peculiar difficulty in visualisation

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Same here. I don't really visualize things. I can *think of* a person in a chair, but no picture comes to mind, and if I *really* try, it is very lacking in detail but I can verbally describe how it *would* look. I'm a *very* verbal/auditory person, bad with directions, shapes, geometry, maps, and spatial relations.

~Kate

Wow, I've never thought about anything like this one. Yes, I can visualize them, but it seems like they want to move around, do their own thing.. so the scene won't stay like it is for long.. they do seem to have a tendency to want to float around.. maybe because they aren't in a room or any sort of 'grounded space'.. but if the items were all contained in some sort of timeless bubble then yeah, they would do nothing forever (timelessly)

That is quite a good question.

As far as specifics, what they all look like, not immediately, but I could come up with something.. I've always been good at coming up with 'reasons' for things.. stories, history, logic, whatever you want to call it.. it could even be a compulsion

I noticed you said you had trouble visualizing while reading - visualization is entirely how I read. I don't remember the words I read so much as I remember what I "saw" while reading. I don't have trouble holding on to those scenes, or remembering them again later. Sometimes this actually can get confusing if I read a novel based on a movie or TV series and then I misremember a scene from a book as being on the screen. That's not a big deal, though, just kind of strange sometimes.

You can chalk me up as another one of those 4D thinkers, if you count time as the 4th dimension. For your suggested scene, I ended up with a guy sitting in an armchair and then thought of him and the chair floating away because then there were helium balloons attached to the chair (as you did say your objects were floating away).

If I see a few pictures of the interior of a building, for instance, I can end up extrapolating to a 3D model of the place. I can remember clearly the details of how to get to anywhere I have geographically ever been, as I can just "see" it and retrace my steps. So the idea of thinking in just static pictures seems pretty weird to me. Even though I've always been generally been quite good at science, math, and reading, on the couple of official career aptitude tests I did, I ended up with the suggested career of "diorama builder," I kid you not. I'm still extremely inclined to want to build talking, intelligent robots as a career path, so I suppose that is related.

Anyway, on the topic of fiction, I find that I sort of have to power up models or something to be able to get anything out of a new book I'm reading. Like, it can take me a long time to get through the first chapter or so of anything because I can't easily see anything for a while; it's like there's no connection unless I really concentrate. In this phase, I'm mega-distractable, and have thought of myself as possibly having ADD like tendencies. But once I get going, it's like I'm in, I can see it, it feels almost as real as what I see outside the book (like of course I can tell it's in my head, but it is then extremely easy to visualize what's going on). It's like I accept the author's representations of the characters and scenery over this early time period, and load it up or something. So I detest short stories, as by the time I get the hang of what everything looks like and can then enjoy the story, it's almost over. I love epic books, though, the more pages the better (so long as it's a good plot).

Some more msc. on the topic: I'm sort of face blind, at least until I've seen the same person a bunch of times (more if the person does not look particularly unusual), and my dreams are very vivid (and awfully realistic at the time).

I did it, and then I got bored so... I changed it up a little LOL

Now the magazine is hanging from the ceiling on a thread with the pages fanned out above the table... I have way too much time on my hands

good lord i cannot even begin to conceptualise this. diorama builder would be an awesome job, for real.


it's funny that i DO also get involved in fiction, i just can't imagine the scenery too well. for a while i preferred short stories so i wouldn't get too overly engrossed. to me, it became hugely disappointing to emerge from a book and realise that... it isn't real.


my dreams used to be vivid when i took SSRIs, not so much now. hmmmmm that gets me thinking whether the role of certain brain chemicals in attention and working memory can have an effect in the phenomenon my OP describes.


ahhhh ok. i find that movies bother me once i have read a book because they look nothing like my spotty imagination could concoct!! ! i remember written words on a page a lot (i often recall things people say on WP way far down the road), as well as spoken words.


i gave up art because i felt like my imagination could not concoct an original scene - everything i created was something that was in front of me, or else it lacked a feeling of "reality" somehow. i felt like a very good technical craftsperson, as opposed to an artist.


i really like your description... sounds like a poetic representation of what i see in my head.


^_^ thank you.


meeee toooooo!! !! really! i concoct theories all the time! and invent stuff! and have to know the reason for everything. i have so many field guides so i can better understand the world (i get scared of things that i do not understand, and that cannot be explained). also i dispense medical advice to an unhealthy degree (see what i did there?). cuz i research a lot of stuff to better have a sense of the world.