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Comment by kzrdude | Hacker News Reader

Aphantasia: Is there a simple test or procedure we can use to make it easier to decide to what degree we have this or not? It just seems like a topic where expectations can differ a lot. Since it's hard to clearly explain what visualizing feels like and doesn't. Some people might even be very normal and yet disappointed and think they are missing something.

I don't think my mind's eye is particularly strong for example, don't have very vivid imagination. But I also don't know where the frame of reference should be!

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> Is there a simple test

Close your eyes and imagine a triangle. Now, quickly, what color was it? If you have an answer, you do not have aphantasia. If you have no answer, you likely have aphantasia - your mind instantiated a concept of a triangle, but until the question of color came up, it was irrelevant and was not considered

Not a good example, IMO. A triangle is defined as 3 points with 3 lines connecting each consecutive point. A better example would be: think of Tony the Tiger, now what colors are his skin, stripes, and bandana? But that's also not perfect because people are along a spectrum in the amount of detail they're able to see.

I can't see Tony's skin since it's covered by fur unless you count the "toe beans" and nose

Weird. If asked to visualize a triangle, I see the "glowing lines in a black space." If I try to visualize a red/green/blue triangle, I can only briefly maintain the image before it fades away into the default white outline in the void.

However, when asked to think of Tony the Tiger and his stripes, not only do I perceive orange fur and red bandana, but I'm struck by just how freaking blue his nose is and it is uncomfortably persistent.

I can't even bring up a triangle until I made it concrete. I imagined I had cut one out in plywood.

Glowing lines in a black space. Color is a pale off white. It's rotated slightly in 3d space but it's a triangle.

Edit: oh yeah, I didn't close my eyes, sorry. I just thought about it as I was reading and the image flashed for an immeasurable time unit multiple times each time I gave it a bit of thought.

It's extremely easy for me to just, almost like daydreaming, to have my vision darken and have my minds eye take over for microseconds for me to picture things. Guess like built in AR.

My inner voice is also incredibly controllable and more than just a voice. It's just a playback device at this point. Whatever I want i can make it audible.

There are some spatial intelligence tests that essentially require mentally rotating and flipping 3D objects in your mind's eye. That could maybe be one way. Can't speak to the quality of this test, but here's one that might apply: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/iq/visual-spatial-i...

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29087803 I have aphantasia, but I no trouble mentally rotating and flipping 3D objects - but I'm not rotating a image of the object, but more like concepts.

I don't think this tests aphantasia at all really. I have a very weak mind's eye and I've always been able to score very highly on visual spatial recognition tests. I can still conceptualize and rotate items even if I can't picture them clearly.

Interesting. I always "perform" the rotation in my mind's eye, so I guess I figured that's how most others did, too. Typical mind fallacy strikes again.

I did it correctly enough apparently ("Your score on the test was the top of the charts") but I didn't have to visualise anything (it's very difficult for me to visualise anything more than fleeting glimpses of vague shapes).

The answers are easy enough to find without having to perform any imaginary rotation but just eliminating candidates one by one by looking at which features would match or not.

That's not a free test and you are informed of that only after you pass. That's too predatory for me that I don't really care how accurate their tests are.

I think this is what you are looking for

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094522...

The authors also include the GitHub with the code for the experiment. Very interesting

VVIQ[1] is a common test.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_Qu...

A simple quick test I've heard: imagine a ball with wings in front of you.

Now, what was the colour of the ball, and what kind of wings did it have?

I’m not going to say it’s a useful test, but how does https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29088032 work for you?

Cool question. I definitely visualize the various rooms in my apt., Indoors perspective, when answering the question, doing so without prompting. It feels effortless and the visualizations are rather basic, without details, but they are spatial with perspective and I see the shape of the room and the window.

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