For those who are a 4 or 5 on this diagram: What are your dreams like?

I'm not as puzzled about the concept of aphantasia (or the opposite) as much as the fact that people here, and two I know IRL, always self report as either 1s or 5s, with a handful of exceptions (ATTOW).

Is there a selection bias, where anyone in-between doesn't relate to either extreme enough to comment, or do said extremes conflate the ability to "picture" fine details with the ability to remember them in the first place?

You guys are gonna lose your shit when you find out some people don't have an inner monologue.

Isn't 5 is called Aphantasia ? To be unable to visualize something in the mind?

I’m a 5, yet I can have extremely vivid dreams that are exactly like I am in that world. I can perfectly picture peoples faces from the past too while dreaming. So the ability is in there somewhere. 🤷‍♂️

I'm definitely a 4. The shape is there, but even that's work for my brain. I know what a thing looks like, but I can't see it. Also, I think a lot less people are #1 than they think. A #1 is someone who can make photorealistic art from the picture in their brain. I'm guessing that's like 1% of the people if not less.

I am probably 1/2, but creating images in my mind is not something I do on a daily basis, which is probably why I lack creativity in certain areas. Also I had hard time remembering faces for most of my life, and only recently it get slightly better.

Also I've noticed that the more I think about how something looks like the less I am able to picture it in my head, sometimes even not being able to remember my crush's face which is probably strange as fuck.

I'm a #5 on that scale.

And how in the hell does one navigate life, or enjoy a book, if they’re not a #1?! Reading a book is like watching a movie. I subconsciously assign actor’s faces to characters and watch as the book rolls on.

I won't say I'm not jealous of people who're #1s. However, to directly answer your question, it's not like our heads are empty. You think apple and (apparently) 'see' an apple. I think apple and it's like thinking of how you'd describe an apple. It's red, it's round. It has a stem. It's juicy. It tastes good... but I can't see it. Or anything else. They're just thoughts.

I have a very difficult time with facial recognition, presumably as a result of this. If I'm watching a movie where there's a lot of characters that are shown but not named, I have a difficult time following that. I need to be able to assign names to them to keep them straight in my head, and often-times if a character isn't named but they're important, I'll assign them a name myself just to have something to track them with. I can recognize people I interact with a lot obviously but if you asked me to describe what someone looks like who I'm not currently interacting with, that's very difficult for me to do, beyond very surface-level stuff, like their gender or their build. If I had to describe someone for a police sketch, I'd be useless at that. Remembering facial features is like remembering a list of words; I can't just call up an image of them to describe... if I haven't already committed that description to memory, I can't describe the person.

It's funny, honestly, because I never realized this wasn't how everyone is until I saw the image you linked some years back. I actually called up my mother immediately after and asked her what she could see. The conversation went something like:

"When you think of an apple, can you see the apple?"

"Yes..."

"Yeah, but like... you can actually see it, though?"

"...yes...?"

"Yeah but I mean like... you can see it, as if you're looking at it?"

"...yes, what is this about?"

For individual objects it is difficult to impossible for me to create the exact image.

For directions however, I can do a visual "fly" over the roads which I believe I should be going down, to make sure I'm going the right place. The roads are clear images, but not to the same effect of watching a video of someone driving along said roads.

I'm coming to think there is a lot more nuance to this than the 5 images let on.

This one is a cluster fuck for me... I can visualize an object in my head and even to the point of placing it in real space in my hand and being able to rotate it. I cannot however, see your face in my mind after you have just left the room.

Don't really know how that fits in.

My sister has #5 and I can ask her to make a response if you want OP.

Last we talked about it she said if she tried really hard she can see come colors and shapes but that's about it.

The best conversation about it we ever had went something like this (keep in mind were both autistic and when together dont always communicate like neurotypical people do):

*while driving*
her: "get in that turn lane to the right"
*i do the 👆hand tricks and turn*

her: "when I don't want to do that I always think in my head 'never eat soggy waffles' and remember that east is left and right is west"

me: "that's not even correct,, but like WHY would you do that??"

her: "to remember how to turn"

me: "why wouldn't you just do the hand things?"
me: "like imagine them in your head and-"

her: "MUST BE NICE HUH?"
*we both explode in laughter*

she didn't even mean to make a joke about it, that's just genuinely the way she remembers lefts and rights

also this meme has become a common occurrence whenever the topic is brought up

Also a pretty interesting thing I remembered while writing this is a clip on TV (can't remember what show it was) where they asked a room of people to draw a bicycle then they made it IRL by welding it and told them to ride it a block or two and back. Only 1 of ~15 did it correctly, one girl got it exactly but forgot the peddles. Pretty interesting how they could all imagine a bike but couldn't draw it correctly

I never know how to interpret this scale. I can think of objects and describe what I'm thinking about, but I don't see anything in the same way my eyes do. Or rather, I see a black void, and if I try to picture an apple it's like a black object on a black background, but I know it's there.

I also get better at it the longer I do it; if I read a book for a long while, the ideas get sharper in my head and can be in color, but I'm still not "seeing" in the same way my eyes do.

am I the only one like this?

Some people really are out there living their lives with aphantasia. I can’t imagine that.

Too fun and interesting to be a shitpost. Half my family are 1 the other half are 5. Woo!

This reminded me of a sort of similar topic, and curiously enough it's about reading, and might provide some insight into your question.

Some years ago, I happened on a thread in which the OP asked people whose voice they "heard" when they read.

I couldn't even make sense of that question. The only time I "hear" voices when I read is when a character speaks. The rest of the time, I not only don't "hear" the words - I'm not even really aware of them. My eyes follow the lines while my brain instantly translates the words I'm seeing into images and concepts and the like. And yes - it's like a movie playing out inside my brain, and yes, I'm a #1 on this chart.

But apparently there's a not insignificant number of people who "hear" a book inside their heads just as if someone else was reading it out loud. Instead of visualizing things, they remain focused only on the words - the representations - and somehow glean from them alone the necessary details.

I wouldn't be surprised if those people are also generally #5 or thereabouts on this chart, and again what it is is that their brains don't directly envision things but instead rely on descriptive representations.

I don't get how it works either, but self-evidently it does.

being a 1 with ADHD is crazy, like I can be in the middle of a class and zone out and start visualising myself walking around the campus in incredible detail, or FPV droning inside a friend's house, or really anything I can think of, although that said it takes a fair bit of effort to keep it going beyond a certain amount of time.