How does it affect your ability to enjoy books? Or type of books you’d enjoy?
Do you tend to prefer more visual medium like video(movies, tv), or comic books?
Mildly aphantastic.
Love reading, don’t know or have any different experience to compare it to.
I don’t visualise, but feel words and concepts as worda/concepts. I like descriptions as I can build up a concept with the words.
Similar experience here. Aphantastic and prefer books to shows/movies.
This. I also have it to a certain degree. Perfect description of how I read books. Never bothered me. Never even realized some people have a vivid visual imagination until it became a recurring reddit topic a few years ago.
999 was the realisation it was a thing for me, and then found a diagnostic questionnaire online and got the “mild aphantastia” result.
I do “see” inner images but they’re blurry, flashing and I can’t directly control them. So when I read I mostly focus on the text and faintly in the background there’s a “school fight recorded by hyperactive kid” version of the plot going on.
This is probably the most relatable one I’ve seen so far
Another great analogy are those comically quick cuts in Bollywood dramas where they mix slo-mo, sped up shots, random super closeups, the same shot over and over and whatever else until you can barely make out what’s even going on
Both of your descriptions match closely with how I internally visualize. Never bothers me until I try hard to follow a visual description
Does your sense of direction also suck? Because it really does for me and I’ve always suspected a connection. I still get lost in my hometown from time to time despite living there for 9 years now.
My sense of direction is usually pretty good. If I’m distracted I’ll get turned around fairly easily but it’s not hard for me to figure out where I accidentally went.
I have aphantasia but love reading, even really descriptive passages. I don’t ‘see’ but I “feel” words, I think, if that makes any sense. Like, if I read a description of a steaming mug of coffee, I’ll feel the rising steam on my face, feel how it smells, feel the heaviness of the mug in my hand, etc. It’s a lot more vivid in a way than when I watch tv since that’s all visual and auditory.
Not total aphantasia, but mostly. I’d describe it as almost cartoonish, but more in the sense of the non-visual concept I associate with the image being described as being heavily exaggerated, more than any visual intensity. I get maybe brief glimpses of visualization before it dissolves into concept.
I know what the scene described looks like, and I know the associated elements well enough to be familiar with their properties and possible relevance to the story. As far as descriptions serve the telling of the story, I don’t really think I’m missing out on much.
For visual media I tend to prefer animation and comic books, though I think that’s unrelated to aphantasia, I’m probably a tad autistic. I appreciate every frame being intentional, and always get caught in a loop of uncertainty with live action; was that expression intentional or is the actor just hammy?
I hate descriptions, and I have a really hard time when there’s more than a paragraph focusing on descriptions of what things look like.
Other than that it’s fine, though I sometimes have to trace back because I often skip parts that look description-y and some authors like to slip in some piece of crucial information.
Does it not bother you that you don’t catch what things look like as you read? If you’re skipping description, of say, a lake, do you just… Assume it looks like a lake you’ve seen in the past? What if the description plays heavy into the plot, like the water is, idk, yellow and boiling. That doesn’t matter to you?
I scan over the descriptions to check for irregularities or significant identifiers. So your yellow lake would be noteworthy to me or if a person is described with long hair. I don’t mentally imagine a long hair person, but I try to remember it, so if later somebody sees a long haired person in the distance I know which character is referenced.
And yes if I don’t recognise anything noteworthy, I don’t make a mental note, it’s just a normal lake, nothing important to remember.
But that isn’t always working out for me. In Neverwhere the Marquis de Carabas is described as being pitch black. Which I fully didn’t get and so was wondering why all the fan art made him so black that you can’t recognise features. Because that was how he was described and I missed that important fact.
I don’t actively hate descriptions, but I used to just skim them. Now I sometimes slow down for descriptions if I think they might bring additional meaning or context. But then sometimes when it gets to be too much work, I’ll go back to just skipping over them again lol
I don’t have aphantasia but I still skip over descriptions. It just doesn’t really add anything for me. Much more interested in dialogue and actions
I sometimes have to trace back because I often skip parts that look description-y and some authors like to slip in some piece of crucial informatio
Ugh, me too! I kinda hate when that happens
This is me too. I will read descriptions, but don’t pay as much attention. Sometimes, if after the description, there is a que that a description had something important in it, I will have to go back over a description to check what I missed.
Didn’t have it for most of my life, but briefly had it, along with some memory issues. It made understanding what I was reading nigh on impossible. Any lengthy descriptions fell through my memory near instantly, as I had no practice in maintaining a purely conceptual memory of a piece of writing. On reflection, I’m terribly impressed with those who manage to deal with the absence of an audiovisual imagination to compress information.
I’ve always been a huge reader, and a fast one. Í wonder if visualizing what you read slows people down.
I also have trouble recognizing faces (mild/moderate prosopagnosia), and it’s easier to recognize a name in a book than a face in a movie.
Í wonder if visualizing what you read slows people down.
Not really, I can read very fast too and also visualize it at the same time, like full blown movie. I think it’s more indicative of information processing abilities in general: I can generally keep up watching lectures at 3x speed and notice things on screen almost instantly too.
I’m super efficient at filtering information too: I’ll look at a paragraph in some documentation and immediately see “If you’re in X special case, then…” at the 5th sentence in the middle of the paragraph when skimming through documentation. Or of course skipping details I don’t care about.
I wonder if visualizing what you read slows people down.
Yes, especially when the author probably got their inspiration during an LSD trip.
I have exactly this problem. It’s also very difficult when watching a movie adaptation of a book I’ve read, to associate the character from the book with the actor in the movie. When I read, they’re just a name.
For those of us who don’t know what it means: “is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images”
Basically if someone said “think of a nice round juicy red apple” people with the condition wouldn’t be able to imagine it in their mind.
