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Comment by riskable | Hacker News Reader

I believe they test this with the "paper folding test". Something like this: https://www.123test.com/spatial-reasoning-test/

If you can answer at least one of those questions you probably don't have aphantasia.

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I am mind-blind in every sense, yet I got a 9/10 on that. It's still only checked by qualitative things, how a person self reports about it. I know it's not just a language thing though. My go to example is that if you knew morgan freedman wrote this you could read it in his voice in your head. I can't, I'd recognize his voice, but I can't use it in my head.

OK, so this is new to me. I can't see anything in my mind, but I can construct any celebrity's voice completely perfectly in my head. I can read anything in anyone else's voice. When you read things in your head, are they only in your own voice?

Is this really testing aphantasia? I would think that to do that you'd have to show someone the first image, give them time to remember it or whatever, and then ask them which of the shapes are possible without reference to the original image. I think anyone can look back and forth between these things and reason about how they come together ("this is not adjacent to that so this folded version is not possible").

Yeah, I have the same concern as well. However, I felt that being able to visualize things in my head allowed me to solve some of these problems very quickly (in around 4-5 seconds). I can make the 2-d image collapse into the 3-d object in my head. I guess not having aphantasia would make you quicker on these tests? I must admit though, I had to look back and forth for some problems as well.

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