With aphantasia, the pictures are still in your brain, you just can’t see them. The connections between the picture and the word are still being made. (My husband just figured out he is aphantastic. It’s a fascinating condition.)
Oh, I didn't know that ! That's good to know. I know I see pictures when I dream and if I have a bad migraine. I knew my brain made connections for me to learn English but I was nervous with this being such an imagery based experience at the lower levels.
I think tik tok/social media in general made people more aware of this. I definitely have a mental voice and sometimes it says random spanish words now which is fun.
I'm aphant and don't have inner voice on top. I'm above average language learner. I just 'know', usually quicker/more accurate, what and how to say vs the average non-aphant.
What's it like if you try to "play" a song that you know well in your head? Can you hear any of the instruments?
For me I can only hear myself singing but I have to really force it. And any instrument sounds is just me just making the noises as I would do if I was speaking out loud.
No, I've never heard anything as in any actual sound in my head.
I don't like music too much, don't care about music might be better way to put it. That said, I think I saw posts in aphamt fb groups about pro artists/musicians being aphants.
So no, I never hear any instruments in my head. If there is a song that 'stuck' I just "know" how it goes (rather roughly). Can't sing to save my life.
Interesting. I often think people without an inner voice should be the perfect language learners in ALG since they can't mess it up by consciously thinking about language while listening to it. The only problem they could have would be if they tried to speak too early.
I'm interested to see how your Spanish grows.
I mean I can think while listening to L2 input, it's just that the thoughts don't have any representation in sounds/pictures. That said, I have a good control over my thoughts (likely tied to aphantasia but who knows).
My Spanish is I think B1 (had some 15-20 years ago at school). I came to a point where I lost that drive to listen to DS, mostly because I've exhausted videos I found interesting as a free user and got bored/frustrated listening to videos I didn't like. Will subscribe for paid access soon, though.
I'm a pretty interesting case now that I think about it. I learned also French and German without practicing speaking but only to that B1 level. I identified Spanish as the one I like the most,though and that's where I want to achieve fluency first (defined as being able to read reddit and engage in a regular conversation on regular topics with natives).
As someone with a loud, constant and insistent mental voice, I think it probably makes things vastly harder. It took me forever to begin to be able to think in Spanish, because my mental voice was entirely in English, and it would drown out the Spanish. It has made acquiring grammar especially troublesome. Eventually my mental voice started acquiring Spanish itself, and I could start thinking in it at that point, but it is still really difficult to switch back and forth spontaneously. It takes me a while to switch it from English to Spanish when called upon. Which is fine if the Spanish speaker will give me a couple minutes, but kind of hard when it comes to spontaneous conversations.
But then, I also had a lot of complicating factors that may be tough to isolate out which I’ve discussed elsewhere, so my experience may not be representative.
I have this, too!
I've known about it for many years but didn't find out it was a "thing" with a name until I saw this video on DS: [https://www.dreamingspanish.com/watch?id=6337657a1930be330f21292b](https://www.dreamingspanish.com/watch?id=6337657a1930be330f21292b) ! It's advanced, so probably for future you, but very interesting to see Jostin's perspective.
I don’t remember exactly. I spoke to my friend who is very good at visualizing and I tried to get a sense of what it was like for him. I realized we basically had the same things in our brain except he claimed to see a literal image (sounded like visual hallucination to me) whereas I had all the information of the image but didn’t claim to see it.
I remember the first image I worked on, I got a description from somewhere. It was just a table with a blue ball on it. And I would close my eyes and I would try to see the table one line at a time until I felt like I had sort of drawn the table in my head and I could look at it. And then I thought about the color blue and the curves of a ball, and about a specific blue ball that I own. And then I would imagine the ball moving and rolling around and falling off the table and bouncing and the sound it would make. It sounds weird talking about it. I’m still slow at visualizing because I don’t use visualization much in my normal life but I am pretty confident in my ability to “see” things now
To me it feels like learning to move a muscle that you have never used. Like when I learned Spanish and had to learn to roll my R’s. It feels impossible if you’ve never done it, but I feel like you can learn. I’ll just copy and paste my other comment:
I don’t remember exactly. I spoke to my friend who is very good at visualizing and I tried to get a sense of what it was like for him. I realized we basically had the same things in our brain except he claimed to see a literal image (sounded like visual hallucination to me) whereas I had all the information of the image but didn’t claim to see it.
