I can play back very long and complex pieces of music in my mind. I can recreate tastes and smells from years ago. But nothing visually. Even my dreams are missing the visual element.
I'm blind in one eye (since birth) so I don't see in true 3D. I thought it was because of this--and my long term memory issues--that I have a hell of a time remembering peoples faces (or names). I am not the guy prosecutors want as a, "he saw the perp's face" witness to a crime... I don't have prosopagnosia (true face blindness) but a whole heck of a lot of people look the same enough to me that I have difficulty telling them apart without hearing their voices (I'm fantastic with voice ID; probably comes naturally when you have trouble with faces haha). Yet I've met people who were also born blind in one eye that are absolutely fantastic at remembering people's faces (and names, obviously).
So what I'm getting at is that even though I don't have prosopagnosia I have difficulty with faces. There's got to be a spectrum as with most cognitive measurements. Psychiatrists don't have yes/no charts when they test you for things; It's pretty much all scales from 0-10 (or 200-799 for some reason haha).
Just curious (if you read this far): How hard (for you) is a question like this? https://www.123test.com/content/question5.jpeg
I can't see images in my head. But at least I can try to fold it within my imagination. I can at least rotate it like in 3D computer program. But void is all I "see" in my imagination.
What about you?
For reference, that particular cube folding question is easier than others because you can take the "shortcut" and just pay attention to the orientation of the numbers. The ones that I have to stop and think about the most are the ones with nothing but colors or (minor) shading. For whatever reason I find sides with shapes the easiest to visualize... Even if the shape is the same no matter the orientation (e.g. a circle).
Interesting tidbit: I love 3D puzzles and I always try to visualize what it looks like inside (if it's the type where you can't see the inner workings) while I'm figuring it out. I'm almost always way off with what I thought the inside would look like. Different kind of visualization I think. Probably has something to do with the ability to turn physical sensations (i.e. "what you feel") into a mental image.
Interesting. This question is not hard to solve for me, but I can't solve it by visualizing the cube rotating despite having no trouble visualizing the cube in its initial position. More specifically, when I try to rotate the cube in my mind's eye, to get it "started" rotating, I have to anchor my focus on one particular side of the cube, which I can then rotate correctly. However, this causes me to lose focus on the other sides of the cube, and I can no longer simply look back at them to see how their numbers are oriented after the rotation completes.
When you do it, do you keep all sides "in view" at all times? Can you "focus on" one specific side during the rotation then look back at the others and see that they are still correct?
I visualize the entire flat object and fold it (all at once) in my head, paying attention to where all sides end up. I can then rotate it around in any direction (some are easier than others though; not sure why). Basically I visualize animating the flat object so that it folds into a 3D object at the edges. Just as if you were to do it with something like Blender.
I have a very easy time turning the flat object into a 3D object (accurately) but remembering which markers/colors were on which side is where my visualization often falls apart, haha.
I am the same way. I'm also highly myopic (I got glasses at age 4). There are times I've failed to recognize old friends until they started speaking to me (they did look a little different from the last time I'd seen them).
I always assumed that not seeing very well as a little kid is part of why I sometimes have visual recognition problems, too.
My last job was 100% remote, and I started a week before one of the twice-yearly retreats where everybody gets together in person. Knowing that I'm poor at recognizing faces and poor at remembering names, I threw together https://github.com/philsnow/slanki and was able to put a name to about 50% of the 250 faces I met at that retreat, which felt absolutely like a superpower to me at the time.
...but then it took me more than a minute to figure out why the test wasn't responding no matter how many times I clicked on the answer, and then other answers, and then even other buttons on the form.
There's definitely many different spectra of perception out there! :D
But could you describe your wife's features?
And if so, do you think it's because you're reciting a list of memorized facts ("she has brown hair" etc) or because you're drawing on your memory, even if not visually?
Could you describe (at all) any major pieces of art, such as the pose of the Mona Lisa?
And as I read that over, I realize it's a terrible explanation. I have no clue how to respond usefully.
I recognize people just fine, but if you sat me down with a sketch artist (or indeed the sketch-artist sub game in Police Quest II), I'm at a loss to say whether someone's eyes are wider or narrower-spaced, whether their mouth is higher or lower, etc. Sometimes I do notice people's noses in the abstract and I may have a describable memory of that, and I think I remember most people's hair shape if not the color. But "A face with a small nose and long hair" is not really much to go on.
Smells, too. I smell just fine, and sometimes smells evoke instant memories, but I can't name a smell that I'm smelling. I'm absolutely at a loss to figure out what herbs are missing from food I'm making, or what I've added too much of. I can't describe tastes or smells beyond a very basic level.
There are standard "algorithms" how to draw people. You kind of draw standard shapes and then make differences against "standard". Proportions of peoples heads, eyes, noses and other features are surprisingly similar among people.
Sketch artists basically learned very well how to draw peoples faces specifically and what are important features people notice.
I think I can kind of imagine what it's like not to be able to picture images in my head but I always have a very hard time imagining what people without internal narrative feel like (as I assume it must be to imagine what it's like to have one when you don't)
When I realized many people actually can recall a snapshot of things, I realized (part of) how they manage to be so much better at drawing than I am.
Truly hard to walk a mile in anyone else's shoes.