

Can you form Mental Images? - johnaspden
http://johnlawrenceaspden.blogspot.com/2010/06/mental-images.html

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telemachos
I _can_ do mental images, but only with enormous effort, and even then,
they're pretty sketch. So I generally skip images. If I forced myself to
imagine a tiger, I wouldn't possibly be able to count stripes.

Along these lines, I've also noticed that I read differently from most people.
I never visualize what I'm reading. I read the words, but don't imagine the
action or the people or places. The question "What does Hamlet look like?"
makes pretty much no sense to me. In fact, I tend to skim quickly over highly
descriptive passages (if they're long). In addition, although I'm a fluent
reader of a few foreign languages, passages describing movement in space (say
a drive or sail), completely lose me every time.

When I talk to people about reading, most think I'm weird, but every now and
again, I find someone who is equally non-visual as a reader.

Thinking about this even a bit more, I realize that I probably could not give
a coherent or useful description of anyone, no matter how well I know the
person. Apparently, I use my eyes only to avoid oncoming objects. Weird.

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realitygrill
I'm not sure if I have mental images - the natural representation for me is
more like outlined kinesthetic/spatial impressions. When I do really try to
visualize it's indistinct silvery stuff on black.

I can project these into space or onto walls but it's not distinct enough for
me to do much with it. Basic algebra operations in space are augmented if I
use my hands to manipulate the equations. I also write in the air. The
kinesthetic sense greatly aids me in physics: I can sort of feel vectors.

My reading is somewhat similar to you: I read and the words flow in and have
meaning. I only 'visualize' (spatialize?) when I'm confused, like with sci-fi
space navy battles.

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teilo
There are so many subtleties to this concept that it actually far more
disturbing/fascinating (depending on your viewpoint) than this article briefly
surveys.

Even when we are looking at a real tiger with our real eyes, we cannot likely
count the stripes unless our eyes are looking directly at the stripes. But
when we are looking directly at the stripes, we are no longer seeing the whole
tiger, even though it is there. People have no idea how selective human vision
actually is even when looking at real objects.

Now moving this into the realm of a mental picture, I indeed see a tiger,
head-on and from the side in my mind. But because mental constructions are
more of a visualized gestalt than a detailed image, when I move from seeing
the tiger itself, I no longer have a real tiger there at all. In fact, you
have nothing at all. When I focus on the stripes in my mental picture, the
tiger of my mind (how's that for a philosophical concept?) ceases to exist as
anything but a peripheral concept with a not so clear form or substance, and
there are only stripes.

I suspect this is true of most visual thinkers because it also happens to be
how we see! We may be aware of other things besides what we are directly
observing, but our mind does not deal with them except as an approximation.
Our brain literally filters out of our visio-spacial conception that which is
not relevant to our current point of attention. But in the real world, at
least, what we are not focusing on remains what it is, even when our attention
is not on it. Not so with mental pictures. I may convince myself the tiger is
still there, until I realize that with my mental tiger, I can make it have as
many or as few stripes as the parameters of my mental concept of a tiger
allows.

Obviously, the point of the article is that this is different for different
people. Everything I think about is visual, sometimes in vivid detail. Even
when I am thinking about abstract concepts, I do so visually, although for the
life of me I couldn't describe what I see to you.

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sophacles
It's strange. I tend to do a lot of reasoning with image components, even if
they are abstract to the point of not really being a metaphor anymore -- and
when brain storming sometimes will say "No it needs to be rounder" about a DB
schema, or use hand motions to place items "where they go" as I describe them.
(Oddly, if I put something that "goes" top left in say, bottom left, it
doesn't feel right). This flabbergasts and confuses people. To the point that
I almost can't communicate w/out a whiteboard sometimes. Other people totally
get it and even "put things" in the right place, and we'll mutually
"rearrange" them as we talk.

Anyway I digress, the article reminds me of this bit by Feynman actually:
<http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf>

~~~
johnaspden
Cool article, thanks! I particularly like the bit at the end, which reminds me
of the fact that I can no longer code without syntax highlighting.

I've no idea what your mental whiteboard must feel like, but I imagine it's
very useful. I find a whiteboard to draw graphs (networks) on really helps me
to think, and it looks like you don't need one!

