I do not know what is happening when I read a fiction novel, I’ve never tried to watch my thoughts as I was reading fiction and memory is bad. I’m in the middle of one, I’ll check tonight. I definitely don’t Mental Image scenes or characters, that’s something I’d have noticed.
Edit: I read a chapter. I know I didn’t Mental Image and I didn’t notice the thing I call Imagining. I paid attention to my reading speed, which is normally very high. Passages on description of physical scenery I skipped over faster than I thought I could possibly read them—going back and reading deliberately, I found that whatever heuristic or background process let me skip them correctly identified that there was nothing there for me. Passages on characters’ inner thoughts or conversations aloud or on action occurring I never skip-skimmed.
It’s not “just” words on a page… but there’s no visual involved beyond the symbol.
I also struggle to create mental imagery. In this scenario, I do imagine a scene, but it’s not generally composed of imagery. I’m aware that this probably won’t make sense to someone who has a primarily visual imagination, but when I’m imagining a scene like this, it’s more like a network of facts in my head—I piece together the underlying concepts behind what’s being described, rather than a visual representation of them.
For example, if I’m imagining a room full of people, I’ll have a mental model of everyone’s positions in the room, which I’ll then update if the story mentions that someone is stood at the left of the room and I’m imagining them at the right. However, I don’t have a picture of the room in my head while I’m doing this, there’s no image of where the people are stood—it’s just something I ‘know’.
If I’m given a description of a person’s appearance, I incorporate facts about their appearance in my mental model of them, but I still don’t form a mental image representing them. If I was asked to draw someone that was described to me, I could attempt it (despite my poor drawing skills), but I would be converting my mental model into a picture at this stage—I wouldn’t be drawing from a picture in my head. When I try to recall a fictional character, my mental model of them is overwhelmingly based on things like personality traits, and my perception of how their mind might work. I can remember details of appearance, but they take the form of ‘has ~5cm, dark straight hair’, rather than a picture of how said hair might look.
For example, if I’m imagining a room full of people, I’ll have a mental model of everyone’s positions in the room, which I’ll then update if the story mentions that someone is stood at the left of the room and I’m imagining them at the right. However, I don’t have a picture of the room in my head while I’m doing this, there’s no image of where the people are stood—it’s just something I ‘know’.
That’s very strange. I don’t see how you can keep track of their positions without visualizing the room and labeling their locations visually in at least some rudimentary way. I would honestly be very surprised if you actually kept track of every visual detail verbally. Barring this bizarre possibility, It seems to me like your visual cortex is processing the “picture” but for some reason you aren’t experiencing it directly…
I would honestly be very surprised if you actually kept track of every visual detail verbally.
Sorry, I didn’t really explain this very well—I’m not tracking them verbally. In fact, most of the time I don’t tend to represent my thoughts verbally either (something else that seems to surprise people when we discuss how we think), they exist in the same state that my spacial representations of things do—at least until I need them in a verbal form (such as when I’m trying to decide on the wording of something I’m going to say or write). It’s hard for me to describe the state my thoughts take to someone else, as there’s no analogue outside of my own head. When I said:
I can remember details of appearance, but they take the form of ‘has ~5cm, dark straight hair’, rather than a picture of how said hair might look.
What I meant is that there are some sort of symbols in my mind that represent these concepts being activated, but in a more abstract way than by using the words that describe them, or by picturing the images that make me think of them. It feels a little like there’s a more abstract layer that sits on top of my visual and verbal systems, and this is where I do my thinking and imagining. If I need to, I can ‘bring my thought down’ to these parts of my brain (like when I’m deciding what to write, or how to draw something), but it’s not the default case.
It seems to me like your visual cortex is processing the “picture” but for some reason you aren’t experiencing it directly...
I guess this could be a possibility, but I do experience the “picture” to a degree if I actually make an effort to visualise it, like when I’m trying to draw a scene from my imagination. It’s not really anything like what I see when I’m actually looking at something, but I assume that’s the case for everyone. For example, if I try to do a puzzle that involves picturing something from a different angle, I’m able to, but it takes a conscious effort. The process I use for this doesn’t seem to get involved when I’m imagining a scene from a book (unless I’m doing something like trying to picture a scene from someone else’s point of view, at which point I have to stop reading briefly while I build up a picture).
When I read fiction, it is very abstract. All the visual details are basically meaningless, unless I can link the words to some abstract concept. I can at best get a dim, faint, low definition, general sense of how some things should look like, but nothing even remotely close to a movie scene. When I dream, the visuals are a bit stronger but still not even remotely close to waking life vision, it is mostly a sense of narrative and flow of abstract concepts with low definition visuals to move it along. Note that I have myopia and I often don’t wear glasses (I remember thinking that wearing glasses makes life hd), so my sense of what “waking life vision” is, isn’t as high def as most people’s.
Additionally, does this extend into the rest of your interactions with people? Do you confuse different people often? How well do you assign names to people? (would blonde, wavy hair, ~5′3″, named “Alyssa” be distinct in your mind from the same traits, but named “Elizabeth”?)
