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Before reading the questions:
Orange.
Dude.
Very stock photo, long dark green shirt untucked, but i had no details.
Like a big pomergranate, smaller than a football but bigger than an orange.
The table was made exclusively out of square shapes of the same dark brown, so for example no cylindrical feet. Kind of like a 3D model or the not-cheapest table at Ikea.
I had all of this before, but i didn't "see" it in the sense that people ususally mean because i have the most complete aphantasia that you can have. If you were to ask me how i saw it in my mind without litterally seeing it in my eyes, i'd have no answer. It's kinda like concepts.
The ball was a blue pool ball, on a wooden table that I can't describe because I suck at describing things (but I do have a visual of it). I didn't even imagine the person beyond the hand coming up to push it off.
The ball color might have been decided on the moment I read the question, I'm not sure whether it was part of my image before that. Person is still nondescript even after trying to "zoom out". I just can't seem to come up with it.
Ping pong ball on a circular wooden table. It took me a second to decide the shape. I can see the boards but I only focused on the tabletop and the ball so the environment wasn't defined. The person pushing the ball wasn't well-defined either. No shadows on the ball. If I go back and re-visualize it with more effort I can imagine the details (environment and person), but by default I don't. I steal the environment from my memories by default but can imagine something else if I try. Shadows and light are very hard to get right even when trying, unless I'm only imagining one object or purposely thinking of something specific (ie light reflecting through a glass).
Under aphantasia, Wikipedia has a long list of famous people who have or had it.
How can these guys have aphantasia?
Mark Lawrence, fantasy author[56]
Yoon Ha Lee, science fiction author
I don't think I'm clear on what you're asking? Is it that you're confused as to how a person can be a fantasy or sci-fi author with aphantasia?
If that is what you're asking, then as someone with aphantasia, I likely can't explain how that can happen anymore than people who don't have aphantasia (like you, I presume) could explain to me what it's like to visualise things. What I can say is that whilst I don't tend to read fiction much nowadays, I used to be an avid reader of both sci-fi and fantasy. I've found that immersive writing tends to involve descriptions that involve more senses than just sight, and also that the environment can be effectively described through how characters interact within the world. A well described world might be easy to visualise, but I don't think that being able to visualise things is necessary for producing that.
Not least of all because all the best writers also read a lot, and fiction is predominantly written by and for people who don't have aphantasia. Through this, I would expect that an author with aphantasia would become proficient in writing that facilitates readers' visual imaginations, even if they themselves didn't engage with fiction in that manner.
But how would someone with aphantasia be able to describe a fictional world well?
By definition they would need to describe something that they can't visualise
I'm not sure what definition you're referring to, but I don't see any reason why visualisation is necessary.
By analogy, I used to have a friend who was born with no sense of smell. This also greatly impacted his sense of taste. Despite this, he was an excellent chef. I once asked him about this apparent contradiction and he explained that because he knew this was something he lacked (it was discovered when he was a teenager), he had put extra work into learning how. He was very reliant on recipes at the beginning, because that was more formulaic and easier to iteratively improve. He most struggled with fresh ingredients that require some level of dynamic response from the cook (onions become stronger tasting as they get older, for example), but he said he'd gotten pretty good at gauging this through other means, like texture or colour or vegetables, and finding other ways of avoiding that problem (such as using tinned tomatoes, for consistency).
I found it fascinating that his deficits in taste/smell actually led to him being an above average cook due to him targeting it for improvement— I met him at university, where many of my peers were useless at cooking for themselves at first. To this, he commented that it wasn't just the extra effort, but the very manner in which he practiced; obviously he couldn't rely on himself to test how well he'd done, so he had to recruit friends and family to help give feedback, which meant he was exposed to a wide variety of preferences and ways of understanding flavour. He also highlighted that the sampling bias in my surprise — that all the times that he had cooked for me were things he had loads of experience cooking with and so he could work from knowledge about what works. Most people who had as much cooking skill and experience as he had would be way more able to experiment with new ingredients or cuisines, whereas my friend had to stick to what he knew worked.
