visualize a parade of tiny soldiers marching in front of you.
Any advice for those of us with little-to-no mental imagery?
Once when I was sad I used a thing which I think I saw on LW, of typing out my thoughts as they occured. It sounds kind of similar to this; any relation? (It helped me to feel better, but I haven’t had occasion to use it since; and it hadn’t occured to me to do it when not-sad, but maybe I will now that it has occured to me.)
The soldiers thing is probably too complicated (apart from sounding silly) as every soldier would have to be individually animated. The alternatives (leaves, clouds etc.) are simpler.
The picture doesn’t have to be very vivid. I couldn’t really keep track of the objects (leaves in my case) for very long as they moved through my visual field. I saw them clearly entering the right side of my visual field but they quickly became fuzzy and were often forgotten before reaching the other side. I also didn’t even try to put words on them. I think that a single-colored background with different-colored fuzzy blobs as tokens would work as well.
If that’s still too hard then externalizing the visualisation could work too. An ideal would be a program that would display objects moving across the screen and you could add new ones by clicking or pressing a key.
Typing seems too slow (even if you are a fast typist).
I’d say not significantly? If I try to recall music, it just comes out as me mentally onomatopoeia-ing the melody or lyrics. If I try to recall someone speaking, it takes on a poor imitation of their accent, but never their voice—it’s just me mentally reciting what they said.
For smell… like with images, I get a weak impression of something, but I can’t smell or “smell” anything.
Although I do have mental imagery, the instructions aren’t helpful to me, either. But I did come up with another idea (totally just an idea).
There are games for learning to touch type. Letters (or maybe even words) fall down the screen and you have to type them, before they reach the bottom of the screen. That seems like a good analogy to me. Your thoughts are just abstract game items (you don’t have to visualize them falling, or something). You note them as they come up,without engaging with their contents, just as you type the letters or words in the game without really caring if they spell anything.
One important difference would be that, in a real computer game, you would get positive points for typing the correct letter and negative points when they reach the bottom. If you mess up in that exercise (you end up daydreaming or thinking about your thoughts, instead of just noting them) it doesn’t matter, just get back to the exercise.
I can’t. I can maybe-sortof-vaguely imagine a marquee, but I can’t put words on it. I don’t know how to imagine words except by thinking them.
(The extent to which I can imagine a marquee is: I can’t see anything, or even “see” anything, but I sort of get an impression of a banner held between two poles. Similarly if I try to imagine a field, I sort of get an impression of something green and spiky. The impressions are very weak. I don’t even know if I’m actually imagining these things, or just imagining that I’m imagining them, or if there’s a difference.)
I will try this at some point, but
Any advice for those of us with little-to-no mental imagery?
Once when I was sad I used a thing which I think I saw on LW, of typing out my thoughts as they occured. It sounds kind of similar to this; any relation? (It helped me to feel better, but I haven’t had occasion to use it since; and it hadn’t occured to me to do it when not-sad, but maybe I will now that it has occured to me.)
Cue everyone being surprised that non-imagers exist.
(If it’s any consolation, whatever I gain by being a strong imager is compensated by weaknesses in facial recognition and word recall...)
And then cue the obligatory link to the most popular inflation-adjusted LW post ever. http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/
The soldiers thing is probably too complicated (apart from sounding silly) as every soldier would have to be individually animated. The alternatives (leaves, clouds etc.) are simpler.
The picture doesn’t have to be very vivid. I couldn’t really keep track of the objects (leaves in my case) for very long as they moved through my visual field. I saw them clearly entering the right side of my visual field but they quickly became fuzzy and were often forgotten before reaching the other side. I also didn’t even try to put words on them. I think that a single-colored background with different-colored fuzzy blobs as tokens would work as well.
If that’s still too hard then externalizing the visualisation could work too. An ideal would be a program that would display objects moving across the screen and you could add new ones by clicking or pressing a key.
Typing seems too slow (even if you are a fast typist).
Can you imagine sound better than sight/spatial stuff? How about smell?
I’d say not significantly? If I try to recall music, it just comes out as me mentally onomatopoeia-ing the melody or lyrics. If I try to recall someone speaking, it takes on a poor imitation of their accent, but never their voice—it’s just me mentally reciting what they said.
For smell… like with images, I get a weak impression of something, but I can’t smell or “smell” anything.
I haven’t made that exercise.
Although I do have mental imagery, the instructions aren’t helpful to me, either. But I did come up with another idea (totally just an idea).
There are games for learning to touch type. Letters (or maybe even words) fall down the screen and you have to type them, before they reach the bottom of the screen. That seems like a good analogy to me. Your thoughts are just abstract game items (you don’t have to visualize them falling, or something). You note them as they come up,without engaging with their contents, just as you type the letters or words in the game without really caring if they spell anything.
One important difference would be that, in a real computer game, you would get positive points for typing the correct letter and negative points when they reach the bottom. If you mess up in that exercise (you end up daydreaming or thinking about your thoughts, instead of just noting them) it doesn’t matter, just get back to the exercise.
Typing with no backspace works quite well IME, yes. Helps if you’re a fast typist.
can you imagine just a marque of words scrolling by?
I can’t. I can maybe-sortof-vaguely imagine a marquee, but I can’t put words on it. I don’t know how to imagine words except by thinking them.
(The extent to which I can imagine a marquee is: I can’t see anything, or even “see” anything, but I sort of get an impression of a banner held between two poles. Similarly if I try to imagine a field, I sort of get an impression of something green and spiky. The impressions are very weak. I don’t even know if I’m actually imagining these things, or just imagining that I’m imagining them, or if there’s a difference.)