The ball was red. The gender of the person was unspecified, they were just a hand coming into the scene coming out of a long sleeve green shirt. And the ball was like the size of a softball. What I pictured was a zoomed in part of a table, Brown, but with two zoomed in of perspective for me to know the shape of the whole table.
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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Background: I did this experiment with the pre-existing belief that I likely have aphantasia.
Starting with the important question, no, I didn't know the answer to these things before being asked
The ball was red, but I don't think my initial "rendering" involved a colour of a ball at all, because the colour isn't relevant to how it rolls. The ball felt cold, because that's one of the ways I understood its weightiness, and thus how it rolls. The ball was small enough to hold in one hand, but in "visualising" its size, I imagined how it would feel in my hand. The ball I imagined was a bit larger than a tennis ball and much heavier. I can imagine the force my fingers would need to exert to grasp it.
The person who pushed the ball had no gender because it wasn't relevant. When I considered the person's gender, they were a woman, but that information seems to have gotten lost when I "looked away" by considering other questions; when I reread the questions, I "forgot" what gender the ball pusher was, and this time they were man. I suspect that because the information wasn't relevant to the manner the ball was being pushed, the person pushing the ball was in a sort of superposition of gender, where they are both and/or neither man and/or woman, because it was liable to change whenever I "looked away".
The ball pusher(s) didn't look like anything unless I really pushed myself on this question and then I'm like "erm, I guess they were brunette?", but I think a similar thing happens as with the gender question — unless I have a way to remember what traits I assigned to the ball pusher, I'm just going to forget and have to regenerate the traits. I suspect that if I were actively visualising something, these details would stick together better, like paint to a canvas.
The table has a similar effect of nebulousness. My only assumption before you asked further about the table was that it was level (because the ball started at rest) and rectangular/square. When I tried to consider the table in more detail, I asked myself "what can a table be made out of". Wood comes to mind most obviously, because I have a wood table near me. Laminated particle-board is another thing. I also remember some weird, brightly coloured , super lightweight plastic tables from school. It could also be metal. It could have four legs, or it might have a central base like the dining table at my last house. It might be circular, or oval, or rhomboid. I think I just modelled it as squarish because I've learned enough mathsy-physics that I'm inclined to think of spherical cows, and having a straight edge is easier to model for mathematically, and to draw.
Brains sure are wacky, huh?
I imagined it in a cartoon-ish fashion, so I think I can actually draw it out.
- Red ball
- Male
- Like Google's default profile picture, without facial features, except he's in gray and has a neck
- My single hand can surround more than half of it in a cross section view, so about 12cm in diameter
- Rectangular table, about 5:2, I didn't imagine the material, but it's plain brown, so I guess wood?
Additionally, the ball rolls parallel to the long edge of the table, and falls off the short edge. The person also have legs.
I already had these in my mind before being asked.
My brother in Christ you have described almost the exact same specs I visualized. The only difference is in the level of resolution of my "scene." And by that, I mean essentially I did a few more render passes in my head to anchor everything you've written within a sort of Impressionistic, highly softened, out-of-focus backdrop. I saw hints of shadowy cabinets, the concept of a darkened kitchen out of sight. The shape and finger placement of my slightly more textured, clothed yet featureless male. The gray-brown feeling of a floor below, a dark white ceiling above, and the faded glow of sunlight through an unseen dining room window grazing one end of that oaken table.
But the basics ... They're the same, and before being asked to recall them. Damn.
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I was really surprised when I learned that the inner eye wasn't just some figure of speech, so I don't see anything, certainly no extra visual details.
Something is still happening though, I can sort of "feel out" shapes/volumes and motion, like depth perception with no visuals attached.
I have a question OP. Do you read fiction? Recently I've been wondering if aphantasia's why some people don't, almost seen unable, to read and enjoy.
