Your brain gives the illusion that you can, because it can switch quite quickly. But this is just like the illusion that you can see the whole world around you—it’s not actually so. The proof is straightforward, and needs a friend.
One person holds up two fingers, one on each hand, and holds them up about a foot apart in front of them. The other person looks rapidly back and forth between the two fingers, switching their gaze from finger to finger twice a second in a regular rhythm. It’s not that hard to do this.
The person holding up the fingers watches the eyes of the other person, and once they’ve established a rhythm they ask them a visual memory question. They will be unable to answer it without breaking rhythm on their eye movements, which the friend can observe.
Corollary—you at some level only have one internal screen which can either view external images, or internal ones. Not both at the same time.
Alternatively, read the rest of this comment while you visualize slowly spinning a rubik’s cube on the axis that cuts through opposite corners. If you don’t have any trouble doing so, you know that you can see while visualizing. As for myself, I find that I can’t do both tasks simultaneously.
I kind-of can, though the cube image is not that vivid. (It’s still something I wouldn’t do while driving, though.)
EDIT: BTW, I have several reasons to think that in my case reading mostly involves a part of my brain also used for processing spoken language and different from that used to process non-linguistic visual information, which may be unusual.
Your brain gives the illusion that you can, because it can switch quite quickly.
If my brain can switch that rapidly, why am I worried about it impacting my driving? And how is it that I can visualize (and hallucinate) objects interacting with the environment?
There you might be a little different—I’m always either looking in or out—there isn’t any fusion between the two. Although I have to say I’ve never tried pushing a fictional thing into the external view—if I try it now I find myself looking at an internal view of what I’ve just been looking at externally, which is not the same thing. Perhaps in your case the barrier can be persuaded to be less absolute.
One thing that’s interesting about the two fingers test is that it can be easy to persuade yourself that you can pass it, but a friend will quickly tell you the truth. When you switch to internal imagery, you don’t just lose awareness of the visual scene, you also lose awareness of the fact that your visual finger switching missed a beat. It’s easier for someone else to see it.
I’m also usually functioning in a state where visual information is dramatically impaired—my boss just came to talk to me and I can’t remember anything about his appearance today. I’ll happily concede the experimental results to you, because they actually do line up with my experiences.
However, “tracking small fingers over the course of split seconds” is very different from “this large object that I am VERY interested in because it can kill me, just suddenly exhibited a major non-rhythmic change in behavior” (i.e. the car in front of me just hit the brakes hard)
I’m also usually functioning in a state where visual information is dramatically impaired—my boss just came to talk to me and I can’t remember anything about his appearance today.
I’m also “naturally” like that, but in the last few years I’ve made a point of consciously noticing what I see whenever I remember to.
Your brain gives the illusion that you can, because it can switch quite quickly. But this is just like the illusion that you can see the whole world around you—it’s not actually so. The proof is straightforward, and needs a friend.
One person holds up two fingers, one on each hand, and holds them up about a foot apart in front of them. The other person looks rapidly back and forth between the two fingers, switching their gaze from finger to finger twice a second in a regular rhythm. It’s not that hard to do this.
The person holding up the fingers watches the eyes of the other person, and once they’ve established a rhythm they ask them a visual memory question. They will be unable to answer it without breaking rhythm on their eye movements, which the friend can observe.
Corollary—you at some level only have one internal screen which can either view external images, or internal ones. Not both at the same time.
This sounds like it could be typical mind fallacy, but at least you involved an experiment so handoflixue could see if it applied to them.
Alternatively, read the rest of this comment while you visualize slowly spinning a rubik’s cube on the axis that cuts through opposite corners. If you don’t have any trouble doing so, you know that you can see while visualizing. As for myself, I find that I can’t do both tasks simultaneously.
I kind-of can, though the cube image is not that vivid. (It’s still something I wouldn’t do while driving, though.)
EDIT: BTW, I have several reasons to think that in my case reading mostly involves a part of my brain also used for processing spoken language and different from that used to process non-linguistic visual information, which may be unusual.
If my brain can switch that rapidly, why am I worried about it impacting my driving? And how is it that I can visualize (and hallucinate) objects interacting with the environment?
There you might be a little different—I’m always either looking in or out—there isn’t any fusion between the two. Although I have to say I’ve never tried pushing a fictional thing into the external view—if I try it now I find myself looking at an internal view of what I’ve just been looking at externally, which is not the same thing. Perhaps in your case the barrier can be persuaded to be less absolute.
One thing that’s interesting about the two fingers test is that it can be easy to persuade yourself that you can pass it, but a friend will quickly tell you the truth. When you switch to internal imagery, you don’t just lose awareness of the visual scene, you also lose awareness of the fact that your visual finger switching missed a beat. It’s easier for someone else to see it.
I’m also usually functioning in a state where visual information is dramatically impaired—my boss just came to talk to me and I can’t remember anything about his appearance today. I’ll happily concede the experimental results to you, because they actually do line up with my experiences.
However, “tracking small fingers over the course of split seconds” is very different from “this large object that I am VERY interested in because it can kill me, just suddenly exhibited a major non-rhythmic change in behavior” (i.e. the car in front of me just hit the brakes hard)
I’m also “naturally” like that, but in the last few years I’ve made a point of consciously noticing what I see whenever I remember to.