Comment by thrance | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrance | Hacker News Reader

I feel like there's more to aphantasia than just "can you see the apple or not?". I can't for the life of me imagine an apple. At best, I get a very faint and dark picture of something resembling the fruit. Plus, there's one on the desk right next to me, so I shouldn't have too much trouble with the assignment, but here we are.

On the other hand, I have a pretty good memory (compared to my peers) and I can recall vivid (at least to me) images of the past. For example, I can still picture a scene of me and my dad picking apples in my grandparents' garden years ago, just after my grandmother passed away. I recall the cold November weather, the grey sky, the felled apples laying on the ground, some rotten. I can still remember what I was wearing that day. Similarly, I do dream a lot, most often accompanied with clear images of places and people, fictional or not. Even though I am utterly incapable of drawing these memories and dreams (I tried), I would still qualify these things as "image", and I can't fathom them being any clearer.

Am I just misunderstanding the exercise or is there something here?

I think I have a similar experience. I can remember scenes to some degree and my dreams are extremely vivid. I wish I could `see` in my mind like I do when I dream. But I don't think I can imagine an image very well. I certainly can't close my eyes and `see` it and I find it hard to believe that others can.

> I feel like there's more to aphantasia than just "can you see the apple or not?".

There is. I think the definition is still being worked on. Here is an overview, but I don't see your particular case: https://aphantasia.com/article/science/aphantasia-definition...

Since you can recall scenes you saw, it might not be Aphantasia. Not being able to create visuals of random stuff might be called differently.

There is a simple (unofficial?) test for aphantasia, and I have tried it on many of my peers, it seems to be accurate.

_Close your eyes and ask someone else to read the instructions for you. If you really want to take it stop reading here._

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Imagine a room with a table in it. Someone comes in, puts a ball on the table and the ball falls down from the table.

- What age was the person that came in?

- What hairstyle did they have?

- What was that person wearing?

- How big was the table? Describe how it looked like.

- What color was the ball?

... and similar questions.

In my experience, people with aphantasia will say "I don't know" or "I didn't pay attention" to almost all of these questions. For me personally, everything is "blank." There was no ball to see there, and the person did not have a face. I just experience "feelings" or "sensations" of the scenario, like in the matrix movie. At most some wire frames. Most other people would say, for example, there was a big brown table with metallic legs in the middle of the room, and the person that came in had a blue T-shirt.

I'm not sure that these types of questions necessarily capture the different levels of what people might "see," though. I couldn't tell you the age or even face of the person I imagined, but I can say with confidence that they were male; I also didn't imagine the table in much fidelity, but I very clearly pictured the person approaching the table from my right side (his left side) and that when the ball fell, it rolled towards me.

> Most other people would say, for example, there was a big brown table with metallic legs in the middle of the room, and the person that came in had a blue T-shirt.

I would only take that seriously from thoughful, detail-oriented, intelligent people who have demonstrated critical introspection abilities before. Otherwise I'd assume they are making it up post-hoc. People often swear up and down in witness testimonies about what they saw and it just turns out to be complete post-hoc fabrication of their mind, even if it seems true to them. Similarly I think they post-hoc think it was a big brown table but this is like a language model completing the sentence.

It's been shown how in split brain patients the language center of the brain can make up totally unsupported justifications for actions that "explain" its experience, fully unrelated to what actually happened.

> Otherwise I'd assume they are making it up post-hoc.

You are right, in that this test might not live up to the highest of standards. But then there are variations in the details. For example one of my friends who happened to be a soccer player said more details about the ball. Other people described familiar objects such as their own kitchen table. You can also tell if someone is starting to think about the answers vs. when they are recalling from memory.

Overall, this method is often (IMO) a better indicator than the typical "apple test" as the context is more natural. Anecdotally the difference between the aphantasia group (incl. those who didn't know this condition existed) and the average response is just too large to ignore.

I'm not so sure. People also describe their visual experience such as if it was camera-like. A rectangle window out of their ead with colors, like a photo/painting.

Perception and experience are very hard to describe. We constantly automatically fill in things that weren't observed or explicitly imagined. It requires conscious effort to notice how foveation and saccades work, the blind spot, the less vivid color perception the further we are from the center etc.

Another thing is this effect: https://cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/meta-knowledge-an...

People will claim a lot of things but if there is no external "ground truth" to test against, people tend to overclaim. They will tell you they can imagine a penny or the apple logo or whatever it is, but then fail these objective tests.

If you can pass or fail the aphantasia test simply by saying words that are up to introspection, it won't be a useful test. Most people under most circumstances simply say what their concept of a normal person is supposed to say.

I can give you a quick and infallible test, but it has to be done live. How do I reach out?

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