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Comment by menotyou | Hacker News Reader

Quick test: Try to imagine the following and then answer the questions beneath.

Imagine a table with a ball on it. A person is approaching the table, pushes the ball gently, and the balls starts to roll.

Questions:

(1) What color has the ball?

(2) Is the person male or female?

(3) What material is the table made of?

(4) When you answered questions (1)-(3), did you know the answer beforehand, or did you think about when you were reading the questions?

Depending on your answer to question (4) you can assume if you have it or not.

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I don't think this is a very reliable test, and it even verges on misleading, as there is a degree of complexity that may lead people who do not have aphantasia to believe that they do have the condition. I think this line of thinking with your "test" has been what has led some people in the comments to say that they believe that the condition may just be a result of miscommunication on what mental visualization entails, since they believe that those who claim to have aphantasia believe that they have the condition due to not meeting a threshold of visualization.

However, it appears that for people who actually have the condition, visualization never gets to any specificity. One could be unable to answer a single one of the questions on your test, yet that does not necessarily mean they have aphantasia, as aphantasia is not the lack of detail in visualization, but the lack of any visualization at all. Some people who have aphantasia have attested in these comments that they cannot picture anything in their minds at all. Many of them attest that they don't even visualize when dreaming.

I like this test because it’s not your answer, it’s your reaction to the question that matters. If you read this and think “uhh is that a trick question?” then you probably have aphantasia.

My initial reaction to reading this the first time was to go reread the story more closely to find the answer. But the answer isn’t in the story. For many people the answer is just a truth that exists when they hear the story and are asked the question. If it’s not you likely have aphantasia.

Maybe you are just very lazy at filling in the details of the scenery? A questionnaire based approach doesn't sound very objective to me. A condition with the only "realiable" diagnostic being the VVIQ test, is not a condition at all.

I've found this to be the most reliable test.

Erm... here's a simpler test:

(1) picture a circle

(2) do you see a circle?

(3) do you still see a circle?

Even replace "circle" with "straight line." I think tests like above (balls, people, details) miss the point that in actual aphantasia you literally visualize nothing

I think this hits closer to the mark. For any given description, if a person is able to visualize anything at all, then they don't have the condition. If they do have the condition, then they apparently can't visualize anything.

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