How does it affect your ability to enjoy books? Or type of books you’d enjoy?
Do you tend to prefer more visual medium like video(movies, tv), or comic books?
A great deal, I’d
imagine.I can conceptualize.I have Total Aphantasia, and zero sense memory at all. I do have an “inner monologue” of sorts. I can’t “hear” it in my head, but I understand all the same. I don’t know how to explain with words and I don’t know how I work either, really. My outer and inner voice are the same thing to me and I have full control over it., often transitioning back and forth when I’m alone. As in, no racing thoughts. One of the ideas behind meditation where you try to silence your mind? I don’t have to try. It’s not something that takes effort for me. I bring this up because this is how I’m reading books, with that silent inner voice. One of my friends is like me with Total Aphantasia, but he has no inner monologue either. Which is bonkers to me. I don’t get it, neither does he! Haha. Many different kinds of human minds out there, it’s not so simple.
Hard to miss what I’ve never experienced, I still enjoy thinking about these fictional worlds even if I can’t conjure up a representation of what is written in my mind.
I read every genre. It’s actually specific writing styles I lean towards. If the author is really detailed with describing environment constantly, I appreciate that. I can’t really “fill in the blanks” so to speak. I also really like it heavy on the internal monologue side of things with main characters. I think that’s why I liked Ender’s Game so much when I was a kid.
I do prefer any visual media. I save all my book and research reading for when I’m at work these days, which is a lot of time actually. One of them hurry up and wait jobs. Books are far better when it comes to potentially constant interruptions.
I remember this poster in a library with a well, and the surface is an empty field of grass, and that part of the poster said “movies”. The bottom of the well was like a hideout, with all sorts of whimsical detail, which said “books”.
Needless to say, I did not get it.
Itt, people that can visualise but think that not constantly visualising everything they read means they have the superpower to “feel words as concepts”
Mildly aphantastic.
Love reading, don’t know or have any different experience to compare it to.
I don’t visualise, but feel words and concepts as worda/concepts. I like descriptions as I can build up a concept with the words.
Similar experience here. Aphantastic and prefer books to shows/movies.
This. I also have it to a certain degree. Perfect description of how I read books. Never bothered me. Never even realized some people have a vivid visual imagination until it became a recurring reddit topic a few years ago.
999 was the realisation it was a thing for me, and then found a diagnostic questionnaire online and got the “mild aphantastia” result.
I actually prefer books and really can’t enjoy tv. It’s simply not my medium. I don’t think aphantasia has any influence on these tbh. It’s not like I can compare but I don’t see how not visualizing what is happening in a book should have any influence on the enjoyment. The information still gets parsed in your head just fine.
It probably depends on the person. I know for me, reading books is only entertaining if I can visualize what is happening like scenes from a movie. Sometimes I even “cast” real-world actors in this imagined movie because it makes it easier for me to keep characters consistent.
Reading just for information retention, on the other hand, sometimes takes me a few passes because I will end up zoning out if it’s not something I can visualize.
I do “see” inner images but they’re blurry, flashing and I can’t directly control them. So when I read I mostly focus on the text and faintly in the background there’s a “school fight recorded by hyperactive kid” version of the plot going on.
This is probably the most relatable one I’ve seen so far
Another great analogy are those comically quick cuts in Bollywood dramas where they mix slo-mo, sped up shots, random super closeups, the same shot over and over and whatever else until you can barely make out what’s even going on
Both of your descriptions match closely with how I internally visualize. Never bothers me until I try hard to follow a visual description
Does your sense of direction also suck? Because it really does for me and I’ve always suspected a connection. I still get lost in my hometown from time to time despite living there for 9 years now.
My sense of direction is usually pretty good. If I’m distracted I’ll get turned around fairly easily but it’s not hard for me to figure out where I accidentally went.
Not total aphantasia, but mostly. I’d describe it as almost cartoonish, but more in the sense of the non-visual concept I associate with the image being described as being heavily exaggerated, more than any visual intensity. I get maybe brief glimpses of visualization before it dissolves into concept.
I know what the scene described looks like, and I know the associated elements well enough to be familiar with their properties and possible relevance to the story. As far as descriptions serve the telling of the story, I don’t really think I’m missing out on much.
For visual media I tend to prefer animation and comic books, though I think that’s unrelated to aphantasia, I’m probably a tad autistic. I appreciate every frame being intentional, and always get caught in a loop of uncertainty with live action; was that expression intentional or is the actor just hammy?
I have aphantasia but love reading, even really descriptive passages. I don’t ‘see’ but I “feel” words, I think, if that makes any sense. Like, if I read a description of a steaming mug of coffee, I’ll feel the rising steam on my face, feel how it smells, feel the heaviness of the mug in my hand, etc. It’s a lot more vivid in a way than when I watch tv since that’s all visual and auditory.
Yknow somehow I had a great time reading. Written word is the most reliable way to stabilize visuals in my mind, which is why I’ve taken to writing as a creative outlet as well.
Its been so long since I’ve genuinely read anything but I think thats the closest I ever got to actually visualizing something. Described well enough and my mind can really conjure up an image for once.
Its why I tend to like slow and detailed scenes. I can spend a lot of time writing a scene that only lasts eight minutes
“I can’t read books that are realistic fiction. I can’t do anything that’s got like crazy world building because I can’t perceive it and I have a hard time.” -my sister
I don’t have it personally, but we both have tism and so here’s a talk we had while driving.
me: *takes wrong turn*
sister: “when I need to know my left and rights and cant do the hand thing, I remember ‘never eat soggy waffles’ because I can remember East is Right and Left is West.”
me: “wh… what?? why? why can’t you just do the right and left in your head?”
sister: “girl how”
me: “I just imagine it?”
sister: “MUST BE NICE, HUH?!”
if someone wants I can ask her in more detail later, she’s busy with something rn
Funny thing I recently discovered, aphantasia has many traits in common with autism, which is kinda fascinating.
