People with aphantasia, how does it affect your book reading?
-
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!
-
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?
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?
-
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?
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.
-
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?
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.
-
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but if you can't relate to mental images existing in a visual sense you probably have some degree of aphantasia.
Some research indicates that it may be a spectrum from complete lack of imagery to full five-sense detail, which might be why it's hard to relate to either extreme. At any rate most people fall in the category of seeing an image, to the point that hyperphantasia is even more common than aphantasia.
I have it*, but not as severe as others. Imagining an apple starts as a very abstract concept, I can't visualize it without concentrated effort. Other people might be able go on to describe the stem, the leaves, the shade of red, the glossy wax exterior, etc... I can't automatically build to any of that, even if I subconsciously default to a red apple the "image" may just as well be green.
*edit: checked the vviq test and discovered the label is hypophantasic
I'm not going along with this tiktok diagnosis shit when the way I see it I have extremely fundamental problems with the plausibility of the entire concept.
-
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.
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 hate descriptions, and I have a really hard time when there's more than a paragraph focusing on descriptions of what things look like.
Other than that it's fine, though I sometimes have to trace back because I often skip parts that look description-y and some authors like to slip in some piece of crucial information.
Does it not bother you that you don't catch what things look like as you read? If you're skipping description, of say, a lake, do you just... Assume it looks like a lake you've seen in the past? What if the description plays heavy into the plot, like the water is, idk, yellow and boiling. That doesn't matter to you?
-
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.
That’s so funny. You conditioned yourself haha but it makes complete sense why it happened
-
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?
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.
-
Does it not bother you that you don't catch what things look like as you read? If you're skipping description, of say, a lake, do you just... Assume it looks like a lake you've seen in the past? What if the description plays heavy into the plot, like the water is, idk, yellow and boiling. That doesn't matter to you?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I scan over the descriptions to check for irregularities or significant identifiers. So your yellow lake would be noteworthy to me or if a person is described with long hair. I don't mentally imagine a long hair person, but I try to remember it, so if later somebody sees a long haired person in the distance I know which character is referenced.
And yes if I don't recognise anything noteworthy, I don't make a mental note, it's just a normal lake, nothing important to remember.
But that isn't always working out for me. In Neverwhere the Marquis de Carabas is described as being pitch black. Which I fully didn't get and so was wondering why all the fan art made him so black that you can't recognise features. Because that was how he was described and I missed that important fact.
-
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?
Itt, people that can visualise but think that not constantly visualising everything they read means they have the superpower to "feel words as concepts"
-
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?
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.
-
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
::: spoiler 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.
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.
-
I hate descriptions, and I have a really hard time when there's more than a paragraph focusing on descriptions of what things look like.
Other than that it's fine, though I sometimes have to trace back because I often skip parts that look description-y and some authors like to slip in some piece of crucial information.
This is me too. I will read descriptions, but don't pay as much attention. Sometimes, if after the description, there is a que that a description had something important in it, I will have to go back over a description to check what I missed.
-
Does it not bother you that you don't catch what things look like as you read? If you're skipping description, of say, a lake, do you just... Assume it looks like a lake you've seen in the past? What if the description plays heavy into the plot, like the water is, idk, yellow and boiling. That doesn't matter to you?
I mean, it does bother me, but there's nothing I can do about it.
I don't assume it looks like anything, I simply know there's a lake, I have no idea (nor do I care much) what it looks like. I can't imagine what a lake I've seen in the past looks like.
If the water is yellow and boiling, I'll remember it because I know water in a lake usually isn't yellow and boiling, I just don't have any visual aide for that.
It's kinda hard to explain, if you show me a picture with a yellow lake, I know it's wrong because I've seen lakes, but if you ask me to describe one, it's gonna be really hard for me and you won't get many details.
If it turns out any of the visual things was important, I'll simply read it again and mechanically remember the details, but mechanical memory is kinda limited in what it can hold, so I avoid that unless I find out that it's worth remembering.
-
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.
Yep, can confirm, can't imagine anything, but my dreams work well. They're usually not very clear, but a few times I had trouble distinguishing dreams from real life.