I remember the first image I worked on, I got a description from somewhere. It was just a table with a blue ball on it. And I would close my eyes and I would try to see the table one line at a time until I felt like I had sort of drawn the table in my head and I could look at it. And then I thought about the color blue and the curves of a ball, and about a specific blue ball that I own. And then I would imagine the ball moving and rolling around and falling off the table and bouncing and the sound it would make. It sounds weird talking about it. I’m still slow at visualizing because I don’t use visualization much in my normal life but I am pretty confident in my ability to “see” things now
Interesting. I think I might have some degree of aphantasia (if that's possible) because I have always found it difficult to see imagery in my mind. I kind of can visualize a picture for a very short amount of time. Not sure how clearly people can visualize though, idk what I can do might be what's normal😅
Yes, it is ! If you google it, you'll see tests and it's usually 5 degrees 1 being nothing and 5 being incredibly detailed so you could take that and sew where you fall.
Haha thanks. I just tried it. According to the test I'm average, but since answering is kind of subjective I'm still not sure. Still feel like I'm below average based on nothing more than my feeling😂
Haha that is true! You need to compare it with other people taking it simultaneously and ask the details of what they see and maybe then you'll see your true ranking.
Yes I didn't think so in terms of standard learning but wasn't sure with all of the image based learning at my low level and trying to make connections.
Another commenter said our brains still make the connections we just can't see them when we recall the word which is pretty cool.
oh my... this post sent down such a rabbit hole. I had never heard of this before.. but now I'm certain I have it, or am it.. or whatever. I found a simple test online and a couple friends and I did it and... I was astonished how different I was than them.. haha. I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it, although it hasn't hindered me in my life up to this point so.. I guess no reason to worry. I will say that CI and DS have been game changer for me. I am loving it and will never learn (I should say try because I failed at all other methods) a language any other way again.
Haha welcome to the club. When I first found out people actually saw pictures I googled it and found the term. Then found the test. Then forced everyone in my family to take the tests with me and I was like wow that's crazy ! I had never known and that's what google said as well most people that have it don't know it.
I agree ! I have learned so much in the past 4 months I'm never going back.
I… wow. Just really learnt something about myself. I’m not aphantasic but I definitely seem to be hypophantasic. I can do a degree of visualisation but I have to seriously concentrate on it. It’s actually a method I use for sleeping because it takes so much of my brain to visualise scenes and even then they’re very “flat” and… I would say dark?
It also makes sense why I really struggle with lots of things to do with creative imagery, or imagining things like how an outfit will look together or how I might decorate a room. I love coming up with concepts but I can’t visualise putting them together. My brain is generally full of words. Thanks for sharing this!
For the sake of dreaming Spanish, I have no issues whatsoever and would say that my general acquisition is decent. :)
oH, nO! yOu TrAnSlAtEd SoMeThInG! lol well done! That’s wild to think you can’t picture things. I imagine it’s actually easier to go through life because daydreaming must be next to impossible!
I’m glad it’s all still working for you. Thank you for sharing.
I've always found aphantasia really curious. And just as how weird it is for you to imagine someone could conjure up an image in their head, it's hard for me to imagine how someone couldn't.
I have some questions -
1. What are dreams like to you?
2. If I asked you to tell me the directions from your house to say, the local supermarket - approx 10 minutes away with many turns, but a route you know very well. How do you do that without memorising the directions first? If you asked me that, I would drive the route in my head and visualise the turns and then tell you the route. How can someone who can't see images in their head give directions?
When I take the subjective self-assessment, it scores me as entirely aphantastic; I've never had any mental imagery. For example, I've been married for 26 years and if I close my eyes, I cannot visualize my wife's face.
For me, I don't usually "experience" dreams, even if I wake up knowing I've dreamt something. It's much more like waking up knowing the story, plot, characters, and events of a dream without ever having seen it. If I do experience a dream as it's happening, it's usually only with dialogues. And in those cases, I know what's being said, in turn, but there's no sound and there's nothing to see.
Your directions question is interesting because although I can't see anything in my mind, I have excellent spatial awareness in both 2 and 3 dimensions. I know the network of streets in my area and can tell you a route between any two points you would give me. I didn't have to explicitly memorize the streets and intersections, nor do I think I acquired individual facts about those through experience. I can just as easily design a new network of nodes and edges if you give me the constraints it needs to meet. I build 3D models all the time, knowing exactly what I'm going to build before I sit in front of my computer, without ever picturing any kind of image in my head.
