No color
• Male, maybe an extension of myself doing the push
• I did not visualize a complete person, only a suggestion of a body, and a arm/hand to push the ball
• Size of two fists together
• I did not visualize a full table, more like a camera view of a tabletop. Nondescript wood finish.

Did I already know? Sort of... My brain rotated through multiple possible imaginings. It worked forward, then reversed the logic to complete the scene. Nothing was set in stone: My brain decided that the ball would not roll off the table. Why? The ball has an uneven surface, it wobbled when stopping. Why? Because it has a surface like a soccer ball. Why? Because that was the first "look" my brain landed on that answered the question. I recall rotating through different colors and finishes, but after my brain imagined the ball stopping I had to come up with a why.

Orange

Male

He was a server in a black waistcoat, white shirt. He was brushing the ball off the table before setting plates down.

It was a ball from a kid's ball pit, so a little bigger than a baseball, smaller than a softball.

The table was round, with a red gingham table cloth.

The orange ball on the red gingham table cloth were there immediately, once instructed to visualize a person pushing it, it only made sense that it was a server, since the table seemed restauranty.

I have complete aphantasia, I can't even visualize a ball or table, or anything else - never have been able to, I see absolutely nothing when I close my eyes and can't visualize or see things in my head at all except when dresming. Same for my Dad. He can apparently visualize an extremely tiny amount (like the night sky but just black + stars, etc) when he's high on thc gummies. I've never been high so idk if it works for me.

It took me 24 years to realize that people actually can actually see images in their head when they think about something or intentionally imagine it. I always thought that phrases like "picture it in your head" or "see in your head what it will look like" were just phrases, not that people actually can see things when they think about it.

The ball falls off the edge but doesn't make a sound, effectively disappears from the scene.

Glass ball for some reason

Nondescript woman, no distinct features, blurry at the edge of perception. Vaguely wearing business clothes.

Ball was softball size

Table was featureless but the size and color of the table I'm sitting at now

• What color was the ball?

I didn't see a color in my visualization, but I know it was red.

• What gender was the person that pushed the ball?

They were genderless; more of a concept of a person than an image of one.

• What did they look like?

Like...an area of visual space that my mind attached the identifier "Person" to.

• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?

A little smaller than a tennis ball, but bigger than a ping pong ball.

• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

I didn't see either property in my visualization, but it's wooden and round.

And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?

Lol. Well, I guess I botched that one. Obviously I did not know before being asked these questions, for most of the answers.

I didn't know most answers, my mind kinda works with the concepts. The ball was there, but there was no color, not even a grayscale, but the absence of color ( I have difficulty imagining colors in general), the pweson was there, and was a woman, but with no face of features. I don't even know if i really pictured a woman, or if my mind worked on that after seeing the questions. The table was there, but was simply a plane for the ball to be on, without features.

Now that I write this, it seems weird. Do people picture scenarios like this as if seeing a real scene? Can this be related to aphantasia? Should I be worried?

I basically fill in the details as the questions were asked. It could have been anything from a billiard ball on a pool table to a rubber ball on a dining room table. Anything unimportant is basically left "unfilled" or generic until it needs detail.

The person who pushed it was vaguely male, again no details unless the question is asked. They may as well have been a featureless mannequin.

I do not have Aphantasia, but I've always been fascinated by other people's "normal". I always loved the "is my red the same as your red" thought experiment ever since I was a kid. I have spoken to people that claim to have Aphantasia, and they describe their experience as pretty normal. Instead of seeing an image in their head, they just.... know the thing. Where most people can visualize a scene in their head, Aphantasiacs apparently just feel and understand. It doesn't seem to impair them whatsoever and they seem to be perfectly normal people otherwise. My layman's explanation is maybe it's a vestigial function of the human brain back when we needed more empathetic or intuitive responses to stimuli, similar to the theory that ADHD would have been a benefit during hunter/gather societies.

The ball was silver and completely reflective. The seen basically looked like that image used for ray tracing testing. No gender just a hand. Table was black

Light blue ball

Male

Medium height dressed in a long sleeved pale blue collared work shirt, wearing jeans, with a brown belt. Brown hair. Non-descript facial features.

Tennis ball sized

A white, rectangular wooden table.

I already knew, the picture formed instantly on reading the prompt. Initially my perspective was looking directly at the ball then when I read the part about pushing it off the table my perspective shifted further back.

It's a gentle push so the ball rolls for a second before falling off the edge of the table and bouncing away on the floor.

Ball Color: Bright red

Pusher Gender: Masculine

Pusher appearance: Caucasian, Tan suit, head was out of frame

Ball size: Tennis ball sized, but smooth with a seam around the middle

Table appearance: A square, short end table on a white studio backdrop. Dark wood with a glossy coating.

The important question: I can confidently say every question I already knew and was just describing what I was seeing, with the exception of maybe the pushers clothing. After reading the question my focus shifted to it and it visually resolved and I described it. Looked and felt almost the exact same way that you might not notice the details of an object in your peripheral because the focus of the scene was the ball, and then at a prompt, shifting your gaze and taking note of that object at the edge. It was framed like some kind of ball demonstration physics video.

I was really surprised when I learned that the inner eye wasn't just some figure of speech, so I don't see anything, certainly no extra visual details.

Something is still happening though, I can sort of "feel out" shapes/volumes and motion, like depth perception with no visuals attached.

• What color was the ball?
  Grey, I suppose? It wasn't important until this question so it was kind of colorless, even though I could picture it.

• What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
  Androgynous.

• What did they look like?
  Nondescript.

• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
  A bit larger than a softball.

• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
  It was a rectangular table. It shifted from being smooth and grey to a lightly finished maple, then back again.

• Important question:
  I didn't really think about these details until asked.