[StreakyCobra]

> Many of the people I speak to learned late in life that their inner voices were not the norm. For years, Worrall thought that other people also had attics in their brains.

I went through exactly the same situation around 10 years ago, but it was about mental imaging. Do you know people can actually visualize and see things when they close there eyes? You probably do, but it took me 25 years to figure out that for most people closing their eyes is not like closing a black curtain.

If that is a surprise to you that people can create and see mental images, you probably have aphantasia as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

Since then I'm convinced that not two brains experience the world the same way. Inner voice and mental imaging are probably two of the many things we assume to be the norm.

[kzrdude]

Aphantasia: Is there a simple test or procedure we can use to make it easier to decide to what degree we have this or not? It just seems like a topic where expectations can differ a lot. Since it's hard to clearly explain what visualizing feels like and doesn't. Some people might even be very normal and yet disappointed and think they are missing something.

I don't think my mind's eye is particularly strong for example, don't have very vivid imagination. But I also don't know where the frame of reference should be!

[dmitrygr]

> Is there a simple test

Close your eyes and imagine a triangle. Now, quickly, what color was it? If you have an answer, you do not have aphantasia. If you have no answer, you likely have aphantasia - your mind instantiated a concept of a triangle, but until the question of color came up, it was irrelevant and was not considered

[navjack27]

Glowing lines in a black space. Color is a pale off white. It's rotated slightly in 3d space but it's a triangle.

Edit: oh yeah, I didn't close my eyes, sorry. I just thought about it as I was reading and the image flashed for an immeasurable time unit multiple times each time I gave it a bit of thought.

It's extremely easy for me to just, almost like daydreaming, to have my vision darken and have my minds eye take over for microseconds for me to picture things. Guess like built in AR.

My inner voice is also incredibly controllable and more than just a voice. It's just a playback device at this point. Whatever I want i can make it audible.

[TheAceOfHearts]

Not a good example, IMO. A triangle is defined as 3 points with 3 lines connecting each consecutive point. A better example would be: think of Tony the Tiger, now what colors are his skin, stripes, and bandana? But that's also not perfect because people are along a spectrum in the amount of detail they're able to see.

[sdiupIGPWEfh]

Weird. If asked to visualize a triangle, I see the "glowing lines in a black space." If I try to visualize a red/green/blue triangle, I can only briefly maintain the image before it fades away into the default white outline in the void.

However, when asked to think of Tony the Tiger and his stripes, not only do I perceive orange fur and red bandana, but I'm struck by just how freaking blue his nose is and it is uncomfortably persistent.

[jimmygrapes]

I can't see Tony's skin since it's covered by fur unless you count the "toe beans" and nose

[kzrdude]

I can't even bring up a triangle until I made it concrete. I imagined I had cut one out in plywood.

[meowface]

There are some spatial intelligence tests that essentially require mentally rotating and flipping 3D objects in your mind's eye. That could maybe be one way. Can't speak to the quality of this test, but here's one that might apply: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/iq/visual-spatial-i...

[andrew_gs]

I don't think this tests aphantasia at all really. I have a very weak mind's eye and I've always been able to score very highly on visual spatial recognition tests. I can still conceptualize and rotate items even if I can't picture them clearly.

[meowface]

Interesting. I always "perform" the rotation in my mind's eye, so I guess I figured that's how most others did, too. Typical mind fallacy strikes again.

[ars]

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29087803 I have aphantasia, but I no trouble mentally rotating and flipping 3D objects - but I'm not rotating a image of the object, but more like concepts.

[seszett]

I did it correctly enough apparently ("Your score on the test was the top of the charts") but I didn't have to visualise anything (it's very difficult for me to visualise anything more than fleeting glimpses of vague shapes).

The answers are easy enough to find without having to perform any imaginary rotation but just eliminating candidates one by one by looking at which features would match or not.

[csomar]

That's not a free test and you are informed of that only after you pass. That's too predatory for me that I don't really care how accurate their tests are.

[gtardini]

I think this is what you are looking for

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094522...

