In this tweet, I'm a hard 5, while everyone I have spoken to is a 1 or a 2 - https://twitter.com/premium__heart/status/122561067717752013...
I do see visual imagery when I'm dreaming, but cannot voluntarily bring the imagery back when I'm awake.
Myself, I'm 5 too. And it really pisses me off. I wish the mind's eye was trainable. Is it?
(And to answer GP's question, during the - infrequent - dreams I have, I'm usually a perfect 1.)
I'm someone who is exceptionally good at visual things. For the apple, I can do way better than the example picture (1) on the Twitter image. I can not only do 2D, but 3D. I can rotate the apple in my mind and slice it and then rotate the slices etc. Found out about this by accident, while watching YouTube videos with visual puzzles, that were completely obvious for me with a single glance.
And I spend most of my free time on visual hobbies, like playing video games or watching movies. But maybe I'm just attracted to those hobbies, because I'm a visual type.
I've never heard of a successful training regime, or even of anyone who successfully trained it, so that's an evidence against it being trainable.
> And I spend most of my free time on visual hobbies, like playing video games or watching movies. But maybe I'm just attracted to those hobbies, because I'm a visual type.
I'd guess the latter, because I also spend a lot of time on visual hobbies, like playing video games or 3D modelling, and it didn't help me in any way. I still don't have a mind's eye when I'm awake.
If people are diagnosing themselves with this (or the star one I have seen elsewhere), then I think there is clearly confusion between hallucination and visualization.