This is more of me trying to understand how people imagine things, as I almost certainly have Aphantasia and didn’t realize until recently… If this is against community rules, please do let me know.
The original thought experiment was from the Aphantasia subreddit. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g1e6bl/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment_2/
Thought experiment begins below.
Try this: Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it) a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball?
Once you're done with the above, click to review the test questions:
- What color was the ball?
- What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
- What did they look like?
- What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
- What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?
That is interesting. I imagined it more like an abstract physics problem than an actual scene. My ball was about 6 inches diameter, made of a nonspecific hard but not very dense material similar to, but not necessarily solid plastic, of no specific color. It was in the center of a table roughly 3 x 6 feet in surface at normal sitting table height, and was also of no specific color or material. The person was just the vague notion of a person applying a push slightly off from across the short axis of the table. The ball bounced slightly on the generic idea of a floor as it rolled away. My mind quickly supplied the additional details when requested, but not until then. (Yellow ball, wood table, etc). If I’d been asked in a way that didn’t feel like a physics problem, but instead asked me to imagine a scene, I would already have had many of those details in my mental view.
Weird. I’ve been thinking a lot about my aphantasia recently.
The closest I can describe what I imagined, was the feeling that those things happened.
For example. That vibe you get when you feel someone is just behind you. You can’t see them, but you know it. If I imagine someone behind me, I get the same uncomfortable feeling and an urge to look behind me.
spoiler-title
Am I the only one who imagined things that they interact with frecuently?
- The ball is green and its the one I got for my cat.
- Female, she gently pushed it with one finger
- It was my mom (idk why)
- About the size of a lemon.
- I just Imagined my table. Medium sized, thick with fake wood vinyl or something. I even imagined the mess that is on it.
I alredy knew, as I said, I imagined things I already know. And the ball bounced like 4 times before rolling out of the door.
What does it mean? lol
Edit: Added the spoiler thing. Quite interesting to read others replies.
My answers:
- What color was the ball? Metallic silver
- What gender was the person that pushed the ball? A woman
- What did they look like? Short straight black hair, pale skin tone, fit build, black blouse, plaid skirt, black leggings, wearing black pumps
- What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? Slightly larger than a baseball, slightly smaller than a softball
- What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Wood, square, about 1 meter/yard square, thick square legs one at each corner.
Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions? All of this was a picture before seeing the questions. Other things about the image that weren’t asked were also there like:
- the room was lit from a single light bulb above the table with a wide shade. Light was cast straight down on the table/ball and extended slightly beyond the table, but I couldn’t see how big the room was…until the ball rolled off the table and hit the floor. I could tell the floor was smooth wood and the walls in the room must also be of a hard material because the sound of the solid ball hitting the floor reverberated. The light showed one wall was red brick. It was indoors.
I already had my answers before looking through the questions. Red, no gender, mostly a lab coat, tennis ball sized, waist-high wooden rectangular table.
Purple-ish
Male? Maybe?
Too abstract I more imagined an arm more than a whole person
Baseballish
Square, I dunno it was also purple. I get very like, early computer animation type vibes from the whole scene. “Ball” and “table” without any context just leaves everything kinda blank.
I think I already knew. Maybe the gender one was a stretch.
I fantasized all the details as they were asked in the prompt, but didn’t give an identity to the ball-pusher until the quiz asked for it.
Honestly, it’s patchy.
‘ball on a table’ is very generic, so my brain keeps suggesting different versions. A beach ball on my grandparents’ living room table when I was a child. A fairly featureless basketball-sized sphere on a beech-like table in some kind of gallery-like environment. A tennis ball, but on little more than the concept of a table. The person, not being specified… could be anyone. In some versions it’s my own arm, POV, in others it’s like something seen out of the corner of your eye. Yeah someone came in and did a thing, I wasn’t really looking.
The motion is more like a series of vignettes, unless I concentrate more - in which case the surrounding detail gets more abstract.
Now, if you give me details, that’s another story.
A fuzzy yellow tennis ball on that cheap folding card table from my childhood with the padding cut off, leaving the textured fibreboard surface. My older sister strides up and shoves the ball across the table, making the flimsy legs wobble as she does so.
Do that, I can see the texture of the carpet and the bare walls from our shitty childhood apartment, I can downright smell the table and have the heft of the thing kinaesthetically along with the shape and visual textures. I can see the skitter and wobble of the ball across the table; my sister more an abstract bundle of mannerisms and gait, and the actual path of the ball is still more implied than observed, though.
For the most part, my visualisation is handwave, like looking through your blind spot or your peripheral vision: the part your brain makes up to fill in the missing details. When I read a book, it’s like half-remembered cover-illustrations of the general scene: more vibe (sometimes richly textured, vivid vibe) than a literal image.
Very interesting!
My results
The ball was about the size of a baseball, and the table was square, but I couldn’t answer any of the other questions without just making something up when they were asked.
Exact same.
- The ball was red
- The person was of indeterminate gender, I only really saw their arm
- They were wearing a blue button up over a white shirt
- The ball is about the size of an orange, and it rolled forwards
- The table was made of wood
I had to picture it again to get the shirt color but not the rest. I can say that the background was dark, almost like a dimly lit billiards hall, and there was a light shining on the ball
Red No gender No appearance No size The table was the same color as our dining table, but that was the only property it had.
- The ball was red and smooth and uniform and shaded like it had been painted there or drawn with colored pencil.