This is a good point... I strongly prefer nonfiction over fiction, but it could just be Autism. I really only read fiction if it is really, really good... but I read them in the same way as I would read a nonfiction book as well, I'd be more interested in the themes of the book
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- What color was the ball?
I didn't see a color in my visualization, but I know it was red.
- What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
They were genderless; more of a concept of a person than an image of one.
- What did they look like?
Like...an area of visual space that my mind attached the identifier "Person" to.
- What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
A little smaller than a tennis ball, but bigger than a ping pong ball.
- What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
I didn't see either property in my visualization, but it's wooden and round.
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?
Lol. Well, I guess I botched that one. Obviously I did not know before being asked these questions, for most of the answers.
I didn't know most answers, my mind kinda works with the concepts. The ball was there, but there was no color, not even a grayscale, but the absence of color ( I have difficulty imagining colors in general), the pweson was there, and was a woman, but with no face of features. I don't even know if i really pictured a woman, or if my mind worked on that after seeing the questions. The table was there, but was simply a plane for the ball to be on, without features.
Now that I write this, it seems weird. Do people picture scenarios like this as if seeing a real scene? Can this be related to aphantasia? Should I be worried?
- What color was the ball? Grey.
- What gender was the person that pushed the ball? No idea, was there even a person? Couldn't really get it to move more than just rolling along.
- What did they look like? Se above, I've no idea as I couldn't really image a person.
- What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? Like a palintar in lord of the rings (commonly known as a "seeing stone" I believe?).
- What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Couldn't image a table, it just kinda layed in the emptyness.
TDLR, can't really image stuff and really can't image people, who especially not faces.
- What happens to the ball? It rolls of the side of the table.
- Color: I didn't imagine a specific color
- Gender: I didn't imagine a specific gender. Most of the person was "out of the frame"
- What did they look like: Again, most of the person was out of the frame, they were just kind of a gray silhouette
- What size was the ball? Like a dodgeball I guess?
- What about the table? Very minimalist square table made up of five rectangular prisms (the surface and four legs). No specific material, uniform texture. I imagined everything in isometric perspective.
This is what I recall from my first time imagining the scenario, I'd have to imagine some more if I wanted to give specific answers.
With all due respect, I don't believe aphantasia is a real thing. The way people imagine things is so varied, weird, strange, and unique that I don't think it makes sense assigning labels. Different people will give varying levels of detail to different parts of their imagination based on their past experiences and knowledge.If you ask someone to imagine a chessboard, someone who plays chess might imagine a specific opening or valid board state, while someone who doesn't might just have a vague blob of chess pieces on a board.
Even with your ball on a table experiment, the experiences people have had throughout the day may give more or less detail to the imagined scenario. I'm fairly certain that the reason I imagined everything so abstractly is because recently I found an artwork with a similar minimalist isometric style that I liked a lot, so it's kind of floating around in my subconsciousness and affecting how I imagine things.
With all due respect, I don't believe aphantasia is a real thing.
It does, it's a studied and proven condition. No idea why you wouldn't believe it lol
With all due respect, I don't believe aphantasia is a real thing. The way people imagine things is so varied, weird, strange, and unique that I don't think it makes sense assigning labels
Labels should always be used with caution, but for me, learning about aphantasia led to me reconsidering the ways in which I imagine things, and this had a beneficial impact on how I communicated with people close to me. For example, I seem to be an odd mixture of relying on visual stimuli for thinking (so I have visual reminders all over, and reading complex info is way easier for me than hearing it), but also seem to lack the ability to visualise. This means that if my partner asks "hey, do you remember which drawer the mini screwdrivers are in?", I would usually be unable to answer, despite being able to walk in, take a glance at the drawers and go "that one, there". We didn't realise how frustrating this was for both of us until we reflected on the possibility of me having aphantasia. Whether I do or not doesn't matter. More relevant is the fact that now, when he asks me questions of where things are, it'll often be accompanied by a photograph of the location, which drastically improves my ability to recall and point to where the item is.