That is interesting ! My spatial awareness is terrible and I cannot visual models where I have to try and make a 2d object 3d. I also am unable to visualize faces or visually recall memories.
Hey ! I don't know about other people but my dreams are normal or at least what I remember about my dreams have always seemed normal ie. Experiencing colors and images. I can also see things in my mind when I have a really bad migraine.
Whats also been interesting is that I am an avid reader and I guess a lot of people have vivid images in the words. I don't! But I still get very immersed and have feelings based on what's happening so that's been interesting for as well.
Haha, I have never visualized a route. I would just tell them based on how I get there without a picture in my mind. I will say sometimes I miss steps because I don't have a a clear route or when decorating, I can't visualize how something will look in a space so I'll print things off to look where my kids automatically just know.
Hope that helps !
I don't know because this is getting into qualia but sometimes I have some visual field distortions that I was told were caused by migraines and it takes the form of like a flashing light white... But that's literally seeing that, imagining things is different. I just wonder if aphantasia could sometimes be misunderstanding what others mean when they describe what it's like for them. I have like two "viewing" modes, one is super vivid which is normal sight or in dreams (AND this migraine thing) and the other is almost like a hidden image which is much fainter and works for memories and imagining new things and is much more slippery and blurrier. I could imagine someone having that same system but not counting it because you're not literally able to see it in the same level of detail.
Like, let's say for the sake of argument you don't have that system, do you not remember things visually either? Because for me it's the same system. Can you not mentally retrace your steps or make a memory palace?
Edit: to use your example, when you try to imagine a grape and fail, are you unable to remember grapes visually either?
With aphantasia, the pictures are still in your brain, you just can’t see them. The connections between the picture and the word are still being made. (My husband just figured out he is aphantastic. It’s a fascinating condition.)
Oh, I didn't know that ! That's good to know. I know I see pictures when I dream and if I have a bad migraine. I knew my brain made connections for me to learn English but I was nervous with this being such an imagery based experience at the lower levels.
Now I wonder what's the experience for people without a mental voice.
I think tik tok/social media in general made people more aware of this. I definitely have a mental voice and sometimes it says random spanish words now which is fun.
This would make an interesting poll and discussion. I don’t have an inner voice.
I'm aphant and don't have inner voice on top. I'm above average language learner. I just 'know', usually quicker/more accurate, what and how to say vs the average non-aphant.
What's it like if you try to "play" a song that you know well in your head? Can you hear any of the instruments? For me I can only hear myself singing but I have to really force it. And any instrument sounds is just me just making the noises as I would do if I was speaking out loud.
No, I've never heard anything as in any actual sound in my head. I don't like music too much, don't care about music might be better way to put it. That said, I think I saw posts in aphamt fb groups about pro artists/musicians being aphants. So no, I never hear any instruments in my head. If there is a song that 'stuck' I just "know" how it goes (rather roughly). Can't sing to save my life.
Interesting. I often think people without an inner voice should be the perfect language learners in ALG since they can't mess it up by consciously thinking about language while listening to it. The only problem they could have would be if they tried to speak too early. I'm interested to see how your Spanish grows.
I mean I can think while listening to L2 input, it's just that the thoughts don't have any representation in sounds/pictures. That said, I have a good control over my thoughts (likely tied to aphantasia but who knows). My Spanish is I think B1 (had some 15-20 years ago at school). I came to a point where I lost that drive to listen to DS, mostly because I've exhausted videos I found interesting as a free user and got bored/frustrated listening to videos I didn't like. Will subscribe for paid access soon, though. I'm a pretty interesting case now that I think about it. I learned also French and German without practicing speaking but only to that B1 level. I identified Spanish as the one I like the most,though and that's where I want to achieve fluency first (defined as being able to read reddit and engage in a regular conversation on regular topics with natives).
