[morgante]

How do you know that you have aphantasia?

I just took the test on the BBC and got the lowest score, but I'm still not sure if I have aphantasia or not.

I can "picture" scenes in my mind. I certainly don't have a problem with imagination or thinking up different potential realities.

But the picture I have is basically a literary description. If you asked me to imagine a beach I would rapidly compose a narrative composition of said beach: there's turquoise water lapping against the sand which slopes up gradually. Oh and there's probably a rock somewhere along the shoreline. And there are some palm trees. But in my mind this process is occurring exactly how it's happening here: as text.

That being said, I remain unconvinced that I actually have aphantasia. How do I know everyone else isn't having the same experience but describing it with images?

One point is that when I tried to imagine my best friend's face I couldn't come up with more than a general description. But perhaps this is just a poor memory of faces?

Like you, I also have a terrible experiential memory. I barely remember going to high school at all and the few memories that I do have from my life are basically stories—narrative snapshots which I have verbalized enough times for them to be embedded in my mind, just like the plots of my favorite books are. I can just as easily imagine the first time I asked out a girl as when Frodo destroyed the One Ring.

Are there any more scientific tests available?

[tempestn]

I think my visualization ability is poor compared to most people, but I can definitely tell you that it starts with an image, which you can then describe in text, not the other way around. For instance, when I imagine a beach, I pull up a (rough, fuzzy, for me) picture in my mind. Then I actually look at the picture and notice that, for instance, it's in kind of a U-shape around a small inlet. In fact, it actually took me a minute to come up with the words to describe that just now.

That said, I think an easier way to differentiate is to imagine a beach you've actually been to. When I tried to do that, the first thing to come to mind was a lake near my house. And I saw more of the lake than the beach actually - the trees behind it, the parking lot off to one side, etc. Thinking logically about that one, my mental picture is actually flawed, because that parking lot is farther away than it is in the mental picture that came up!

It seems like for a lot of people, the pictures actually have a "mind of their own" to some extent. Another comment mentioned imagining a triangle, and it turned out it was spinning. I can totally see that happening. You don't think, "I'm going to imagine a spinning triangle" or something - you just attempt to pull up a picture of a triangle, and your brain gives you a representation. Details you don't decide on will be filled in.

It really is fascinating. And from reading other comments on this post and others like it, it sounds like some people have a far stronger ability to visualize than I do. I'm mildly jealous, but at the same time, the OP for instance has obviously done just fine without - and is also a highly entertaining writer! (Who knows, perhaps even for reasons related to the aphantasia.)