For the longest time I thought I have some weird form of autism because way too many things fit the description, but some of the crucial details didn’t fit me.
Then I discovered that research and suddenly I knew why.
Dated a girl for a while that had corresponding R & L tattooed on the topside base of her thumbs.
That way when she was driving and people said go left, go right, she wouldn’t have to ask which way that was.
When I was with her I’d have to say things like the turn is on your side, take a my side.
It was different.
my grandma once said if I get one of those tattoos I would never get a job and live in a cardboard box because nobody would hire someone who can’t know their rights and lefts 🥀
She also said I’m infected by the devil because I love my gay dad
she also hasn’t even gone to church in 4 years because the pastor told her to not be racist.
Your grandma had a lot to say.
Those three points are a lot to unpack.
Well she was the first time I’d encountered that personally. While it was different and directions-wise I had to train myself how to convey meaning, you’ll be pleased to know I never gave her shit for it.
I taught children’s martial arts for a long time, and the best way to teach the younger ones is to face them and do the thing on the opposite side. I had to, for many years say stuff like: “step out with your RIGHT foot” while simultaneously stepping with my left,
Let me tell you, the number of wrong turns I take when someone is giving directions is so embarrassing. I have to really concentrate and like… feel which hand is my right hand.
I didn’t realize I had it until well into adulthood and I’ve always enjoyed reading. Even the extensive description still has meaning I just don’t see it.
For those of us who don’t know what it means: “is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images”
Basically if someone said “think of a nice round juicy red apple” people with the condition wouldn’t be able to imagine it in their mind.
I hadn’t followed this when apparently it became a topic of interest on Reddit.
Apparently people sit on a spectrum, where they can envision less color and detail, where people with aphantasia cannot envision anything.
Also, interestingly-enough, this is apparently not tied to the ability to envision things in dreams.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g69hc0/dreams_in_color/
I dream very vividly, in full colour, but am a total aphant.
That’s fascinating. I can envision things voluntarily, if perhaps not as vividly as in real life—it’s not on par with looking at a fully-detailed scene, but I can certainly do color. On the other hand, my dreams have always been on the border with being unable to visualize at all. Maybe there’s a hint of color, but everything is normally desaturated, and things are transient and vague.
Huh.
I know what the condition is but the condition is still fascinating to me.
I’m in my 40s and learned about this just a few years ago. Never affected my reading of different genres. I guess I didn’t know any different! It did help me understand why I don’t have the great memories of childhood things like my close-in-age sister does. I have always relied on her for details.
May be the wrong thread for this, but isn’t it really common for people to not even know that have aphantasia?
I’m imagining the whole community from The Giver, where people didn’t know that they
This book's so old I don't know if it's worth spoiler-warning for
Couldn’t see colors
and they didn’t even realize.
Yep, I always thought “imagining” something was really just an euphemism for thinking about it.
It wasn’t officially discovered until 2005. A doctor(Adam Zeman) had a patient who lost their visual imagination and wrote a paper about it. It turns out that aphants are overrepresented in the medical and engineering communities, so a bunch of doctors wrote back, having just realized that a lack of visualization is not normal. Then, he finally published a paper on it in 2015.
That’s a great reference.
I don’t have aphantasia and I don’t particularly fancy any medium over the other, but what I often miss is sound. Music is a whole different language to either visual or conceptual as conveyed by words, whereas imagery to me feels the most direct and laziest, music can convey feelings there are neither words nor imagery for, and so often I like adaptations of written works for injecting some fitting music, and will listen to fitting music as I read books.
When you say you miss sound, you mean while reading? I wonder if there are books that get deep with sound description. I can think of a couple that might, but they of course do not have actual sound.
Yes, while reading. I miss music to be specific, so this applies to comic books, manga etc.
A good soundtrack to me is everything in terms of tone and atmosphere and mood.
Less subjectively, it makes sense, since you can’t touch or smell the world inside a book or a game or a film or whatever, the remaining types of information are auditory and visual, so 50% of the information about a thing is aural, so games, movies, shows etc. get that as a leg up on books etc.
On the other hand a lack of music does often force my brain to make some up which gets my lazy ass to go nurture that hobby and produce some sounds so I’m not complaining!
Have you heard of Diane Ackerman? She has a book, A Natural History of the Senses, that gets deep into human connection to these things.
Time spend on video medium is like 1000x more than reading.
I rarely read books, by rarely I mean I just skim all school reading materials, and only pick up random books lying around at home (that were given out for free by the public library) to read when my electronics were broken/consfiscated by parents.
I read a lot of news and wikipedia aricles tho, those are somehow just more fun than a book.
There are some adapted works that I’ve seen the adaptation of, but still haven’t read the source materials yet. I kinda just read the wikis to check any differences between the 2 mediums… 🤷♂️
Recently, I came across some interesting works of fiction that didn’t have an adaptation in a video medium, so I reluctantly started reading. Recursion was a fun read with the audiobook playing in background at 1.2x speed.
When I read, I usually use the sterotypical portrayal of that character’s archetype from other visual mediums to like fill in the character model and use similar scenes from visual media to paint the room and atmosphere.
I have like a “level 3” on the aphantasia scale, so like I could just barely paint the scenary.
If I do my own worldbuilding and my own story, I can sort of see the world slightly mroe clearly, like a “level 2” on the apantasia scale.