I wonder whether aphantasic authors might feel similar to my friend — like they're operating from recipe books, relying on formulae and methods that they know work.
Why do you think you need to visualize something to imagine or describe it? It's just a wholly different way of thinking.
What happens to the ball? It rolls slowly off the table, and bounces a few times away from the table before coming to a stop.
What color was the ball? Blue
What gender was the person that pushed the ball? Male
What did they look like? Tall, average build, short brown hair with facial hair, maybe mid-30s, gray shirt, brown pants
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? A bit smaller than a basketball, like a ball for kids or a handball.
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Round, wood, but like the cheap laminate kind with plastic edging. Metal legs. Like a cheap table you'd see in a school or office.
I feel like I imagined a lot more detail than others. The questions were really easy for me to answer, and like a lot of unnecessary details came to mind. The guy pushed the ball because he was asked to, and he didn't know why he was there. Probably the schizophrenia.
To me the imagery seemed like a cheesy "how to push a ball" educational video with a paid actor to demonstrate how to push the ball in the correct manner.
Included the timely-ness of the details in my answers above.
The scene was like an example reel from a video game, greenscale-ish translucent humanoid mannequin standing in a pseudo void, with a nondescript rectangular table of a similar greenscale-ish semi translucent material, and only the ball is "finished" as it is the camera focus. It is approximately between baseball and softball size, smooth, but I did not pay attention to the color. There is an "interaction/activation" sound effect as the mannequin kinda leans over and lightly pushed the ball to cause it to roll. It rolls to a stop on the table top, and this action loops.
The center of focus pulled back as I read the questions, more becoming aware of them than choosing them, and the scene changed with a camera pull out as part of the "ball is pushed" tutorial clip.
I have realized how much growing up as a gamer as influenced my perspective.
I already knew the answers, for the most part. The questions didn't cause me to add more detail, but they did cause me to reflect on the details I had chosen. So, for example, I never looked at the person who pushed the ball. Because of that, I couldn't fill in any details about their looks or gender. But I did clearly see the hand giving the ball a push, and I think the hand belonged to someone white. Having said that, I did have to stop and think about the answer for the table. The table was part of what I imagined seeing, but it wasn't the focus of my attention. I realized I could think about what I had imagined and the details came to me. But, it's possible that I didn't actually dream them up until I was asked the question.
Also, nobody asked, but the ball fell down and hit a white surface (something like white tiles) and bounced the way a futsal ball bounces, which is to say mostly a soft "thud".
White
Not in shot, just a hand
The arm was the same complexion as my own
Tennis ball sized but made of that stuff billard balls are made of, smooth and shiny
Classic oblong wooden table, looks like that cheap ikea pine with a clear grain
The ball rolls along the table with again, the same sound you get with a billard or similar rigid ball rolling along a solid surface, upon falling off the table it hits the floor (pale orange ceramic tiles) and bounces a few times in that satisfying way that produces an ever increasing frequency until it stops.
I already knew and did not have to chose after being asked the questions.
That was my first thought. But then (before reading the questions) I also imagined other similar scenarios like with a soccer ball and my desk at work, lol.
My experience with this experiment was kind of like when they play memory flashbacks in movies, I could see the ball being pushed and falling, but with jump cuts and the timing was off. Detail-wise I'd say it was kinda like what you got from AI image generation when Dall-E first came out two-ish years ago.
I don't think I have the most visual imagination out there but if aphantasia is one end of the scale I'm pretty far to the other side.
Color: greenish-blue
Person: male (I identify as male, the person kind of represents me, I guess)
Looks: Cannot see entirely, because "the camera" is very near. Blue pants.
Size of ball: Fits in one hand. The ball is made of a light material and will probably bounce on the floor.
Table: Very generic table. Beige, light brown.
I think, all of that I knew before reading the questions, I was able to answer the questions without really thinking about it.
I pictured a smooth red rubber ball about the size of a baseball on my kitchen table. The "person" was more of an invisible force, not explicitly male but definitely not female. That might be male bias, or subtly thinking of myself doing it (combined with playing too many physics engine video games where your disembodied self pushes things around).
