Ask Lemmy

What I don't like about this experiment is that being hyperphantic doesn't necessarily mean "you need photographic visualizations of every scenario at all times". My mind conjures scenarios differently depending on context.

I can imagine myself barely being able to see a ball on a table, let alone a person moving into view.

I can see the ball having a glossy, low-res texture alla 1980s CGI, with the ball being pushed by a polygon figure, moving without any real animation and limply falling off the table with no gravitational speed.

I can picture a worn, shiny leather baseball sitting on an old coffee table, stained walnut. The person is Mark Wahlberg and he has a smirk on his face as he lazily finger-flicks the ball, which only barely makes it to the edge of the table before just being able to tip off the edge, bouncing twice with a heavy bomp-bomp and rolling unevenly for a couple seconds. Mark winces because his finger hurts now. I could also imagine the flavor of the baseball and what it would smell like.

The point is that an aphantic might only be able to visualize this scenario at best as well as the first description, or perhaps not even at all and they can only 'know' of the movements in the scene with zero visual or otherwise relation to it.

Hyperphantics generally can conjure near limitless detail and they can retain that information visually for long periods of time without much effort.

I already had my answers before looking through the questions. Red, no gender, mostly a lab coat, tennis ball sized, waist-high wooden rectangular table.

1. The ball was red
2. It was a man
3. They wore a t-shirt and jeans
4. A small sized ball, like a stress ball
5. It was a plain wooden table made out of cheap particle board or laminated wood.

I had to think of questions to these answers after they were asked. The only things that I already knew were it was a red stress ball and that it was a cheaply made wooden table. I imagined that the ball simply began rolling towards the edge of the table. The person was amorphous at best.

I don't think I have aphantasia, but I do think I have a weak imagination. When I try to conjure an object or place, it's always like I'm peering through a keyhole. Like an image with too much vignette. The objects are usually non-descript and are more like concepts than things.

The ball was white/light gray. It has the surface texture of plaster of Paris, but it is somewhat lighter than would be appropriate for its canteloupe-like size.

I don't think I actually pictured a whole person as pushing the ball, more likely it was a disembodied hand or the general sensation of pushing it myself.

I remember being specifically intrigued that I pictured the ball rolling back towards the center of the table and pondering why I had chosen the table to be slightly concave. I don't remember more attributes of the table, but I have the feeling that has more to do with inattention to its details rather than not picturing them at the time.

I imagine that, based on the framing of the story, my interpretation was to picture the sphere as a literal entity, but the person as the "concept of a push"... The table probably lied somewhere in the middle.

I've always found this subject fascinating. Why are we all so different in this regards? What's going or not going on up there? Anyway, this is my result…

Red. Before

Dude. After

Me. After

Baseball. Before

White card table with grey liner. Before.

Ball rolled slightly forward after being judged by the person. Stayed in the table. Before

Blue rubbery ball with small dents in it like for a dog toy.

Pushed by a man in a suit with brown hair but face of Olaf Scholz because I did read a news about him prior.

Ball had a diameter somewhat smaller than a tennis ball but bigger than a golf ball.

White table with very flat plastic top, like in a students learning room. Because I automatically associated this as some kind of experiment which I often did at school.

I could feel the table I rested on while watching the man push the ball to fall of the table.

I have a high level of imagination and work creatively all day in my free time, be it doing art or playing creative games. But this never increased in a way, I remember being able to create these same quality images in my head since I was able to read as small child.

The ball was pale, not any color specific, something life a cream color. The person was nongendered, just a hand extending from a black suit with no determining orientation. They were a suit below the shoulder to above the knee, no other visible details past the table. The ball is maybe baseball sized, just big enough to comfortably fit the hand. The table is my current dining room table, an antique drop leaf table. This detail was the oddest to reconsider because until now I've been imagining either my previous table or the coffee table from my childhood, I don't normally decorate the thought space.

Red

Didn’t think about gender

Didn’t think about what they looked like

Ball was baseball sized

It was a square wooden table

Bonus, I imagined the ball rolling across the table and then falling off the table and bouncing a few times on the floor.

I didn’t choose any answers after reading the questions, but didn’t have an answers for the person.

• The ball was orange
• I don't remember
• I don't remember
• As big as an orange
• The ball was on a white surface

Don't know, they were an amorphous humanoid so I uh don't know for these two, baseball ish sized could fit in a palm, the platonic ideal of a wooden table. The first questions did not make me change the thing in my head. I don't think I see color in my mind eye, but I can uhhh label things with a color. Like. This ball is red, I think to myself, as the ball... continues to ball. Maybe if I imagined a specific red ball it world be redder.

