Comment by SaidinWoT | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SaidinWoT | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> it sounds like the way you remember things must be missing a lot of details.

> Do you think that's accurate?

I don't think someone with aphantasia (of which I am one!) is really capable of assessing this - which details our memories have routinely omitted is an unknown unknown until we're explicitly made conscious of the gap.

With regard to your example of a movie, I think you may be overweighting the importance of visualization in recalling narratives (and details within them). Fiction books (for adults, anyways) generally lack visuals, yet readers across the entire visualization spectrum[0] can engage with them and recall/discuss scenes, plot points, etc. Absorbing the narrative of a movie isn't so far off from that. I just took my kid to see Inside Out 2 earlier this week, and have a pretty clear recollection (sans whatever gaps I'm incapable of being aware of) of all of it.

[0] I think, but am not sure, that it strengthens my point here to note that people who visualize the story as they read it are nearly certainly visualizing it _differently_, but that almost never poses a problem for engaging with others about it.

Thanks, those are great points. After more thought, I somewhat agree I was overweighing the value of visualizing things in my mind. I don't know if there are people out there that can actually conjure tastes of food as part of remembering something. I only remember food tastes through language descriptions like sweet, salty etc. So maybe that's analogous to aphantasia. It's just that we're talking about the sense of sight versus taste. From a practical standpoint, there isn't much value even if I could taste something as part of a memory. It would make the memory even stronger and more vivid though.

> I don't know if there are people out there that can actually conjure tastes of food as part of remembering something. I only remember food tastes through language descriptions like sweet, salty etc.

For what it's worth, I can't conjure anything other than a few fleeting details for something visual. When I manage to surface a distinct image, it vanishes pretty fast. But (if I can remember it) I can "imagine" the taste of a specific chocolate bar, a sound (particularly voices) or how something feels to touch very distinctly. I'd say "accurately" as well, but that's hard to gauge.

Interestingly, I think my tendency to visualize makes me a slow reader. I can suppress it with effort, but typically my pace slows down to let me imagine observing the story.

I don't think that's part of "visualization" itself. I don't visualize a scene, but I still can take a long time if it's interesting or has a lot of detail. I remember reading the Lord of the Rings books and it has really long descriptions of the scenery and sometime it took me a very long time to read it, just so I can get all the details. In other parts I read over it as fast as I could to get on with the story.

I imagine that's the same for "both sides".

Perhaps, but for me, it's more like having to slow down to let the scene play out in my mind. But that's really interesting to hear about your experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com