[majormajor]

If you think of a bowling pin vs a baseball bat, do you have such a specific visual image in your mind that you could compare their sizes?

I'm particularly curious about a bowling pin because we often only see them from far away, so size is harder to gauge in the first place. I can't form detailed images of anything in my mind, but those images are also all "normalized" to an extent - e.g. in my head, both bowling pin and baseball bat seem to be similar in size. Even though that's very much not true. So to me, visualization and size comparison are totally different faculties.

[mescaline]

Even though I've never held a bowling pin or been close to one, I know how big a bowling pin is because I've seen the ball hit the pin at the end of the lane and I've held the ball in my hand.

A bat is definitely longer than a bowling pin, but not by much. I don't see either in mind when doing this referencing.

These ideas are linked through memories of spatial relatedness, not imagery.

I once had an interesting discussion with someone who had participated in unique treatments for PTSD. The councilors advised the patients, when they saw disturbing imagery in mind, to place the imagery on a poster. They indicated that most patients could do this task. They then proceeded to have the patient put the poster on the wall "across the room". The image "shrunk" in mind by forcing it into spatial perspective. They then had the patient put the poster on a telephone pole "across the street". This shrunk it even more. A diminishment in the strong feelings (stress) related to the imagery was reported in some patients. So, the smaller something appears, the less some appear to react to the imagery. Small monsters vs. large ones, I guess.

[postalrat]

Are you sure you aren't just visualizing how many bowling balls a bat is in length vs how many bowling balls in length you estimated a bowling pin is?

At least to me if you are even just imagining the lengths you are still visualizing.

[Jtsummers]

When you do mental arithmetic, say 48 added to 73, do you visualize 48 objects and 73 objects and then count them? Do you visualize a page like a 1st grade arithmetic homework sheet and draw out the numbers with a mental pencil and do all the carrying by mental hand? Or do you “just” add them and end up with 121 in your head?

[postalrat]

I add numbers when doing arithmetic.

I don't assign numbers when mentally comparing things. I compare them relative to each other. I think that's why it's hard to compare things that have a large difference in size.

[LocalH]

Someone tells you that they don't visualize in their mind, and your first instinct is to find out how they're wrong?