To some degree, I agree that it's nonsense to assign labels when in nature and in humans, variation is the norm. Certainly it can lead to reductionism and ignoring wide swathes of that variety if one is on a quest to sort people into boxes. However, there is still a lot that we don't know about how the brain works to process things and labels can be instructive either in researching aspects that we don't yet understand, or for regular people like me who find benefit in a word that helps me to understand and articulate that there are ways that my partner thinks and processes information that seem to be impossible for me to emulate. "Aphantasia" helped both of us to be more accepting of these differences.
Framing a phenomenon as either real or not isn't especially useful though, largely because of the ambiguity in the phrasing. An example in a different domain is that I've seen a wide variety of people claim that they don't think autism is a real thing. This tends to be received as offensive to many people, not least of all autistic people who feel like their lived experience is being directly attacked and questioned. Sometimes it is, and their anger is justified. However, I've also seen the "autism isn't a real thing" sentiment come from (often autistic) people critiquing the label and how it's used, especially in a clinical context. They argue that it perpetuates a binary framing of autistic and not autistic, which further marginalises people who do have a diagnosis, and isolates some people who have autistic traits but are overall sub-clinical in presentation (who may have benefitted from understanding these traits from an autistic perspective). Regardless of one's view of the arguments, it's pretty clear that these are two very different stances that might be described by "autism isn't a real thing".
I make this example because debating of the utility of labels can be a great and fruitful discussion that helps to improve our understanding of the underlying phenomena and people's experiences of them. Framing that debate as what's real or not can lead to less productive arguments that are liable to cause offence (especially on the internet, where we're primed to see things in a more adversarial manner)
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What does it mean if the first time I pictured the ball being pushed I noticed it was sliding instead of rolling and corrected it
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I can imagine it in the sense that I can understand what happens. There is nothing visual at all for me. My assumption was that it was roughly-tennis-ball-sized absent any other info, but it wasn't even a person, just a hand pushing a ball (and again, just the idea and nothing visual) as no other info is relevant.
- Red
- An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape doesn't have a gender
- An amorphous blob in a humanoid shape
- Baseball sized
- Round, four legs, wood.
Haha no, I had to fill all that info in as I answered the questions. I mean, you can't literally see the things in your minds eye. They're more concepts.
The interesting part is that some people are able to see.
- rolled to the left and up a bit, fell off
- Red
- male
- only saw the arm
- tennis ball sized
- folding card table
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I don't literally SEE it like I would with my eyes but:
Red ball
Clown, no idea of gender
Again, clown
Ball smaller than tennis ball, bigger than golf ball
The table I am sitting at and looking at right now.
And no, I can and do imagine how things look. It's a different sort of knowing/imagining than actual physical vision or dreaming though. Which led me to be confused about what exactly aphantasia is.
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- Small push, ball rolls a very short distance and stops
- No color
- Male, maybe an extension of myself doing the push
- I did not visualize a complete person, only a suggestion of a body, and a arm/hand to push the ball
- Size of two fists together
- I did not visualize a full table, more like a camera view of a tabletop. Nondescript wood finish.
Did I already know? Sort of... My brain rotated through multiple possible imaginings. It worked forward, then reversed the logic to complete the scene. Nothing was set in stone: My brain decided that the ball would not roll off the table. Why? The ball has an uneven surface, it wobbled when stopping. Why? Because it has a surface like a soccer ball. Why? Because that was the first "look" my brain landed on that answered the question. I recall rotating through different colors and finishes, but after my brain imagined the ball stopping I had to come up with a why.
It's a gentle push so the ball rolls for a second before falling off the edge of the table and bouncing away on the floor.
Ball Color: Bright red
Pusher Gender: Masculine
Pusher appearance: Caucasian, Tan suit, head was out of frame
Ball size: Tennis ball sized, but smooth with a seam around the middle
Table appearance: A square, short end table on a white studio backdrop. Dark wood with a glossy coating.