The authors also include the GitHub with the code for the experiment. Very interesting

[pseudalopex]

VVIQ[1] is a common test.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_Qu...

[distances]

A simple quick test I've heard: imagine a ball with wings in front of you.

Now, what was the colour of the ball, and what kind of wings did it have?

[ManuelKiessling]

I’m not going to say it’s a useful test, but how does https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29088032 work for you?

[kzrdude]

Cool question. I definitely visualize the various rooms in my apt., Indoors perspective, when answering the question, doing so without prompting. It feels effortless and the visualizations are rather basic, without details, but they are spatial with perspective and I see the shape of the room and the window.

[helaoban]

I don't even have to close them, I can reproduce pictures of objects, people, scenery etc in my mind while my eyes are open and actively observing other things.

As I type this comment I've got an image of a girl I saw yesterday fixed in my mind, as if looking at a picture of her.

I also assumed this was the norm.

[jraph]

I can't even picture my close friends very well, never mind some stranger I saw yesterday. I'll recognize people visually but their voice, their habits and their facial expressions help a lot if available, especially people new to me.

I have a quite good memory and will easily recall events but the image is not very precise. I might not remember how you were dressed just 10 minutes ago; hard to build precise pictures with such a visual memory.

Relatedly, if you tell me a story, I'll probably not have a precise picture of it in my mind. I noticed some people do have pictures very quickly and may take advantage of it when speaking to have some fun.

I still picture things in my mind. And I don't need to close my eyes. If you tell me about some event I'll probably locate it in my (not very precise) representation of the month / the year if you said when it happened / will happen. I will have some visual representation of what you are telling me or what I am reading, but do not ask me what colors are things or how people are dressed.

If you wonder how I manage to picture things without being able to tell the color they have, well, I can't figure it out neither.

[Fricken]

I went through a phase that lasted several months, in which I practiced daily drawing portraits and caricatures.

Towards the end I debeloped a photographic memory for faces. I could go out for an evening, and later I could see all the faces I interacted with that evening crystal clear, and draw their likeness referencing only my mind's eye.

When I stopped practicing portraiture the magical ability went away.

[thechao]

Right!? I just naturally assumed that everyone could picture & model 3d shapes in their visual space (like AR), until I was in college. I used to design machines & parts "in front of me" and then build them. I think it's one if the reasons I find CAD so difficult to use.

When I draw 3D shapes, I just "visualize" the shape on the surface and trace it.

[vasco]

Same, I think this is normal. Having to close my eyes to visualize is like having to read out loud to parse the text. I assumed nobody needed to close their eyes and that they did this in movies so "you know" they are thinking.

[dylan604]

Way back in high school, I took several different tests that would have questions that would show a drawing of a folded piece of paper with a hole in it that would then ask what the pattern of dots on the unfolded page would look like. The ASVAB was one of them IIRC. At the time, I was shocked at the number of people that could not visualize this. Going through life, I then met so many people that would say they could not picture what was being described to the point I thought I just sucked at descriptions. While there may be some truth to that, I learned that aphantasia existed and it wasn't that someone was just not trying very hard.

[floatingatoll]

I can barely do this, at a naturally-occurring rate of maybe one image a month or less. But I can pick up music instantly.

[telesilla]

Really interesting in this thread about how so many see images or hear voices. I always have strong threads of music, always available at any moment. I bet all musicians have this. I used to wish when I was a child that I could jack my brain to a stereo system for instant playback and bypass the effort of writing things down.

[floatingatoll]

This reminded me of a spiral/helix of fifths music theory poster I had twenty years ago. I can't find it now, but in my research, this came up:

Music Through Computation, Carl McTague, 2003 International Mathematica Symposium https://www.mctague.org/carl/music/computer/talks/music-talk...

And it does indeed have a nice picture for "Helix of Fifths" that is a dry black and white sketch of what was on that poster.

[telesilla]

Ouch my poor brain went into shock reading that! I'd done all I could to forget schenkerian analysis and now it's all flooding back. Aside from that, nice intro to helical harmony.

[floatingatoll]

I'm sorry / cheers :)