Mastodawn

There might not be a relationship /at all/ or, probably, any relationship is purely coincidence but who can blame a dude for being curious 😄

Wynke Feb 6

@hvangalen My thoughts are, for the most part, extremely verbal - as in not just words but full sentences most of the time. In different languages, too (any language I have a basic grasp of). And I get a bit stuck at times if I can't get the grammar right.

I do have visual thoughts, but they are much less prominent and often play a supporting role. On the other hand, I do seem to have thoughts based on other senses (taste, touch, smell) that stand out and are more independent of verbal thoughts. So most definitely no aphantasia there.

I have spoken to at least two people who do have aphantasia who said that their thoughts do not take the form of words and sentences either and are much more abstract. I have a hard time imagining how that works, probably as much so as they would find it hard to imagine the shape of my thoughts.

@wynke Thank you, interesting.

That last parapraph describes exactly how it is for me (but interestingly, at this time, zero people have chosen the "aphantasia with inner dialogue being just vibes"-option, but it's early days)

For me, visual memories, like peoples faces are also stored in an abstract manner and they fade away really fast. Of course, I do recognize people, but I can't see them in a "minds eye", so I like to have pictures of people close to me.

Wynke Feb 6

@hvangalen A funny thing is that many of my *memories*, as opposed to real-time thoughts, are visual (and/or the equivalent in relation to other senses) to me, but they're kind of harder to access (the visual ones, at least) because they're less compatible with those same real-time thoughts.

And for my recognition of other people, their face plays only a relatively small part. It's just as much based on shape, posture, the way they move... And when someone unexpectedly changes their hairstyle it can really throw me off (shape more so than colour).

Ruben Feb 6

@hvangalen @mayintoronto I have some aphantasia (mainly struggle with visualising things) and voted for "vibes", but it's a mixture, I think. By default, it's "vibes", but when I start to really focus, it morphs into words.

@mayintoronto @ruben For me thoughts become words when typing or writing. That's why I really like typing on a computer! I can easily rephrase or add clarity as I struggle to do that in my mind before actually writing 😄

@spiegelmama @hvangalen What's Aphantasia?

@spiegelmama @NicksWorld No mind's eye. No ability "see things in your head". We do have an imagination, just not visually/graphically.

@hvangalen @spiegelmama oh, okay. I have the ability to see in my mind's eye even though I'm blind.

@spiegelmama @NicksWorld This is so fascinating to me. Curious to know if you have always been blind. (I don't need an answer if you don't feel comfortable sharing)

@hvangalen @spiegelmama Yep, born blind.

@NicksWorld This is so intriguing that a blind person can have a mind's eye, but my mind's eye is blind.

The mind and body work in mysterious ways, eh

@spiegelmama

@hvangalen @spiegelmama It can be very vivid sometimes. I can make entire worlds in my head when I feel like it.

Ollie 🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸🇺🇦Feb 6

@hvangalen Aphantasia with inner voice and vibes but split about 2:1

Gwen the Loitering Fox

Feb 6

@hvangalen I htink the easiest way to describe is "vibes based"

if I focus on the thinking it will take the form of a dialogue, but as I read or just exist, it'll mostly just be shapeless thoughts yeah

banneduser Feb 6

I need my inner voice to shut the fuck up he’s an asshole

@banneduser Yeah I can imagine that sucks

Chris Siebenmann Feb 6

@hvangalen @mayintoronto I probably don't have aphantasia¹ and for me it's definitely in words or at least fragmented word-thoughts.

¹ I have a very good visual memory for things, as I found out when I took up recreational bicycling and reliably recognized places we'd been before, but when I picture things in my mind they're generally at least somewhat abstract and when I can reconstruct in my mind what something looks like, it's a tedious exercise, it's not a picture that snaps into being.

@cks @hvangalen @mayintoronto

Ted Lemon Feb 6

Personally it's inconceivable to me that people are able to picture things in their mind clearly. It feels like they're lying when they make this claim. I understand intellectually that perhaps they are not, but that's how implausible it seems.