I’m in my 40s and learned about this just a few years ago. Never affected my reading of different genres. I guess I didn’t know any different! It did help me understand why I don’t have the great memories of childhood things like my close-in-age sister does. I have always relied on her for details.
I hadn’t followed this when apparently it became a topic of interest on Reddit.
Apparently people sit on a spectrum, where they can envision less color and detail, where people with aphantasia cannot envision anything.
Also, interestingly-enough, this is apparently not tied to the ability to envision things in dreams.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g69hc0/dreams_in_color/
I dream very vividly, in full colour, but am a total aphant.
That’s fascinating. I can envision things voluntarily, if perhaps not as vividly as in real life—it’s not on par with looking at a fully-detailed scene, but I can certainly do color. On the other hand, my dreams have always been on the border with being unable to visualize at all. Maybe there’s a hint of color, but everything is normally desaturated, and things are transient and vague.
Huh.
I know what the condition is but the condition is still fascinating to me.
I don’t have aphantasia and I don’t particularly fancy any medium over the other, but what I often miss is sound. Music is a whole different language to either visual or conceptual as conveyed by words, whereas imagery to me feels the most direct and laziest, music can convey feelings there are neither words nor imagery for, and so often I like adaptations of written works for injecting some fitting music, and will listen to fitting music as I read books.
When you say you miss sound, you mean while reading? I wonder if there are books that get deep with sound description. I can think of a couple that might, but they of course do not have actual sound.
Yes, while reading. I miss music to be specific, so this applies to comic books, manga etc.
A good soundtrack to me is everything in terms of tone and atmosphere and mood.
Less subjectively, it makes sense, since you can’t touch or smell the world inside a book or a game or a film or whatever, the remaining types of information are auditory and visual, so 50% of the information about a thing is aural, so games, movies, shows etc. get that as a leg up on books etc.
On the other hand a lack of music does often force my brain to make some up which gets my lazy ass to go nurture that hobby and produce some sounds so I’m not complaining!
Have you heard of Diane Ackerman? She has a book, A Natural History of the Senses, that gets deep into human connection to these things.
I actually prefer books and really can’t enjoy tv. It’s simply not my medium. I don’t think aphantasia has any influence on these tbh. It’s not like I can compare but I don’t see how not visualizing what is happening in a book should have any influence on the enjoyment. The information still gets parsed in your head just fine.
It probably depends on the person. I know for me, reading books is only entertaining if I can visualize what is happening like scenes from a movie. Sometimes I even “cast” real-world actors in this imagined movie because it makes it easier for me to keep characters consistent.
Reading just for information retention, on the other hand, sometimes takes me a few passes because I will end up zoning out if it’s not something I can visualize.
I prefer books that don’t waste too many sentences describing things that have no relevance, but I can still enjoy a good story.
Itt, people that can visualise but think that not constantly visualising everything they read means they have the superpower to “feel words as concepts”
Details in books and written media as a list, not a series of images. Loved reading as a kid, dropped off when I spent more time doing other things, like cpmouter gaming.
The upside is that witthout a mental picture of characters any close enough visual take on the character will work for me. I also have ADHD so small details are likely forgotten and only the prominent ones that the character is defined by are going to be weird if mkssed.
For example when I heard Idris Elba was going to be cast as Roland in The Dark Tower it was a big positive because he seemed like someone that would be able to oull off the personality of the character and I was only concerned about whether they would do a good job with the missing fingers or drop it entirely as missing fingers was a big part of Roland’s character for me. Yeah I know there was something involving race in the books, but that plotline was something that didn’t seem to be necessary to carry over into a movie.
Of course the movie ended up being a pile of trash, but is a good example of how I focus more on how the character acts than how they look.
Same with a lot of science, swords, and other objects where I really don’t have a mental image so a lot of sets work as lpng ss they have the things or the general feel.
It was different for me, King mentioned his blue eyes so many times that I couldn’t imagine Idris as playing him.
A great deal, I’d
imagine.I can conceptualize.I have Total Aphantasia, and zero sense memory at all. I do have an “inner monologue” of sorts. I can’t “hear” it in my head, but I understand all the same. I don’t know how to explain with words and I don’t know how I work either, really. My outer and inner voice are the same thing to me and I have full control over it., often transitioning back and forth when I’m alone. As in, no racing thoughts. One of the ideas behind meditation where you try to silence your mind? I don’t have to try. It’s not something that takes effort for me. I bring this up because this is how I’m reading books, with that silent inner voice. One of my friends is like me with Total Aphantasia, but he has no inner monologue either. Which is bonkers to me. I don’t get it, neither does he! Haha. Many different kinds of human minds out there, it’s not so simple.
Hard to miss what I’ve never experienced, I still enjoy thinking about these fictional worlds even if I can’t conjure up a representation of what is written in my mind.
I read every genre. It’s actually specific writing styles I lean towards. If the author is really detailed with describing environment constantly, I appreciate that. I can’t really “fill in the blanks” so to speak. I also really like it heavy on the internal monologue side of things with main characters. I think that’s why I liked Ender’s Game so much when I was a kid.
I do prefer any visual media. I save all my book and research reading for when I’m at work these days, which is a lot of time actually. One of them hurry up and wait jobs. Books are far better when it comes to potentially constant interruptions.
Quoting my partner that has it: “Comic books are cool for that. I love books. I tend to gloss over heavy descriptions of place settings, I don’t spend a lot of time trying to picture it so I prefer books with dialogue. Watching a show before reading the books does help though. (Like we did with The Expanse.)”
They also mentioned that Red Rising action scenes are ridiculously descriptive and they typically skim those sections to find out who hits whom.
