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by Jtsummers
1650 days ago
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That's also just memory. I couldn't describe most servers I've had after a few hours if it was the only time I saw them. Try to imagine a barista. Imagine a scene in a coffee shop, it will get filled in with your actual memories of places you've been and people you've seen. Can you produce a detailed (but not accurate to reality) mental image of such a place or a barista working there that is comparable to your recall of your wife's face? (maybe not as detailed, but not as fuzzy as trying to recall a specific barista) |
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It was in response to the complaint that the "Vividness of Visual Imagery" test is ambiguous, because people can't decide whether their visualization is clear or not. I'm saying that, for a person with a good ability at visualizing, the distinction is fairly clear.
And it's not just fuzzy memory, the fuzzy memory causes a non-clear picture. But I can't transfer my phenomenological experience to you, so you'll either have to accept that some people can have both clear or non-clear imagery, or not.
In answer to your question, I can certainly produce a mental image of an imagined barista. I can imagine very fine details in, say, the handlebar mustache I invent. Yes, those details will probably have come from reality, but I don't know from where, and I can visualize it very clearly if I choose to.
In answer to a question you didn't ask, when I read books I rarely have a detailed image of a character. They're kind of faceless people, roughly sketched. I actually discussed this last week with my either-year-old, and she had the exact same experience, but had never really stopped to think about it. (Like what I was saying before about the nose missing not being weird.)