I can spell well and do some math in my head (not a math person so nothing too complex) but I rarely need to visualize letters or numbers to do either. I’d need to visualize the numbers to do triple digit multiplication but for simpler stuff I don’t think I do it? Occasionally I will write it in the air.
I was talking with my 22 yr old and my husband about this last night. My 22 yr old has a highly developed mind’s eye, no inner narrator at all, and can’t “hear” songs in the mind’s ear, and thought getting a song stuck in your head was just a phrase. My husband has a photographic mind’s eye, and a perfect mind’s ear (he can call up the sound of a voice he knows at will). He’s also got a great memory. I think he’s a “super recognizer”.
I find all this fascinating - as stated above I can visualize in my brain if I try, although I don’t have pictures in my head all the time, and they are not super clear even when I, for example, make myself visualize my grandparents’ living room (note, it’s been 30+ years since I’ve seen it in real life). But I can definitely see it, and I definitely dream in images. Faces are harder, but I can see them if I try. I do have an internal narrator, though sometimes she is more active than others. I am not musical AT ALL, yet I sometimes can hear music, and definitely get songs stuck in my brain. I try to do math in my head, but if I visualize it I usually lose one number before I have a solution - tricks like rounding the numbers and adding them work much better for me. One thing I haven’t heard mentioned and I’m curious about - I can hear in my head exactly how a foreign word or phrase should be pronounced, but can’t make my tongue do it. I guess similar to hearing music perfectly, but not being able to necessarily sing it without going off tune. But I find the language thing so frustrating! I KNOW how it sounds but can’t say it. If I learn a word or phrase without seeing it written first it is much better - I am more likely to say it correctly forever - and if I am around people speaking a language my pronunciation gets better - but if I see it on the page or hear it in my mind? No way can I translate that into speech (note I am not at all bilingual and have limited proficiency, so not sure if that is a factor too).
For those who see … when you close your eyes, is the imagery in front of your eyes, or do you have to pull it from your head. I’m trying to understand - I close my eyes and see black (or floaters). To visualize my husband/kids’ faces, I 'see" them in what feels like the dark recesses of my brain, but they are not vivid images, just faint outlines.
Is your visual imagery vibrant, or does it feel as if you are dredging them up through mud?
It doesn’t matter if my eyes are closed or not - I just visualize a scene. I guess I’m a very visual thinker. When I’m in a place I want to remember, I purposely look around and concentrate so I can recall what it looked like in the future.
The mention of an inner narrator struck me- I remember having that as a kid but I don’t think I do anymore! A lot of my childhood was running around the farm playing pretend though.
I do get songs in my head constantly. A lot of this morning was one that was on my clock radio this morning, I got sick of it and tried to change it in my head and ended up with a children’s game chant. Now it is the A-Team theme song. Seeing a word will trigger a song with the word in it. Sometimes purposely trying to change it when I’m sick of it works, sometimes not.
I very often get random momentary images in my mind of certain places. Frequently it is a parking lot to a local farm store, or a certain spot at the Iowa State Fair, or a couple other places. I noticed there’s been a new one recently, but now that I want to think of it, I can’t.
I can easily imagine details of how someone or something looks or sounds, don’t have to close my eyes. But I don’t have the best memory. DH will often ask if I remember when we did this or that and I don’t. He also remembers a lot from movies and TV shows.
When I think of it, I’m singing it with James, strumming the guitar, and playing the glissandos on the piano. It’s the Live version from 1993, the year I graduated from college. I can even hear all his ad-lib na-na-na’s and comments in between the songs.
Note: I have zero talent as a musician and can not play electric guitar or piano IRL.
I still feel like S24’s inability to visualize words in his head may be related to dyslexia, though. Like how the words Mediterranean and Caribbean are interchangeable to him although he totally knows the two separate histories and geographies. The other day, he said “tandem” when he meant “tangent.” I figured that those words are distinct for me because they look different, and in my head, they are associated with different word pictures. (A geometry drawing and a bicycle.)
I’m a visualizer - one reason I don’t love movie adaptations of books (though I watch them) is that they partially replace my own scenes with the movie ones. Everything from Jane Austen to fantasy novels are rendered in my head. Even imaginary scenes from my own daydreams are precisely rendered. Sometimes for real-life I use the wrong “picture”. When I picture my kid sleeping, it’s often in the dorm she was in before her current one. But without fail if I think of her when I think she’s sleeping, it’s with a visual image. Etc.
I also have the constant radio in my head. It’s hard work to change the channel when stuck with an ear worm!
I knew a family where the dad had dyslexia and so did the daughter, but he was a builder and could absolutely see shapes in his head. I think that’s why the letters were hard for him because if you think about it, b d p are all the same shape just rotated. He could rotate shapes easily in his mind so the letters easily flipped too.
Just to add to this, my wife has, I guess, hyperphantasia, as I wrote above - closes her eyes and sees very clear 3-D images. AFter she has been in a room, she can close her eyes and turns 360 degrees in that picture. It’s not didactic memory, since, like the article wrote, her mind will add incorrect details, like an upright piano instead of the bookcase that’s actually there. However, she will have a very clear picture of that piano, color and everything.
She is also moderately dyslexic and dysgraphic. She can read, but it takes time, and if there are more than two zeros in a row, she has to count each one. She really good at creating diagrams to explain what she wants, and he slide show for talks and lectures are really heavy on graphics, and light on text.
When I think of it, I’m singing it with James, strumming the guitar, and playing the glissandos on the piano. It’s the Live version from 1993, the year I graduated from college. I can even hear all his ad-lib na-na-na’s and comments in between the songs.