I play DND with a "theatre of the mind" battle system (no map or miniatures, we just remember where we are) with a a dude who's a 5 and I have no idea how he does it.

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3 or 4

I can "picture" with images but it's not top accuracy. It's mostly imagining a thing existing

My brain is like a vector database, it stores the "feelings" of information, not the actual information - if that makes sense?

I can make lightning fast connections in my head when something happens, like when something breaks in production, I see the symptoms and the vectors just connect from effect to the cause.

Can I explain to others why and how I know where the problem is? Nope. ...Or yes, but it'll take a long time for me to follow the feeling-vectors and put them into words I can actually communicate to other people.

For actual people and characters in books I also retain the shape and ...something about them, but I couldn't explain how most people in my life look like to a sketch artist.

When I read a book, I kinda retain the "feeling" of the characters and maybe one or two visual traits. I can read thousands of pages of a character's adventures and I can maybe tell you their general body type and clothing - if they have an "uniform" they tend to wear.

I've read all 5 books (over 5000 pages) of The Stormlight Archive and I couldn't tell you what Kaladin (the main character) looks like. I have no visual recollection of his hair colour, eye colour, skin tone or body type.

It always baffled me when a movie adaptation of a book came out and people were really upset that the characters looked wrong. And I was just "... you remember what the people in books look like??". It turns out they do.

Oh, and DEFINITELY no voice in my head. I’d get myself committed if I had someone talking to me in my brain.

Most days I'm about a 3, sometimes it's more like 4. If I'm reading a book or doing something like that, where I'm really focusing on the visualization, I can get to 2. The only time I ever get to 1 is when I'm laying in bed at night about to fall asleep.

I have real trouble sleeping sometimes, and one of the things I do to help is put on instrumental music (lately, a lot of jazz sax), and then pick some random scenario, like:

"if I could be king of the world what policy changes would I make?"

Or "if I ever get to have kids, what kind of things would I most want to teach them?"

Or "Let's design the perfect floorplan for my dream home"

And as I begin to drift off, but while still consciously aware, I can see things in stunning detail, but it's always like they're semi transparent. That's not a great example, because there's no backdrop, but it's the best I've got.

I think I'm 1, but there's no way to know for sure. I find it easier to call out sounds rather than visuals. I can't "hear" a voice or a sound if I want to. Visuals seem to require more will for the same fidelity.

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 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?"

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.

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.