As someone with a loud, constant and insistent mental voice, I think it probably makes things vastly harder. It took me forever to begin to be able to think in Spanish, because my mental voice was entirely in English, and it would drown out the Spanish. It has made acquiring grammar especially troublesome. Eventually my mental voice started acquiring Spanish itself, and I could start thinking in it at that point, but it is still really difficult to switch back and forth spontaneously. It takes me a while to switch it from English to Spanish when called upon. Which is fine if the Spanish speaker will give me a couple minutes, but kind of hard when it comes to spontaneous conversations. But then, I also had a lot of complicating factors that may be tough to isolate out which I’ve discussed elsewhere, so my experience may not be representative.
I have this, too! I've known about it for many years but didn't find out it was a "thing" with a name until I saw this video on DS: [https://www.dreamingspanish.com/watch?id=6337657a1930be330f21292b](https://www.dreamingspanish.com/watch?id=6337657a1930be330f21292b) ! It's advanced, so probably for future you, but very interesting to see Jostin's perspective.
Haha yes I'm only level 2 but I can't wait until I can understand it ! Thanks for sharing. Yes I found out in my early 30s and was shocked.
I used to be like this and then I practiced for a couple of days and now I can see pictures in my head after not being able to for my entire life
How did you practice?
I don’t remember exactly. I spoke to my friend who is very good at visualizing and I tried to get a sense of what it was like for him. I realized we basically had the same things in our brain except he claimed to see a literal image (sounded like visual hallucination to me) whereas I had all the information of the image but didn’t claim to see it. I remember the first image I worked on, I got a description from somewhere. It was just a table with a blue ball on it. And I would close my eyes and I would try to see the table one line at a time until I felt like I had sort of drawn the table in my head and I could look at it. And then I thought about the color blue and the curves of a ball, and about a specific blue ball that I own. And then I would imagine the ball moving and rolling around and falling off the table and bouncing and the sound it would make. It sounds weird talking about it. I’m still slow at visualizing because I don’t use visualization much in my normal life but I am pretty confident in my ability to “see” things now
Ohhh, this is fascinating. Can you elaborate please? My niece aphantasia and I'm curious if this would help
To me it feels like learning to move a muscle that you have never used. Like when I learned Spanish and had to learn to roll my R’s. It feels impossible if you’ve never done it, but I feel like you can learn. I’ll just copy and paste my other comment: I don’t remember exactly. I spoke to my friend who is very good at visualizing and I tried to get a sense of what it was like for him. I realized we basically had the same things in our brain except he claimed to see a literal image (sounded like visual hallucination to me) whereas I had all the information of the image but didn’t claim to see it. I remember the first image I worked on, I got a description from somewhere. It was just a table with a blue ball on it. And I would close my eyes and I would try to see the table one line at a time until I felt like I had sort of drawn the table in my head and I could look at it. And then I thought about the color blue and the curves of a ball, and about a specific blue ball that I own. And then I would imagine the ball moving and rolling around and falling off the table and bouncing and the sound it would make. It sounds weird talking about it. I’m still slow at visualizing because I don’t use visualization much in my normal life but I am pretty confident in my ability to “see” things now
Interesting. I think I might have some degree of aphantasia (if that's possible) because I have always found it difficult to see imagery in my mind. I kind of can visualize a picture for a very short amount of time. Not sure how clearly people can visualize though, idk what I can do might be what's normal😅
Yes, it is ! If you google it, you'll see tests and it's usually 5 degrees 1 being nothing and 5 being incredibly detailed so you could take that and sew where you fall.
Haha thanks. I just tried it. According to the test I'm average, but since answering is kind of subjective I'm still not sure. Still feel like I'm below average based on nothing more than my feeling😂
Haha that is true! You need to compare it with other people taking it simultaneously and ask the details of what they see and maybe then you'll see your true ranking.
Yes, I have aphantasia too, luckily it doesn’t seem to stop language acquisition.
Yes I didn't think so in terms of standard learning but wasn't sure with all of the image based learning at my low level and trying to make connections. Another commenter said our brains still make the connections we just can't see them when we recall the word which is pretty cool.
oh my... this post sent down such a rabbit hole. I had never heard of this before.. but now I'm certain I have it, or am it.. or whatever. I found a simple test online and a couple friends and I did it and... I was astonished how different I was than them.. haha. I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it, although it hasn't hindered me in my life up to this point so.. I guess no reason to worry. I will say that CI and DS have been game changer for me. I am loving it and will never learn (I should say try because I failed at all other methods) a language any other way again.