All of this was pretty vague though, like I didn't really imagine the details of the room or the exact path of the ball other than knowing it would roll off and bounce on the floor.
The ball is black, the table is black, the human is black. They're all just blobs I tell myself exist so I feel normal.
Really interesting reading your follow up post in here. It's so incredible to hear about how differently people can think.
I imagined the scene in detail, but to pay attention to all the details I had to think back to it and examine each part of what I imagined, if that makes any sense.
I pictured a side camera angle with a white metal table and a light blue wall behind. The ball was a soccer ball, and it was pushed by a woman's hand wearing a gray knit sweater. Only the hand and forearm are "in frame". Her arm comes in from the right side and pushes the ball to the left, rolling it across the table.
So my ball was the ball from toy story on a round wooden kitchen table. Probably the table from my childhood home. So the ball is yellow with a blue stripe and a big red star. It has shading and a shadow. I switched it out for a golf ball, but that didn't seem right, so back to the bouncy ball from toy story, bigger than a baseball, smaller than a kickball. Because it's the ball from toy story, the young man pushing it is toy story animation style. I tried switching him out for a regular human, but it just seemed wrong so I couldn't. He goes with the ball.
Oh shit.
Ball color and size, and table shape and color were the only things I distinctly pictured, and the ball being deformed when pushed. Everything else was still sort of abstracted and not specifically visualized, and the table color changed to improve the contrast as I imagined the scene. If I stop and really focus on the scene I think I would fill in more specific details but at my pace of reading that's as far as it went. I think unless I have a reason to do otherwise I tend to visualize the minimum necessary.
Maybe the ball was light blue, I smaller than a baseball maybe standard stressball sized?
I didn't exact gender the person but did kinda imagine dude-hands because I was looking at my phone with my hands holding it. And I just imagined maybe a wood table, like a dinner table.
I don't have aphantasia, but a rather vivid imagination sometimes. Also, a lot of my answers were indirectly influenced by my immediate surroundings:
A question for those of you who have, or suspect you have aphantasia, how are your dreams like? Can you imagine and "hear" sounds?
My answers:
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?
I already knew? . I had to visualize it first to answer any questions.
All these details were present from only reading the title:
A very large and heavy marble that you'd need to pick up with both hands to hold. A man was already there keeping a hand on the marble, to prevent it from rolling on the wooden table. The table is simple, square and has 4 legs. I know what the marble would sound like if it were to roll, bumping over the little imperfections. This is happening indoors, but there's some natural light coming through. The table is relatively close to the edge of a room but you can still approach the table from all sides. The room is mostly undefined besides that. The man is not too detailed, I have a vague awareness of what he is like, but more like a gestalt of him.
After reading the prompt: The man rolled the ball with a soft push. It produced the expected sound and then he stopped it again before it fell. I felt anxiety when the ball rolled, and was relieved when it was stopped. I want to put it on soft cloth so that we can stop worrying about it rolling off the table. There's soft cloth nearby, and it's purple felt.
I have hyperfantasia.
The ball I imagined was made of polished metal and reflected its environment.
A man.
I did not imagine a face. But he was wearing a dark blue business suit with a red striped tie. A watch was on the wrist of the hand that pushed the ball.
About the size of a large orange.
It was a smaller rectangular table made of a dark, varnished wood.
I'm an artist. I often tend to visualise what I want to draw quite well.
My answers
I picked a lot of RL stuff (like the cat, or the table) to "build" the image with; I often do this. I picked all those things before seeing the questions.
Tap for spoiler
spoiler
Fun experiment! It's amusing reading the comments.
::: spoiler spoiler Red ball pushed by an older gentleman, only imagined the hand and arm (wearing green long-sleeve but I'm not sure if I added the long sleeve after tbh, Im pretty sure I only imavined the hand). It was a red rubber ball, the kind you throw to a dog and it was on my kitchen counter (it has a distinct pattern).
Except for the log sleeve, I knew the rest without a doubt. Also, I didn't really see it fall, my angle was from across, I couldn't see the other side per say and I stopped imagining the moment it slipped off. I don't really remember a floor either.
It puts the push in the little backpack it's wearing and thanks the person.
