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Nog een A op mijn lijstje!

Gestart door Ace89, september 30, 2016, 11:33:04 AM

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Ace89

Naast aromantisch en asexueel, heb ik ook aphantasia  :schater:


"Picture this: a beautiful sunset at the beach.." While your mind shows you a lovely image, mine stays absolutely blank. I have Aphanasia: the inability to create visual images in your mind. I knew other people could make pictures in their mind, be it crystal clear or blurry, I just never gave it any thought that I could not. When I tell this to people they often find it very strange and wonder how I imagine and remember things then. I found some questions online about this issue and thought it fun to answer them for the poster.

1. Can you picture simple things like balls or triangles?
No, I can't. I know what balls and triangles are and I can easily describe them to you, but I don't see anything in my mind. When someone tells you about a ball, you probably imagine one with a specific size and color. Because I only work with words and concepts, my triangles and balls don't have any specific 'look'. When you tell me about a blue ball, I attach blue to ball, but they are still just ideas, not an actual image.

2. Does it help if you see the object in front of you and then close your eyes?
Only a little bit. Often I feel like there is some faint impression that I can almost reach, but it never actually appears before my mind's eye and it fades quickly. Having seen it just before also makes me remember more facts about the thing, These facts together with the impression of its general color, shape and size,  would enable me to draw it better. But don't expect it to look exactly like the original pot.

3. If you cannot even imagine what simple things look like, how do you remember faces?
I don't. I may remember the color of your hair and eyes, your glasses, the fact that you have freckles or a small nose. I remember facts, not the actual face. Faces that I have seen many times may leave a faint impression that is almost visual, but I am never able to call it to my mind's eye. Actually I'm not sure I even have such a thing.

4. How do you recognize things?
Recognizing things and actively visualizing things are two different processes. The first is passive, the other active. Apparently my mind does save enough concepts or visual clues from things to recognize them, I am just not capable of pulling them to my conscience.

5. How do you think and remember things?
I mostly think in words, concepts and emotions. I can also play music and to a lesser extent voices in my head (Maybe I am crazy..). So I do have an imagination, it is just not visual. I don't recall what things felt, looked or smelled like as a physical sensation, nor can I imagine such things. If the visual aspect of something is not very important, I tend to focus much more on their general impression/character, especially with people.  If I want to remember visual details I have to focus on them, and then again I will only remember them as facts or as 'muscle memory' after drawing.


6. Do you attach much value to visual things?
I surely like it when things look nice, I enjoy it at that moment. I also really appreciate images and figures used to illustrate/clarify things. Movies and pictures are great, because they make things visual when I can't do that myself. I do however hate infographics with a passion. Modern musea with 'interactive' displays, spoken explanations and visual fuss also don't really attract me. Remembering visuals takes more energy because I have to conceptualize everything that is more than a very general impression.

7. Do you enjoy reading if you cannot visually imagine what is going on?
Yes, very much! To me a story is more about personalities, emotions, actions and thoughts. Flowery descriptions of what things look like get boring pretty fast, but I like some basic info to build the general idea of a person or thing. Movies never look different than I expected from the book, which is great!

8. How do you relate to visual art?
I like looking at art, but I never feel anything about it. It just looks nice. I am very bad at drawing, sculpting and painting realistic things. I make dresses as a hobby, which is a very visual thing, yet I never truly know what it is going to look like until it is finished.

9. Do you dream?
I rarely remember my dreams, but those I do remember when I wake up are visual. I even remember snippets of the visual parts for a few seconds after waking up, but it is very blurry.

10. Did aphantasia hinder your education?
Some scientist think that aphantasia actually makes learning more difficult. I guess that depends on your ability to conceptualize things quickly and easily. To me, it never hindered me one bit. Studying is actually very much up my alley. It is remembering and connecting facts, conceptualizing ideas, very much abstract. Text book and presentation images help to clarify concepts and how things work. They contain only the info you need in a logical way. Thus they are easy to conceptualize and to retain a faint impression from. Videos only help if processes are dynamic, 3D or difficult to piece together from images. Mostly they just frustrate me because they go too slow :p

11. What about your work?
It doesn't hinder my work at all most of the time. I do however have some troubles remembering all the details of complex/detailed things that are usually remembered and represented in a visual way. Drawing them a few times or remembering the processes that create the things helps, but it gets more difficult the more complex the visual is. Try to remember what a specific spider web looks like in detail without storing an image... Distinguishing groups of complex things that are only slightly different is also tricky.

12. Do you feel bad about it?
No, why should I?

Een hokje dient om even te passen of iets je staat. Daarna stap je weer vrij de wereld in, met of zonder nieuwe aanwinst :D

Marie8

A is een leuke letter toch? ;)
Ik heb inderdaad als wel eens eerder van aphantasia gehoord

En ja, heel veel mensen kunnen geen gezichten herinneren, niet goed in ieder geval en de precieze gezichtskenmerken ook niet (ik ook niet)
Het gezicht van een persoon vergeet je dan ook eerder dan de stem (meen ik me te herinneren ooit gehoord te hebben)
duc me in cochliecclesiam (ecclesiam cochlearum)

Tempesta

Bijzonder, daar had ik nog nooit van gehoord. Ik ben zelf ongelooflijk visueel ingesteld, snap concepten en processen veel beter als ik ze voor me kan zien en onthoud visuele info veel beter dan auditieve info.