Difficulty with mental imagery?

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Constructional Apraxia
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/apraxia/apraxia.htm

Likewise, my ability to visualise things is extremely limited ordinarily, but I dream in full detail.

Something I've noticed (I've been trying to understand how visualising things works for me for a while now) is that when I'm just about to fall asleep, I sometimes (not often, it's not a reliable thing) start visualising things "properly" - what I suppose is the "ordinary" way people visualise things - maybe it's being relaxed, or maybe it's just that visualising is easier for everyone in the dark.

Can anyone shed any light on that?

The experience you describe is true for me as well, although in my case it extends into dreaming. I remember most of my dreams, but while they are often detailed in terms of plot, they are not visually vivid at all. I understand my dreams spatially, and I know what things in my dreams look like (it's the same with my waking imaginings). But it's definitely a "knowing" rather than a "seeing". Most people I talk to tell me that when they imagine things, it's as though they're seeing them; I don't experience that at all.

I took a seminar in my first year of college called Dreams and Dreaming, and, due to curiosity about my own visualization process, ended up writing a paper on this subject. Basically, the idea is that people experience different levels of "visual vividness". (I wrote about it specifically in the context of dreams, but it extends to waking visualization as well.) Some people can simply picture things more vividly than others; it doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything wrong if you can't do it well. I can barely do it at all.

From what I can tell, NVLD involves difficulty with visualization in general, including spatial judgment, rather than simply decreased vividness. So, if both are a problem, that might be at the root.

I've always said that I don't think verbally or visually... It's more a rawer conceptual type of thinking.

It's more like a list of details. parameters to create something. formulae. (well, no.. I don't think of a circle as x^2 - r = 0) But never are there "pictures" in my head. Flashes for a split second, like the strobe effect... okay.. maybe, of a small area, in detail, with everything else blurred. There and gone. I don't try to visualize this way because I don't find it useful.

The thing is... when you reject the limitations that visual representation of something imposes, you can "imagine" things that are far more complex.

My dreams are perhaps VIVID... but they are not visual. they are similarly conceptual.

As far as this relates to "non verbal learning disorder" though I didn't read the article... I think it's different with me... this is something that makes it hard for me to take thoughts and put them into words... it's almost like I have to "translate my thoughts from a different language"... one that uses a different alphabet too. So it would be more of a verbal learning disorder as opposed to non-verbal.