The important question: I can confidently say every question I already knew and was just describing what I was seeing, with the exception of maybe the pushers clothing. After reading the question my focus shifted to it and it visually resolved and I described it. Looked and felt almost the exact same way that you might not notice the details of an object in your peripheral because the focus of the scene was the ball, and then at a prompt, shifting your gaze and taking note of that object at the edge. It was framed like some kind of ball demonstration physics video.
-
What color was the ball?
Grey, I suppose? It wasn't important until this question so it was kind of colorless, even though I could picture it. -
What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
Androgynous. -
What did they look like?
Nondescript. -
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
A bit larger than a softball. -
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
It was a rectangular table. It shifted from being smooth and grey to a lightly finished maple, then back again. -
Important question:
I didn't really think about these details until asked.
I find it very interesting that the vast majority of people saw a red ball. I did too.
::: spoiler
- red
- Indeterminate, mostly just an arm
- shoulder-length brown hair, androgenous body, hidden face
- Like a rubber bouncy ball you'd get in a party bag
- wooden, square
Mostly I already knew, but it felt like things were "filling in" as I tried to "remember" the image to answer the questions, especially around the person.
:::
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- The ball was red.
- I have no idea.
- I have no idea.
- Like, maybe softball sized? A little bigger? I'm not sure.
- Square. It was made of brown.
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
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Before reading the questions I visualized an all white room, with an average square wooden table with a red ball about the size of the baseball on it and the person was a white man with black hair in a grey suit.
- Ball rolls a bit but stops before going off the edge of the table
- Red
- Male
- Avg Height/Build, Brown hair, shaved face
- Like twice the size of a marble, like a bouncy ball
- Square, wooden table, lightly stained.
Knew the answers before being asked.
Small tennis sized ball whitish color on a whitish classic rectangular kitchen table. But the table is zoomed in quite much at the start so you only see the overside of it.
No specific gender, very neutral. Like a videogame character with few colors, white mostly. Now the scene is zoomed back to let you see the person walk up to the table.
Did not know. But when i read the others answers mine turned into a 1990 MTV music video where objects are immutable but displayed in lots of different ways, colors, textures, ... I also exploded it when the pwrson touched the ball for fun.
I have worked a lot in video games and scientific visualisation, so the test looks like something I'd make in a 3D engine I guess, least information possible to show the important things, the ball etc.
I can imagine and see about anything, colour, texture, forms, people, movements, but the more details the more zoomed in it gets. I can imagine you as lofi-girl looking at your phone, but expeession like "what the crap did I just read" imagining you reading this for example.
HTH
Amateurs, all respondents imagined something new.
My mind is so efficient, it just plays something back.
Except he pushed it towards her instead of picking it up.
- Striped white and blue
- Male
- Casual clothing, nondescript
- About the size of a softball
- Round wooden table
All of this came before I was asked about it.
- rolls off the table, bounces a bit and rolls toward a glass door, where it also bounces gently after hitting the glass door. You could see outside into a yard that had a green garden in it. And trash bins outside.
- blue
- female, I think. But I didn’t pay much attention to the person at all.
- long light brown hair, wearing a winter jacket, facing away from me. So I couldn’t see their face.
- it was a dodgeball. Blue dodgeball. Not brand new. A few scuff marks on it. I could see like, the raised bumps on it.
- it was a dark brown thin wooden table. It had a tray with a vase in the middle of it with a green plant with long grass-like leaves. There was a black, modern looking chandelier hanging from the ceiling above it. The table kind of looked like it came from IKEA lol.
The reason this is so detailed is that I just so happened to imagine the kitchen from a friend’s house. I already know everything that’s in there. It was easy to picture. And no, I didn’t come up with any of this as a result of answering the questions. I just saw it in my head.
The ball was black, made from rubber, tennis ball size. Only a hand was imagined. No particular colour or gender. The table was made from Elm.