After reading your first sentence, I immediately saw an apple with three dots in a triangle pointing downwards on the side. Interestingly, the 3 dots in my image were flat, as if merely superimposed on an image of an apple, rather than actually being on an apple.

How do people with aphantasia answer the question?

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sheepscreek 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I guess it's a spectrum with varying abilities. If you ask me, I can see a red apple - or a photo of a red apple precisely. It's not in 3D though, I cannot imagine it from other angles so I cannot image the dots around it. But if I were to sit in a quiet and dark room without any distractions, and tried concentrating super hard (with my eyes closed), then I would be able to see it as other can. Perhaps even manipulate it in my mind.

Then maybe, at least in my case, it is my inability to focus my imagination when my senses are already being bombarded with external stimuli. But I cannot speak for anyone else.

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foofoo12 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I found out recently that I have aphantasia, based on everything I've read. When you tell me to visualize, I imagine. I don't see it. An apple, I can imagine that. I can describe it in incomprehensibly sparse details. But when you ask details I have to fill them in.

I hadn't really placed those three dots in a specific place on the apple. But when you ask where they are, I'll decide to put them in a line on the apple. If you ask what color they are, I'll have to decide.

	▲	mitthrowaway2 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'm pretty sure I don't have aphantasia. I don't see the apple either; it doesn't occupy any portion of my visual field and it doesn't feel similar to looking at an image of an apple. There's more of a ghostly, dreamlike image of an apple "somewhere else" whose details I only perceive when I think about them, and fade when I pay less attention. But the sensation of this apparition is a visual one; the apple will have an orientation, size, shape, and colour in the mental image, which are defined even if they're ghostly, inconsistent, and change as I reconsider what the apple should look like.
	▲	brotchie 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		+1, spot on description of aphantasia.

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yoz-y 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For me the hard question to answer is whether I have aphantasia because people describing “actually seeing” things like with their eyes is an absolutely wild concept.

To answer the question I imagine an apple with three dots in a triangle, closely together. There is no color because there is no real image, it’s just an idea. As other have said if prompted the idea gets more detailed.

That said, when I tried to learn building mind palaces it has worked. I can “walk through” places I know just fine, even recall visual details like holes in a letterbox. But again, there is no image.

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jvanderbot 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They may not answer but what they'll realize is that the "placing" comes consciously after the "thinking of" which does not happen with others.

That is, they have to ascribe a placement rather than describe one in the image their mind conjured up.

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sunrunner 4 days ago | parent [-]

How fair is it to ask people to self report whether details existed in their original image before or after a second question? Does the second question not immediately refine the imagined image? Or is that the point, that there’s now a memory of two different apple states?

Edit: This iDevice really wants to capitalise Apple.

	▲	jvanderbot 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		This is not a scientific study it is an introspection tool. Sibling comment shows how useful it is.

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wrs 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There's no apple, much less any dots. Of course, I'm happy to draw you an apple on a piece of paper, and draw some dots on that, then tell you where those are.