@mayintoronto @abhayakara

@cks I know right? But apparently they can and my brain can't comprehend how 😄

@mayintoronto @cks This reads like aphantasia to me, to be honest.

Elyse M Grasso Feb 6

@hvangalen Aphantasia and neither answer seems right.

@ElyseMGrasso So is it a combination of things or... No inner dialogue at all?

Elyse M Grasso Feb 7

@hvangalen It's complicated. But dialogue is very much the wrong word for any of it, I think, since it implies questions and answers between two entities. There isn't anything to have a dialogue with: it's all just me, connecting with things and ideas and noticing 3rd party connections between exterior things and ideas. And the verbal part (there's a LOT of verbal) is at least as likely to be storytelling, narrative, as it is to be a commentary on events and my surroundings or internalities.

Abram Kedge🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦Feb 7

@ElyseMGrasso @hvangalen No aphantasia, and very much like Elyse, only I'd add in a very bizarre sense of balance. Options in decision-making have mass. Visualised components have tangible levels of elegance and "rightness". Mental calculations, particularly when estimating things like the number of boxes needed to pack up a house are weighed on the balance and adjusted until they feel right.

Elyse M Grasso Feb 7

@AbramKedge @hvangalen I don't do mass, I don't think, but I do 3D packing very well. Fill a pickup truck with topper completely while leaving a view port from the rear-view mirror to the back gate. Fill a milk crate with odd shaped squashes making as much use of the available volume as possible, but so the next crate stacked on top won't damage any of the squashes...

I'm not sure how that works without visualization. It's probably related to being good at jigsaw puzzles without visualization.

Abram Kedge🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦Feb 7

@ElyseMGrasso @hvangalen oh I'm obsessive with packing efficiently! Absolutely love it.

I think it originated with working for a house moving company for five years - you can't waste space when you're fitting four homes into one 2000 cubic feet Mercedes truck, in Austria or Switzerland (no backup trucks to pick up the extra).

When we had an estate sale team in preparing for our big moving sale, they thought they'd need two skips for all the discarded things. Nope, I did all the putting-in-skip, used two thirds of its capacity.

Elyse M Grasso Feb 7

@AbramKedge @hvangalen Do you have stereoscopic depth perception? I have a near eye and a far eye, and never the twain shall meet. So visual data lacks some 3D-ness, for me, but the world does not.

A word that keeps coming up when I try to think about how I organize the world is 'kinesthetic'. It's not the right word, but it's less wrong than some alternatives. I feel like people who focus on aphantasics' visual cortex and ignore -- I don't know, the spine? maybe? are sort of missing the point.

Abram Kedge🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦Feb 7

@ElyseMGrasso @hvangalen I do, even though the right eye is increasingly useless.

I'd love to be able to somehow experience how you plan and refine your spatial organisation. I bet that quietly observing your choices would convey a lot about your inner processes - or perhaps not! It's like reverse engineering a very different world, all the context would have to be reconstructed.

@ElyseMGrasso Yeah perhaps monologue is a better term in hindsight.

KanaMauna Feb 7

@hvangalen

This needs to multiple choice. I an not aphantasia but sometimes its a monologue, sometimes vibes, sometimes music

@KanaMauna I am realising that as well. This requires more options or a multiple of polls.

Very interesting how minds work!

K4-713

Feb 7

@hvangalen As someone who does not think in words until the thoughts need to be expressed to others: Wow, is this honestly the less common attribute? Because that would explain a lot.

Needless Mustard Feb 7

@hvangalen This was difficult to answer. I'm Aphantastic and when I decide to think about something there's i guess speech-like something to it, but also vibes when I'm not actively thinking about something? Like I'm pretty good at just shutting off the internal noise.

king toot uncommon

🏴Feb 7

@hvangalen my inner monologue used to be speech-like but has become more vibes only in my 40s

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Feb 7

@hvangalen Since I learned of aphantasia, I've thought a lot about how my mind works. Yes, inner dialogue, heck, even back and forth between groups of individuals, rehearsing how I think people might behave because that's how my brand of shyness and autism works: defusing unexpected behavior, preventing startlement and freezing up, by calculating what could happen. The written words that show on the page mimics my inner world. But do I hear distinct voices of the people I rehearse on that inner stage?

No. Not really. Recognize?

Yes.

Which leads to the visual, to the mental images. I can, for example take a book and rotate it is my head. I can take a cereal box and turn it to read the opposite side, the bottom, doing it mentally. I can imagine a fighter jet, seeing the nose cone, yawing it around, seeing the exhaust, flipping it, seeing the weapons under the wing, the flaps. Do I see actual images?

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I have what is called visual intelligence. I understand aesthetics, symmetry, composition in a snap. Photography is my art form. But do I see mental images? That's what discussion with people like @ElyseMGrasso made me realize:

No pictures.

No mental images.

It's all recognition. I recognize what I'm looking at internally. Like turning my iPhone around as I thumb type this to see the camera package, and that the exterior is orange. I'm evoking a mental pattern to match or a mental logically imagined structure, and feeling that I am seeing, hearing—but not really either seeing nor hearing. It's recognition.

My dreams, however, feel truly visual, vividly colorful, tangible. But I've read that' is the mental process of the brain exercising the visual and sensory processes in order to write memories into "permanent storage." The visual sensation might be phantom sensation because the REM state activates parts of the brain imagining does not.

Anyway, that's my theory of my visualization at the moment. Hope this impromptu essay is helpful at some level.

#actuallyAutistic #aphantasia #writer #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon

Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦Feb 7

@hvangalen @mayintoronto this is helpful to me: in my Internal Family Systems work with clients, aphantasia changes how I guide the work. I was not aware of the inner-dialogue possibility! My own inner world is very visual/vibes, it's good to know what to ask, about how others experience it.

Estel Feb 7

@hvangalen my inner thoughts are almost entirely voiced

Picturing things in my head is an extreemly active skill to use and is at best an animatic with little visual detail

Fedtegrevinde Furie af Helvede Feb 8

@hvangalen I think the 'no aphantasia' is kind of a finnicky double negation 😂

How we process thoughts are so interesting and funny and weird, so hard to Imagine what it must be like in someone's head when that person's thought process is so different from ones own.

Like, if you have aphantasia, can you imagine what it must be like to not have it? I would think not, but having phantasia doesn't mean I can imagine what it's like not to have it, either!

😂😂😂

hugovangalen 🤖 🕹️ 😼Feb 9

@svedigtype Yeah, "no aphantasia" is "phantasia" I guess, haha

I feel your remark about how individuals very individually process their thoughts. It's such an intruguing thing.

I can kind of imagine what "normal" mind's eye is like, but it feels quite unreal, kinda like I can imagine how it would be if people were able to talk to the dead.

Nigel Small Feb 8

@hvangalen I found out a short while ago that aphantasia was a thing, and it explained a lot about me! I've never actually heard an actual voice in my head, though I do get musical earworms where I can kind of "feel" the tune and lyrics of a song playing, though I don't literally hear that either.

Also, do you remember dreams? I only do if I have a fever, which is rare.

hugovangalen 🤖 🕹️ 😼Feb 9

@technige I remember most of my dreams, and my dreams are in fact very visual. And weird. Mostly weird 😅

(I also do have hallucinations when I haven't had enough sleep, but I've only been sleep deprived when I was much younger and used to party a lot)

Blackoverflow Feb 13

@hvangalen
33% of the votes voted an aphantasia option, but still more votes for aphantasia-vibes than phantasia-vibes.

More than 25% of aphanasia votes were "vibes" votes.
In comparison around 12% of phantasia votes were "vibes" votes.

A bit of a difference.

I am pretty sure, the typical mode of thought is a spectrum and it is hard to measure, because people have no objective overview of their thought processes.