visualization

[calimac]

Read during yesterday's procedures, Nov. 3 New Yorker with an article by Larissa MacFarquhar on people with aphantasia, the inability to summon to mind mental images, typically from one's own memory. People with this condition tend to think of abstract representations of the concept instead, which can be an advantage when a specific personal memory would be a distraction from the topic, and they often have trouble in general recalling details of their own distant pasts.

I don't think I quite have this, but it is true that I'm not very visually oriented. During conversations with people, for instance, I am concentrating so tightly on the content of what's being said that my eyes are off in the middle distance, not looking closely at the people I'm talking with.

But what really caught my attention was the report that many such people can easily recall things that are spatial rather than visual - it appears to be an entirely different sort of memory classification - and some have a truly awesome ability to remember music. That's me. I have a solid ability to remember and analyze geographic direction pathways, I'm interested in architecture far more than in other visual arts, and I can remember works of music that I know almost, though not quite, as well as the one who can summon up a 45-minute summary of Verdi's Requiem by just thinking about it. I tend to fatigue over remembering long works by scratch, but during a performance I always know exactly what is coming next.

It's not just music, either. When I remember my deceased parents, the images that come to mind tend to be those in photographs rather than direct memory. But I can recall the sounds of their voices precisely. That's because I was listening to what they were saying rather than concentrating on looking at them.

Where do you sit on this scale?

Comments

[sartorias]

I'm pretty visual, though sounds that are attached to emotions come back clearly, if in snatches. This has frustrated me in music when I remember for decades a bit of music that really struck me at first hearing. Sometimes I do catch up with them, years and years later.

[petrea_mitchell]

I have a good memory for music, but also no trouble summoning mental images.

[sturgeonslawyer]

I am extremely nonvisual; I usually don't have visual images of what the characters in a book look like, even when there's some pretty explicit description; and, with rare exceptions, landscapes whirr right by me. The first few times I read The Hobbit, the only real images I had of the main party was that Gandalf was tall, the Dwarves were short, and Bilbo was even shorter. Beorn I had a bit of an image - a big burly guy with a beard. Goblins were generically little green guys, and Wargs and Eagles were, well, wolves and eagles. The Men of Laketown blurred into a "people" sort of cloud. The only characters I had really sharp mental images of, those first few times, were Elrond, Smaug, and the Trolls.

Twenty years after my first reading of LotR, I could not tell you what Aragorn looked like. Reading it the first time did alter my mental image of Elrond: he got a bunch taller, as did the other Elves in the story. The only real mental image I had of any of the Fellowship was ... Sam. He was sandyhaired, in my imaginarium, and slightly chubby but significantly muscular.

On LotR, I did get fairly serious landscape images early on: Mount Doom, the Argonnath, and the "Prancing Pony" were all pretty real places to me. To this day, I have no real mental image of Rivendell beside what Jackson stuck there (and it isn't very stuck, except for the porch where the Council takes place).

Narnia did somewhat better, but probably that was because it was illustrated. My other favorite series of those years, the Tripods trilogy, gave me exactly two clear mental image, and those were the Tripods themselves, and the tripodal creatures who lived in the City of Gold and Lead.

[calimac]

Strangely, the only novel I've read that's given me really strong visual images of characters is That Hideous Strength, and it's real people - mostly British politicians of Lewis's day - whom I picture as resembling the figures of the NICE.

[bibliofile]

For music, my memories can be somewhat complete: for rock music for example, remembering how the whole piece sounds and not just the sung melody. For orchestras, I'll remember how the piece sounds as a whole, even if I can't conjure the indiviual part of a specific section (beyond the second violins, which I played in high school orchestra). It helps a lot that I listened to music pretty constantly growing up, and that I played violin in ensembles through high school.

Visually, I recall things as still pictures, not moving ones usually. And I wish I remembered more things visually; if it were computers, I'd say that it was a limited-memory issue. Like, thinking about my mom, I know what she looked like, but I don't have any movie-type memories of her talking even though I'm sure I watched her talk regularly.

I'm not sure what you mean by spatial memory. Is that moving around physically, or just remembering position in space relative to other things? Or something else?

[calimac]

"Spatial memory" is the ability to remember things that you move around in rather than just see. Paintings and scenes viewed out windows, say, are visual. Geographical directions are spatial; architecture is spatial.