[interroboink]

I think another person in this thread pointed out a good example — reading a book, then being disappointed when seeing the movie because the characters didn't look onscreen how they imagined them when reading. Not w/regard to the textual descriptions, but w/regard to the other visual bits that their mind filled in.

This is a widespread phenomenon; no shortage of examples. It has happened to me, too.

There are some people in this thread who claim they haven't experienced that, and had a hard time understanding what that would even mean. These seem like pretty different mental/visual experiences, so it seems reasonable to have a word to describe it.

I agree it's hard to measure such internal things exactly, and it's full of self-reporting problems, but the core concept doesn't seem like purely a semantics issue.

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Aside: I once had a conversation about thinking, and my friends were surprised at the idea of thinking without using words. But that is very much my experience! It is something I semi-trained myself to do (I felt that translating into words slowed me down), but I think it was a natural tendency, too. But it can be likewise difficult to convince someone it's a real thing without resorting to brain scans (: