I wonder if there are blind people with aphantasia.
I feel like the amount would either be close to none, or most of them.
What does it mean to visualize a chess position?
I don’t exactly “render” the board or pieces. It’s like when you look at a board, and then make connections and feel whatever you feel, I just recreate those things.
I assume it’s similar to other people, but the phrase “not being able to create images” sounds like people do “render” things in their head.
It’s not the same. Aphantasisa is the total absence of being able able to picture things mentally. I have it to a degree except it takes me some effort to picture things. I can’t imagine scenes from books. I get like a fleeting image.
It’s not the same as seeing it visually, but yeah I’d say it’s a mental “render”. Sort of like how having a song stuck in your head isn’t the same as actually hearing it.
You move the pieces around in your mental picture of the board to reassess what the potential position would look like.
That’s so far removed from how my brain actually works, it might as well be magic. I simply stare at the board and make mental notes which spaces would have which pieces, but there’s nothing visual to it. Take away the board and I can’t do a thing to plan my next moves.
For the record, I also never have any songs stuck in my head. When listening to stuff, I can recognize wrong notes and such, but I cannot in any form listen to music in my head. Heck, I can barely hum the tunes of my favorite songs after listening to them hundreds of times.
It’s incredible how our brains can accomplish the same things in different ways.
It’s not like the average player can picture the full board state and play blindfolded chess like some GMs can, but I’d expect that it’s pretty normal to visualize pieces on potential spots for tactics.
I can imagine what the board state would be if my piece is there, I just don’t create a mental picture of it.
Well I don’t play chess in my head. That doesn’t stop me from being a reasonably decent chess player when there’s a physical board in front of me. I’m not sure why aphantasia would be considered relevant to chess?
Do you have it? I’m just curious how someone would plan multiple moves ahead without an image of changes to the board in their head.
“Well, if I move the bishop here, then it’s pinning the knight to the king. Then I can capture over here, threatening a fork.” etc.
I do. Feel free to ask further if you have more questions.
Basically, when I’m playing, and trying to look multiple moves ahead, at least for me it’s like a logic tree. Exactly like what you described. I just don’t visualise any images. To me, I’ll keep track that the bishop will be on this spot, this spot will be empty, etc etc. I just need memory for that, it doesn’t involve any imagery.
That’s fascinating. What about controlled squares? Like, visualizing the cross-shaped lines extending from a bishop? Or the asterisk-shaped lines extending from the queen?
In my head, I sort of “highlight” them like this:
Same thing, but with knowledge instead of colors. Like how you can (I assume) know your birthday without visualizing a calendar.
Wow. That’s wild. I suspect a lot of folks here without aphantasia are wondering what it even means to “know” something without being able to see (or hear/smell/taste/feel/whatever) it in your head.
I guess I “know my birthday” by virtue of the fact that I hear the words “August 17th” (not my real birthday, but yeah) in my head when I casually wonder what my birthday is.
If I know my birthday is on a Wednesday this year, I can picture a calendar page with the middle square of the third row “highlighted” like The Picard Maneuver was talking about with controlled squares above.
For me, I’m not sure I can imagine “knowing” something without either hearing or seeing (or otherwise sensing via some anlogue of the 5 senses) it in some sense in my head.
I guess I “know my birthday” by virtue of the fact that I hear the words “August 17th” (not my real birthday, but yeah) in my head when I casually wonder what my birthday is.
That would describe my experience. Aphantasia only affects the ability to visualise something, not the mental voice that I believe everybody has.
If I ask you your birthday, I’d expect you to hear “August 17th” in your inner voice before answering. But if I asked you “is your birthday January 3?” would you have to mentally say your birthday before answering “no”? I’d assume not.
My inner voice is used almost exclusively for forming sentences before speaking or typing them. If I’m alone, not thinking of conversations, and not reading, there’s rarely anything there except maybe a song stuck in my head. My inner voice isn’t constantly there saying “let’s go switch over the laundry” and stuff.
It’s funny that you mention it, because while I would of course “know” a date, any time I read one I always visualize a calendar at the same time.
Pretty much. I don’t visualise it with pretty colors, but I can look at the board and see their lines of control. I feel like you’re imagining aphantasia to be a lot more limiting than it actually is?
Maybe so then. In my mind, “seeing” the line that’s not there would count as visualizing.
Well you might be seeing an actual line. I’m mentally tagging the squares in that line as ‘line of control’. It’s like seeing somebody point a finger at something. I don’t need to visualise an actual line coming from their fingertip to be able to judge where they’re pointing at. It’s more a spatial thing than visualising an image.
IDK, it’s tough explaining how brains and thought processes work. They just… are.
This is why I’m always interested in talking to people about aphantasia. It’s like 2 people trying our best to describe colors to each other and wondering “are we talking about the same thing…?” the whole time.
Not an avid chess player, but as someone with aphantasia pretty much spot on for my experience.
Aphantasia is a condition that prevents people from creating mental imagery . It is rare, affecting only about 4% of the global population… My visual memory is like looking through a frosted window. I see some colors and blobby shape and that’s about it.
I found it very interesting to learn that they believe aphantasics can form the mental image, they just can’t access it. Minds are amazing!
This happens to me periodically and I seriously think it means we just need more potassium, less sleep disruption, and more time in nature to absorb green colors (soothing in memory, gives you good dreams) and exercise the eye muscles with long distance focus.
Absorb green colors haha. How many crystals should I carry while I do the absorption?
You do realize that when people are confined entirely to urban spaces they report having anxiety dreams about interior spaces?
Are you sheltered or something? Looking at verdant green spaces has been proven to have a positive psychological effect. You should wear crystals over your eyes if you are nearsighted to help. 👓 Aphantasia is just a difference in language games people use. It’s been debunked.
Aphantasia is not actually a real condition btw, the whole “imagine an apple” discourse is completely lacking in rigor. It’s like the online ADHD discourse, or MENSA. It’s a way for boring people to talk about themselves to each other. (Like most of Reddit and Wikipedia.)
We got a no-apple-seer over here
No, everyone can imagine an apple. This is stupid. Even this guy admitted he can remember things, he’s just not satisfied with the quality. A cup of coffee would make him see an apple.
Lol wtf are you on about. It’s realistic to you that people can have PTSD, hyperphantasia, photographic memory, schizophrenia, bipolar, blindness/deafness, multiple sclerosis, and all these other otherworldy experiences which most people wouldn’t believe without being educated on it, but not realistic that a portion of people have deficient or non-existent mental imagery? Or even that a portion of people have ADHD?
I seriously doubt that you know better than neuroscience&psychology researchers and people who have the disorder but alright.
Also aphantasia isn’t “no remember thingies”. Memory is complex and it isn’t reliant on your ability to project images into your vision.
I have never been able to actually mentally visualize something, I always thought “imagine being in your happy place” was a metaphor and not that you’re actually supposed to visualize a place. I have always took “visualize” to mean metaphorically and not literally put it in your vision. The closest I have is dreams and sleep paralysis hallucinations lol. No amount of caffeine or concerta could possibly change that. You’re crazy if you think because you can’t imagine it that there’s a conspiracy of “so-called aphantasiacs and medical researchers” who are lying about the existence of lacking mental imagery.
I’m curious as to where you allegedly saw aphantasia being “debunked” because all there seems to be is crazies on internet forums (specifically, Reddit and ycombinator) who notably aren’t psychology researchers, have no qualifications regarding the matter, and are just random people who want to feel like they cracked the code. Often times it’s people who have never been able to visualize who think their deficiency of mental imagery is the norm and that most other people have never been able to visualize either.
I’m also curious as to whether you think developmental/congenital prosopagnosia is fake or if it’s just a phase like you think aphantasia is.
“Neuroscience researchers” but you don’t post a source, just an essay on how invested you are in this being real. Keep huffing that Quanta magazine, buddy. MBTI testing is also horseshit. I didn’t see it “debunked” on Hacker News and Reddit, those are the #1 aphantasia and ADHD havers in the entire world. It’s hilarious you think something less rigorous than IQ testing is on the same level as PTSD
“Neuroscience researchers” but you don’t post a source, just an essay on how invested you are in this being real.
These 2 are by Rebecca Keogh, an actual cognitive neuroscience specialist/psychology researcher who has a PhD from one of the most well-regarded universities in Australia. Here they establish that there is real evidence that aphantasiacs lack mental imagery, and finds that there is no evidence backing the claim that “aphantasiacs have mental imagery”. Keogh also has some works that delve deeper into mental imagery and how it’s a spectrum, including aphantasiacs and hyperphantasiacs.
Here’s Cleveland Clinic casually affirming its existence too.
I shouldn’t even have to give sources because I’m not the one claiming an abnormality in visual imagery is fake but here you go anyways.
It literally comes up immediately when you search for aphantasia research. You clearly have not even tried to find research on aphantasia. Now where are your sources? I notice you didn’t link any, at all. And I bet
Does Aphantasia also cause the development of superhuman levels of patience? Because my dude, i don’t know how you managed to entertain this troll for as long as you have. This whole thread was highly entertaining though, so thanks for that, lol.
(I know it goes deeper but i didn’t want to bury my comment that far down)
If there is anything keeping people from having solid visualizations throughout the day, it’s not sleeping enough. It’s a night-and day difference in mental imagery. None of these studies control for anything like that or sleep, which really just shows you how hard they are fishing for something which isn’t there. A lot of sleep issues are totally incurable without switching to back sleeping, getting rid of lint (people refuse to do this), and eliminating a sedentary lifestyle. Now if you tried to do studies on people like that you wouldn’t be able to find any. But I can tell you I’ve experienced “aphantasia” and it’s cured by getting a good night’s sleep. A lot of people never get a good night’s sleep ever.
Hahahahaha oh my god Psychology Today has done a numbet on you, what a moron, the first study has N=15, it’s entirely based on self-diagnosis and surveys. The want to come up with a neurological basis for it based off fifteen people self-reporting fuck off lmfao
Can’t wait to see the second one.
This is like when my sister decided she was a super taster and that cilantro tastes like soap.
I never said I was particularly impressed with the rigor of ALL NEUROSCIENTISTS, they are as bad as physicists involved with string theory. Unfalsifiable nonsense. This is the kind of shit I’m talking about when I trash the entire field of “smart science” that’s been picked up by TPOT and Lesswrong and other pseuds.
saw it debunked
Oh you want me to prove aphantasia isn’t real lol, no wonder you have trouble with things like this where people play word games, you’re completely devoid of logic. The onus is on you, and neuroscientists, to prove it exists.
What you did is go pull every paper you could possibly find which reinforces your identity.
I just witnessed a murder lol
This is the problem with the I Fucking Love Science crowd, your fun facts quickly turn into barrages of narcissistic gibberish whenever someone doesn’t give you validation. There’s no rigor, there’s no questioning, there’s no meta-analysis.
Just TRUST THE SCIENTISTS, LOOK AT THE STUDIESESS nevermind whether they’re any good. Go post about the Stanford Prison Experiment or something you irritating pseud.
4% is a pretty big chunk of the population. That’s 1 in every 25 people. Which makes it all the more insane that nobody realised it existed as a condition until just a few years ago.
It just doesn’t come up all that much. Folks live without knowing they are different.
And it is on a spectrum. Some folks is nothing others are can force a few pictures if they have to but aren’t clear. I dunno.
It really depends on how you define aphantasia. Often the VVIQ score is used, a vividness score ranging from 16 to 80.
About 0,8 % of people have a score of 16, and 3,9 % have a score <= 32. The figures are from one of the more recent studies. Other studies report similar figures, for example one study by Zeman found 0,7 % with a score of 16.
About ¼ of all people with visual aphantasia also have multisensory aphantasia (all classical senses and emotions).
I don’t see things in my head, it’s still blank but i can imagine the concepts. Do i have aphantasia? My dreams are vivid tho
I have total aphantasia and am exactly the same.
Downvoted for telling you how to dream more, stay salty!
It’s just a made up fad condition. It’s not a real thing.
Yeah i never believed people see anything in their head, bunch of liers.
Did you believe in the gluten intolerance epidemic that’s been magically cured too?
I’ll never forget the day I learned that “picture an apple in your head” or “picture the audience naked” wasn’t just a saying and was literal.
I remember not believing my friends who said they could see their imaginary friends.
You thought they were smelling them or what?
Ha! I posed this query to my daughter just the other day. We are both aphantastic and have no chess abilities at all.
An article about it :- https://en.chessbase.com/post/aphantasia-in-chess
So like, I’ve heard about this for ages but I struggle understanding. I definitely cannot “see” anything when I close my eyes, I definitely cannot “see” anything in my mind/imagination. I can “picture” things but that picture is more or less an emotional feeling about the thing, I can imagine certain parts of it but it’s more or less a conversation with myself about what I would see or experience about the thing, as if I were describing something that I’m feeling while blindfolded.
When they say visualize something in your head, do people actually see something as if they were looking at it? Else I just figured that visualizing meant more or less an analogy of how we make sense of the actual experience.
It’s not as vivid as seeing it for real, or even dreaming of it. It’s more akin to how you can “hear” a song that’s stuck in your head.
See, now that’s the funny thing. I can totally listen to music in my head, vivid enough that I even unconsciously will start to bob my head or shoulders in time. I get goosebumps the same as I would for a song that’s actually playing.
I have this and have often wondered if it works against me. I have also been weirded out that it’s normal for people to actually “see” pictures in their head ever since I found out about this.
Anyways yes. This must be why I am not great at chess. Let’s blame it!
I now have a mental picture of you sitting at a chess board straining to visualize it in your head and losing. At least you are spreading imagery to others.
They project into the ceiling
A friend of mine has aphantasia. It seems like she has trouble with some board games but not with others. If she can stare st the layout of the board she’s usually fine. We’ve never played chess.
In addition to not being able to see anything in her head, she also cannot hear her own thoughts.
That last part is particularly interesting… So maybe it’s not just visual reasoning.
I think most aphantasiacs can’t hear their own thoughts, but I might be wrong.
She’s like the Helen Keller of thinking
TIL I have aphantasia
I just think about what moves they may make from what I can physically see. It works well enough but I’m not good at chess. That’s most likely my ADHD working against me though not the aphantasia. Maybe both lol.
Speaking of ADHD, I’ve been into chess lately and have found it to be a really good way to practice extending my focus and not taking mental shortcuts, like I’m prone to do.
like people who don’t have it? Chess is strategy, not art, or engineering.
Chess is a series of strategic moves. You just make them. Are yall out here experiencing some kind of bizarre 5d chess i’ve never experienced before?
source - me, i have it.
I’ve always suspected my wife has this, and I just inquired. She said she can’t picture faces or things, but can recognize them. Her memories are more like feelings. I asked if she were separated from our daughter in an apocalypse, if she could remember what she looked like. She said, “I have no idea what she looks like right now.”
Now she’s in kind of a dark place.
It’s possible that she hasn’t got aphantasia, but something called face blindness (prosopagnosia). The Wikipedia might be an interesting read for you guys!
She’ll get through it. I had a similar experience, but it passed. I can’t picture my daughter in my mind, but I can describe her and recognize her and, as it happens, she has aphantasia, too. Indeed, I only realized I did because of her. She said that, because she is autistic and has always known how different she is, she knew it wasn’t just metaphorical when people spoke of “mind’s eye” and “picturing” things. Remind her of how much aphantasia frees her from. I wouldn’t trade.
This matches my experience. Everything and everyone has a feeling, not so much a word, or an image, or a number, but a simple to recall, and hard to explain feeling.
If she’s still in that dark place, ask her whether she can recall what your daughter’s “feeling” in her head. If she’s anything like myself, that feeling is the sum of her relationship with your daughter all in an instant. Not only is that something you probably can’t do that she can, it is an interesting way to perceive others. It helps a lot with code switching too, that same feeling of someone else also sets the tone with which you can effectively communicate with them in my experience, though it doesn’t work on everyone.
This is the level that I am at and it’s hard to explain to people that, “no, I don’t remember so-and-so’s smile on their birthday.” Like the feeling of the experiences are there and an analytical capture is, but vision? Gone the second I don’t see it anymore
I can’t imagine my families faces, and I prob couldn’t even manage a photofit of my own face to be fair. Its strange when you first realise this isn’t standard for most people and its actually a thing.
Put photos in a necklace for your wife or something similar if it bothers her.
That would actually be a really thoughtful gift, OP should do that.
It’s hard to imagine… not imagining images. It’s such a weird perspective to think about.