Blue

Gender-nondescript, like a drawing in a school book

See above

Tennis ball size

Square, particle board like Ikea furniture

Some of them I extrapolated upon after seeing the questions because having unknowns in your mind's eye is not uncomfortable to people with intellectual integrity

• small dull red rubber ball
• no obvious gender
• they looked simple, like a Simpsons character. Impression of having a body, but only actually saw their hand
• table was standard rectangular, wooden affair

My visualisation is quite chaotic, so I mostly see a jumble of overlapping objects then have to choose which one to focus on.

Surprisingly, I had a real hard time visualising the ball rolling on its own. The hand was either pushing it or it was bouncing off of the floor.

Interesting exercise!

I'll participate.

The ball is silver colored/metallic, grapefruit size. A man resembling my partner pushed the ball. The table is a plain square wooden shaker-style.

I began imagining as soon as I started reading, with each additional word adding detail in my mind. By the time I got to the questions it was easy to answer them.

I visualized a blue ball the size of a tennis ball being pushed forward on a flat white surface by a shadowy figure with only the hand being visually clear. Upon the follow-up question, I believe that it solidified the gender in my mind to be male and also prompted me to think about the surface of the table edges in relation to where the figure stood. However, my main focus was on the blue ball and the hand pushing it forward over a white surface.

The ball was blue and kind of glossy, clearly made of plastic.

The person was a scruffy looking femme character in black and white. I just subbed in a character from a comic post above this one.

The ball was about 50% bigger than a baseball.

The table was a round coffee table with that fake wood texture paneling you see on cheap furniture, you know the type? It was a muted brown color.

I did know that I was probably expected to visualize details on the described object, but not the person or table!

I already knew after I read the prompt. It was like a little YouTube video playing in my head! 😃

• What color was the ball?
  Grey, I suppose? It wasn't important until this question so it was kind of colorless, even though I could picture it.

• What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
  Androgynous.

• What did they look like?
  Nondescript.

• What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
  A bit larger than a softball.

• What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
  It was a rectangular table. It shifted from being smooth and grey to a lightly finished maple, then back again.

• Important question:
  I didn't really think about these details until asked.

• Small push, ball rolls a very short distance and stops
• No color
• Male, maybe an extension of myself doing the push
• I did not visualize a complete person, only a suggestion of a body, and a arm/hand to push the ball
• Size of two fists together
• I did not visualize a full table, more like a camera view of a tabletop. Nondescript wood finish.

Did I already know? Sort of... My brain rotated through multiple possible imaginings. It worked forward, then reversed the logic to complete the scene. Nothing was set in stone: My brain decided that the ball would not roll off the table. Why? The ball has an uneven surface, it wobbled when stopping. Why? Because it has a surface like a soccer ball. Why? Because that was the first "look" my brain landed on that answered the question. I recall rotating through different colors and finishes, but after my brain imagined the ball stopping I had to come up with a why.

It's a gentle push so the ball rolls for a second before falling off the edge of the table and bouncing away on the floor.

Ball Color: Bright red

Pusher Gender: Masculine

Pusher appearance: Caucasian, Tan suit, head was out of frame

Ball size: Tennis ball sized, but smooth with a seam around the middle

Table appearance: A square, short end table on a white studio backdrop. Dark wood with a glossy coating.

The important question: I can confidently say every question I already knew and was just describing what I was seeing, with the exception of maybe the pushers clothing. After reading the question my focus shifted to it and it visually resolved and I described it. Looked and felt almost the exact same way that you might not notice the details of an object in your peripheral because the focus of the scene was the ball, and then at a prompt, shifting your gaze and taking note of that object at the edge. It was framed like some kind of ball demonstration physics video.

I don't literally SEE it like I would with my eyes but:

Red ball

Clown, no idea of gender

Again, clown

Ball smaller than tennis ball, bigger than golf ball

The table I am sitting at and looking at right now.

And no, I can and do imagine how things look. It's a different sort of knowing/imagining than actual physical vision or dreaming though. Which led me to be confused about what exactly aphantasia is.

At first I saw something silhouetted on a card table. Then Action entered the story and I had to choose an adventure after being asked what happened.

I figured how it rolls might depend on who pushed it, and I already knew that. Kevin. Why he did it was less clear. Muscle memory placed us at a table in the canteen. Sitting across from him on any ordinary day, some rolled up piece of napkin or a wad of garbage paper might present itself as a projectile to reach him across the plates and glass between us.

Tonight we were in my kitchen, together there for the first time. I'd moved the table into the corner with both leaves open to make extra space for snacks for the party. We pushed the pretzels and empties aside and sat facing each other off the edge of the table, knees nearly interlocked.

My chin was on my hand and my heart was on the ceiling. We were laughing about something when I noticed the toy baseball on the table. The stairs creaked and the sound of background chatter crept in like a breeze that chilled my spine. He flicked the ball, and it rolled fast off the edge then fell to the floor with a flat thud.

The phone on the wall behind him rang, and I clicked to review the test questions.