My husband forwarded this article to me about Aphantasia. I found it really interesting about the way this man describes the his world and how he never really understood that others navigate it differently and

https://goo.gl/AhWzyW

affects how he reads & writes.

Makes me wonder if issues such as my son's difficulty in expressing himself has a similar type of component. He is clearly not Aphantasia. That his brain just doesn't organize the world in the same way others do. Kind of why the best way to get an essay from him is to often refresh the question because questions like "what is your favorite" really have no meaning to him.

As if this gives us a better idea how to understand ASD even if it's not the same thing, than most of the literature out there.

Wow. Fascinating!

Wow - that is amazing! My DD last year chose 'what is visualization' for her grade 5 independent project. We helped a bit with narrowing down her research - but we never came across the idea that some people can't visualize at all.

Will have to show her this!

This was really interesting, thanks for sharing.

It has become more obvious as DS10 gets older that he has some level of face blindness. I know he doesn't realize this is uncommon. He also has trouble expressing himself with words, but I have been assuming it's because he doesn't connect words with images in his head very well. Kind of the opposite of aphantasia, I guess. But perhaps I am completely wrong. I'll have to ask him some questions about his "mind's eye" this morning.

I wouldn't say I have this, but I am somewhat face blind, have a terrible sense of direction, and a poor visual recall in general for many things. If you ask me to picture a SPECIFIC beach, that's not going to be a very good picture. I can picture a stereotypical beach.

DD also appears to be mildly face blind. My DH is the opposite--extremely good at face recognition ("That was our waiter from two weeks ago"--wth?)

What do you guys mean by face blindness? Do they not recognize people they have seen before?

The author of the article says he seems to have a "hash table" in his head and doesn't have a big problem recognizing people. It was one of the things that stood out for me.

I have a hard time with names. Not so much faces. I have acquaintances I've known for years that I can tell you a lot about except their name. I will notice we have the same waiter we had two weeks ago, but not remember his name when he only told us it 30 minutes ago.

Precisely. Here is an old thread on face-blindness from 2010.

I have this. I also can't hear my own thoughts or hear a tune in my head. My wife let me know this is unusual a few years ago . Until then I thought everyone was like this.

Posting in two threads.


The people with aphantasia seem to recognize other people when they see them. I'll happily speculate that they store the images of faces in their minds but can't access them in order to create an image (e.g. their image creation software doesn't work).

This isn't the same process as recognizing Mary when they see her. So perhaps in this situation, they access images of faces the same way that unaffected people do. If I meet my sister, I don't have to "recall" an image of her to recognize her. I just know it's her. Faceblind people can't do this (but can they see an image of the beach in their minds? Is there a difference in their ability to create an image in their minds compared to unaffected people?).

Going down the path a bit, what if someone with aphantasia meets an old high school classmate 25 years later and the person looks different? Is their ability to recognize this person the same as a "normal" person's, or is it better or worse? Does it depend on multiple factors?

The Facebook author said that he can't remember stuff that he had done. I wonder if photos or verbal/written descriptions would stimulate his memories (i.e., I'm wondering if the memories are there, but he can't access them the usual way). Would hearing the songs from the musical he forgot he saw help him remember he'd been there? Dunno.

The not remembering what he did thing seems strange. He must remember to some degree, or hr would be extremely impaired. There are people out there who truly have no short-term memory or ability to form memories, and it is tragic and they are nonfunctional.

A research paper by the principal investigators referenced in the NYT article cited in the blog post above that may be of interest. It includes a questionnaire on mental visualization on which persons self-identifying as aphantasiacs generally score poorly. Poor autobiographical memory appears to be not unusual among the very small non-random study population.

http://www.eugencpopa.ro/wp-content/uploads/Afantazia-.pdf

I wonder if the deficit has anything to do with retrieval inefficiencies (cued vs uncued recall). Quite a number of the (very small) study population reported involuntary mental visualizations.

That's interesting. My son is on the opposite end of that spectrum.

My kids have exceptional visualization skills, and so does my wife. I am grateful my kids don't suffer from this. It's pretty embarrassing to be an adult and have to count on my fingers, but I've learned now that I can remember the maths facts automatically without drawing up the sum in my head like my wife does.

I remember my memories, rather than seeing them. I remember what something must look like, although this doesn't always work. I remembered my wife having brown hair when we met instead of blonde. I can't visualize someone's face, but I know them when I see them. I can't manipulate objects in my head, like spin them around and imagine what they look like on the other side like my family can.

I don't remember what I've done, just know what I've done, if that makes sense.