Visualizing a family member, for instance: I personally have a similar experience to yours, Guy, and find that when tasked to form an image of a parent, for example, the person becomes a hodgepodge of significant traits at best and just hair at worst. My father, for example, is just a bushy mustache with short curly hair and my sister is a slightly open-mouthed smile. My mother is just an outline of hair… and it’s the hair color she had ten years ago, but no longer.
When reading a fiction novel, do you imagine a scene in which the characters are interacting, or do you just see words on a page?
I do not know what is happening when I read a fiction novel, I’ve never tried to watch my thoughts as I was reading fiction and memory is bad. I’m in the middle of one, I’ll check tonight. I definitely don’t Mental Image scenes or characters, that’s something I’d have noticed.
Edit: I read a chapter. I know I didn’t Mental Image and I didn’t notice the thing I call Imagining. I paid attention to my reading speed, which is normally very high. Passages on description of physical scenery I skipped over faster than I thought I could possibly read them—going back and reading deliberately, I found that whatever heuristic or background process let me skip them correctly identified that there was nothing there for me. Passages on characters’ inner thoughts or conversations aloud or on action occurring I never skip-skimmed.
It’s not “just” words on a page… but there’s no visual involved beyond the symbol.
I also struggle to create mental imagery. In this scenario, I do imagine a scene, but it’s not generally composed of imagery. I’m aware that this probably won’t make sense to someone who has a primarily visual imagination, but when I’m imagining a scene like this, it’s more like a network of facts in my head—I piece together the underlying concepts behind what’s being described, rather than a visual representation of them.
For example, if I’m imagining a room full of people, I’ll have a mental model of everyone’s positions in the room, which I’ll then update if the story mentions that someone is stood at the left of the room and I’m imagining them at the right. However, I don’t have a picture of the room in my head while I’m doing this, there’s no image of where the people are stood—it’s just something I ‘know’.
If I’m given a description of a person’s appearance, I incorporate facts about their appearance in my mental model of them, but I still don’t form a mental image representing them. If I was asked to draw someone that was described to me, I could attempt it (despite my poor drawing skills), but I would be converting my mental model into a picture at this stage—I wouldn’t be drawing from a picture in my head. When I try to recall a fictional character, my mental model of them is overwhelmingly based on things like personality traits, and my perception of how their mind might work. I can remember details of appearance, but they take the form of ‘has ~5cm, dark straight hair’, rather than a picture of how said hair might look.
This is exactly how my brain works also. It’s very frustrating to not be able to call up an image.
That’s very strange. I don’t see how you can keep track of their positions without visualizing the room and labeling their locations visually in at least some rudimentary way. I would honestly be very surprised if you actually kept track of every visual detail verbally. Barring this bizarre possibility, It seems to me like your visual cortex is processing the “picture” but for some reason you aren’t experiencing it directly…
Sorry, I didn’t really explain this very well—I’m not tracking them verbally. In fact, most of the time I don’t tend to represent my thoughts verbally either (something else that seems to surprise people when we discuss how we think), they exist in the same state that my spacial representations of things do—at least until I need them in a verbal form (such as when I’m trying to decide on the wording of something I’m going to say or write). It’s hard for me to describe the state my thoughts take to someone else, as there’s no analogue outside of my own head. When I said:
What I meant is that there are some sort of symbols in my mind that represent these concepts being activated, but in a more abstract way than by using the words that describe them, or by picturing the images that make me think of them. It feels a little like there’s a more abstract layer that sits on top of my visual and verbal systems, and this is where I do my thinking and imagining. If I need to, I can ‘bring my thought down’ to these parts of my brain (like when I’m deciding what to write, or how to draw something), but it’s not the default case.
I guess this could be a possibility, but I do experience the “picture” to a degree if I actually make an effort to visualise it, like when I’m trying to draw a scene from my imagination. It’s not really anything like what I see when I’m actually looking at something, but I assume that’s the case for everyone. For example, if I try to do a puzzle that involves picturing something from a different angle, I’m able to, but it takes a conscious effort. The process I use for this doesn’t seem to get involved when I’m imagining a scene from a book (unless I’m doing something like trying to picture a scene from someone else’s point of view, at which point I have to stop reading briefly while I build up a picture).
When I read fiction, it is very abstract. All the visual details are basically meaningless, unless I can link the words to some abstract concept. I can at best get a dim, faint, low definition, general sense of how some things should look like, but nothing even remotely close to a movie scene. When I dream, the visuals are a bit stronger but still not even remotely close to waking life vision, it is mostly a sense of narrative and flow of abstract concepts with low definition visuals to move it along. Note that I have myopia and I often don’t wear glasses (I remember thinking that wearing glasses makes life hd), so my sense of what “waking life vision” is, isn’t as high def as most people’s.
Additionally, does this extend into the rest of your interactions with people? Do you confuse different people often? How well do you assign names to people? (would blonde, wavy hair, ~5′3″, named “Alyssa” be distinct in your mind from the same traits, but named “Elizabeth”?)
Visualizing a family member, for instance: I personally have a similar experience to yours, Guy, and find that when tasked to form an image of a parent, for example, the person becomes a hodgepodge of significant traits at best and just hair at worst. My father, for example, is just a bushy mustache with short curly hair and my sister is a slightly open-mouthed smile. My mother is just an outline of hair… and it’s the hair color she had ten years ago, but no longer.