[Artlav]

> But I do wonder how much of it is about different uses of words by different people.

There are qualitative differences, however. I think a better question would be not how vivid the imagined shape is, but how connected and contextual it is.

Someone might imagine a 6 red star and stop at that, someone might imagine a 3 star, but with the whole Kremlin tower attached on a snowy night with distant car sounds.

Testable things i found are looking for reactions. Imagine yourself at the beach, standing half immersed in the sea, enjoying the view, then something grabs your leg underwater.

-Did you flinch, or was these just words? Some people would, since they are contextually immersed in the scene.

-Can you answer side questions, like how calm the sea was, were you looking towards the land or the horizon, were there any birds in the sky, and so on? Some people can, because they were visualizing the scene, some people won't unless prompted, since they were constructing the scene.

In the similar vein, do you project your imagination over the world around you? People who do tend to not comprehend how you can lose things, like forgetting where you parked your car.

[bonoboTP]

I do think there is something to this, but it's exceedingly difficult to communicate about the differences.

For example English is not my native language and even though I'm basically fluent as far as understanding any TV show or reading books goes, but I still notice it doesn't reach me as viscerally as speech in my native language. It's blunted, it's like touching things with gloves on. So there is some sort of vividness of ideas, but it's hard to describe.

I think people who claim they can visualize something don't actually pixel for pixel visualize it. I read about some study where these people only realized this when followup questions came. I think you can excite your neurons to represent the visual concept of a house without having to expend all the effort to actually create all the parts, decide on the color of window frames, all the small details.

Overall I'm torn. I guess there are differences and we should listen to descriptions like these. On the other hand, I also know how unreflective and un-introspective average people can be.

[saberdancer]

"-Can you answer side questions, like how calm the sea was, were you looking towards the land or the horizon, were there any birds in the sky, and so on? Some people can, because they were visualizing the scene, some people won't unless prompted, since they were constructing the scene."

- this is exactly it. I seem to be unable to visualize things in my mind. If someone asks me to visualize a beach, I can create a description of a beach and know what exists on the beach, I am able to give an verbal explanation of it. However I do not at any moment see it, nor do I have insight into the beach that I didn't construct. I don't notice that there is a hotel in the distance, but I can think about it and add it in the description. I feel this is very different to what apparently majority of people can do.

[bonoboTP]

Do you find the following exercises difficult? http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/docs/education/institute91/handouts...

[Artlav]

Hm, not at the speed of reading. Takes a bit of slowing down to get some.

A complication is that a lot of these are from elementary school geometry books, so i tend to just remember the answer before getting a chance to look at it.

[bonoboTP]

Can you imagine each Tetris shape, one after the other, in some kind of spatial way? Can you "make" the L shaped one sit on its short side then lie down on the long side?

[Artlav]

Sure. And it makes a clang as it falls.

Can't quite play tetris, however - i start to lose track of the pieces once there are like 5-10 of them.

[saberdancer]

I can think about L shaped one standing upright or lying down on the long side. I don't see them though.

[bonoboTP]

Can you do this? "You see the silhouette of a cube, viewed from the corner. What does it look like?"

Or mark the edges of a cube into thirds, and cut off each of its corners back to the marks. What does the result look like? Can you mentally rotate this shape around?

[saberdancer]

Yes I do. Since I can't visualize a triangle in my head, it's hard to visualize what is left over when I cut off at thirds.

The link states that this can be trained. Is that your experience as well?

[bonoboTP]

Do you see any sort of visual imagery when dozing off to sleep? Have you ever played a lot of some visually repetitive game, like Minesweeper, Tetris, Bejeweled etc? I find that if I play a lot of those (hours) then at night when I shut my eyes I can't get rid of visualizations of these shapes in my mind, it's even kind of annoying.

[TeMPOraL]

For reference, this is what happens to me. If I spend a few hours playing a particular videogame, its imagery "burns into" my mind - when I close my eyes, I can see recurring patterns from the game (like ground textures or UI elements); if I'm tired, that's an easy way to get me to high level 3 on the "starn scale". The effect disappears after I sleep for a few hours.