- the gender of the person was indeterminate, perhaps leaning female
- they did not have a definite look to describe, it was more a concept of a person. They were a featureless, fuzzy, void-white silhouette adorned only by a similarly featureless light blue t-shirt, black pants and black hair, all so ill-defined it was as if they they had been hastily cut from craft paper and slapped over top the glowing form. Like the color scheme of the fitness boxing mascot, but the more simplified form of South Park Canadians, and more amorphous.
- the ball was slightly larger than a baseball but smaller than a softball
- the table was rectangular, of beige ‘wood’ with a light grain, and very sharp edges. It looked distinctly like it was out of a low poly video game.
Important question: The ball and table were distinct and known but oddly not “real-life”. The person was very indistinct and the gender is merely speculation. The edges defining their arms and hands became more defined as they approached and interacted with the ball. The color and form of the clothing and hair manifested then too.
Interestingly, I “know” the visualization took place in my kitchen, in an orientation different than my actual kitchen table. I saw the light from the windows Illuminate the table and the ball, and I could tell where I was in the space watching it happen, but the kitchen wasn’t there and neither was I. The table, ball and person appeared alone in a murky dark void.
Sure, OK.
Welcome to my brain
- Red
- Don’t know, the “camera” wasn’t panned up that high
- All I really “saw” was jeans
- Looked like one of those rubber balls that people like to bounce against walls, like in handball or squash. About as big across as the palm of your hand. Hollow, you could squish it without much effort.
- one of those simple black square tables from Ikea
That’s kind of what just popped into my head before I knew there were questions.
Oh my! I didn’t know what to expect, and I have to say… I was quite surprised by some of your answers. Also confirmed to me that I am definitely not normal
Not many replies that are indicative of Aphantasia so… here goes nothing. I tried really hard at this okay
spoiler
I don’t “see” see anything when I close my eyes. I can create a very vague concept of a ball, a table, and… kind of a person in my head, but I don’t actually see the scene, I used to think when people say imagining things they were just making a metaphor. Things get really funk from here… But the overall schema feels more like one of those badly drawn scenes from the hit visual novel Slay the Princess. And yes I imagined it in 2D for some reason
- Color: the ball doesn’t have a color
- Gender: it wasn’t even a real person; it seems like a silhouette of the hand and back of a person
- Looks: As I said, the person isn’t even facing me
- Size: No idea; in retrospect it’s fairly large compared to the table (diameter probably 1/2-1/3 of table?), but the table is also an abstract concept so…
- Table: no clue, it is a square table but that’s it. If anything it looks like the things served on Pizza Hut pizzas
- Well I spoiled the question for myself so… but I didn’t have to choose, heck I couldn’t choose even if I know what the questions are
You imagined a lot more details than I did. For me it was just the concept of a ball. And then the idea of it moving. The person and the table were left our as irrelevant.
The thought experiment I use when explaining to people about aphantasia is a much simplified version of yours: “imagine a circle”, “ok”, “what color is it?”
That’s it. People give an answer, sometimes including more details, like texture. Then I tell them that for me the question doesn’t make sense, I just imagined the idea of a circle and didn’t actually “see” anything, so there’s no additional detail to it.
Just as an exploration with you on this. Use your same instructions for the placing and actions with one difference.
The room is pitch black, and you can’t see a thing.
What do you hear?
Click for review questions:
- what did the steps of the person sound like? Can you tell what kind of shoes they have with “heal/toe” impact sounds? single thumps indicating flat footfalls? nothing?
- how long were they walking before they got to the table?
- Did the ball make any sound as it rolled on the table? What kind of sounds? What kind of table would make that sound?
- When the ball hit the floor did it bounce or fall flat? Was there an echo? Did the sound of the fall indicate you’re in a tiny room or a giant room?
- How close was the person to your point of observation?
- Could you hear the person breathing?
- What else did you hear that I didn’t include here?
- The person didn’t walk, that wasn’t the focus of what I was imagining
- The ball didn’t make a sound when it rolled, but I was imagining a soft futsal ball that would make almost no noise rolling on a table. If I’d been imagining a marble or something that would have been different
- The ball bounced once a bit, then fell flat, it’s how a futsal ball bounces, it’s a kind of “splat” sound with no echoes. I didn’t imagine walls, so the room is effectively infinite sized
- The person wasn’t really part of what I was imagining. They were there to give the ball a push, but otherwise were irrelevant, so I didn’t focus on them in any way
If I’d let my fantasy get “polluted” by the other questions and stories, I’d have answered differently. With all the questions about the person, I’d have invented a person and effectively “panned out” so that the person was part of what I was thinking about. Instead I went with my original visualization which just involved an effectively disembodied hand giving a ball a push. If this were a TV show or something, the only part of the person that I ever saw was the hand that gave the ball a push, everything else was “out of frame”. But, I wasn’t imagining a “frame”, just whatever my mind’s eye was focused on, which was almost entirely the ball, and not anything else.
I am not joking; the only thing I can imagine is for some bizarre reason a bowling ball noise followed by a comical noise of striking pins. I know there is a person but I couldn’t imagine that person
spoiler
- The ball started out crystal, then changed to a colourful pool ball, off-white & yellow / red,
- The person doing the pushing had no distinct features / might have been me in the first person / was otherwise unremarkable, most of the visualization starts after the point of pushing the ball
- ditto.
- ditto
- The ball was roughly pool ball sized.
- the table was a relatively non descript wooden (pine coloured) dining table, in a kitchen / dining room ish area with the vague sense of cabinets and a counter behind it, but these were all very blurry and non descript