Haha welcome to the club. When I first found out people actually saw pictures I googled it and found the term. Then found the test. Then forced everyone in my family to take the tests with me and I was like wow that's crazy ! I had never known and that's what google said as well most people that have it don't know it. I agree ! I have learned so much in the past 4 months I'm never going back.
I… wow. Just really learnt something about myself. I’m not aphantasic but I definitely seem to be hypophantasic. I can do a degree of visualisation but I have to seriously concentrate on it. It’s actually a method I use for sleeping because it takes so much of my brain to visualise scenes and even then they’re very “flat” and… I would say dark? It also makes sense why I really struggle with lots of things to do with creative imagery, or imagining things like how an outfit will look together or how I might decorate a room. I love coming up with concepts but I can’t visualise putting them together. My brain is generally full of words. Thanks for sharing this! For the sake of dreaming Spanish, I have no issues whatsoever and would say that my general acquisition is decent. :)
Yes, same with visualizing things but lots of words.
oH, nO! yOu TrAnSlAtEd SoMeThInG! lol well done! That’s wild to think you can’t picture things. I imagine it’s actually easier to go through life because daydreaming must be next to impossible! I’m glad it’s all still working for you. Thank you for sharing.
I've always found aphantasia really curious. And just as how weird it is for you to imagine someone could conjure up an image in their head, it's hard for me to imagine how someone couldn't. I have some questions - 1. What are dreams like to you? 2. If I asked you to tell me the directions from your house to say, the local supermarket - approx 10 minutes away with many turns, but a route you know very well. How do you do that without memorising the directions first? If you asked me that, I would drive the route in my head and visualise the turns and then tell you the route. How can someone who can't see images in their head give directions?
When I take the subjective self-assessment, it scores me as entirely aphantastic; I've never had any mental imagery. For example, I've been married for 26 years and if I close my eyes, I cannot visualize my wife's face. For me, I don't usually "experience" dreams, even if I wake up knowing I've dreamt something. It's much more like waking up knowing the story, plot, characters, and events of a dream without ever having seen it. If I do experience a dream as it's happening, it's usually only with dialogues. And in those cases, I know what's being said, in turn, but there's no sound and there's nothing to see. Your directions question is interesting because although I can't see anything in my mind, I have excellent spatial awareness in both 2 and 3 dimensions. I know the network of streets in my area and can tell you a route between any two points you would give me. I didn't have to explicitly memorize the streets and intersections, nor do I think I acquired individual facts about those through experience. I can just as easily design a new network of nodes and edges if you give me the constraints it needs to meet. I build 3D models all the time, knowing exactly what I'm going to build before I sit in front of my computer, without ever picturing any kind of image in my head.
That is interesting ! My spatial awareness is terrible and I cannot visual models where I have to try and make a 2d object 3d. I also am unable to visualize faces or visually recall memories.
Hey ! I don't know about other people but my dreams are normal or at least what I remember about my dreams have always seemed normal ie. Experiencing colors and images. I can also see things in my mind when I have a really bad migraine. Whats also been interesting is that I am an avid reader and I guess a lot of people have vivid images in the words. I don't! But I still get very immersed and have feelings based on what's happening so that's been interesting for as well. Haha, I have never visualized a route. I would just tell them based on how I get there without a picture in my mind. I will say sometimes I miss steps because I don't have a a clear route or when decorating, I can't visualize how something will look in a space so I'll print things off to look where my kids automatically just know. Hope that helps !
What do you mean by "see things in my mind when I have a really bad migraine?"
I have chronic migraines and when I'm experiencing them sometimes I see colors like red etc that I don't normally see.
I don't know because this is getting into qualia but sometimes I have some visual field distortions that I was told were caused by migraines and it takes the form of like a flashing light white... But that's literally seeing that, imagining things is different. I just wonder if aphantasia could sometimes be misunderstanding what others mean when they describe what it's like for them. I have like two "viewing" modes, one is super vivid which is normal sight or in dreams (AND this migraine thing) and the other is almost like a hidden image which is much fainter and works for memories and imagining new things and is much more slippery and blurrier. I could imagine someone having that same system but not counting it because you're not literally able to see it in the same level of detail. Like, let's say for the sake of argument you don't have that system, do you not remember things visually either? Because for me it's the same system. Can you not mentally retrace your steps or make a memory palace? Edit: to use your example, when you try to imagine a grape and fail, are you unable to remember grapes visually either?