/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13642931]

How can people with aphantasia read and understand if they can't visualize the words meaning?

[Anonymous No.13642972]

>>13642931
It's simple:
It's a completely made up disorder. It's existence is fueled entirely by a craze of victimhood.

[Anonymous No.13642978]

>>13642931
fixed

[Anonymous No.13642980]

>>13642931
How does one visualize a meaning. Do people without aphantasia do this?

[Anonymous No.13642990]

>>13642931
The orange man is chinese and doesn't know what "Apple" means

[Anonymous No.13642995]

>>13642978
This

[Anonymous No.13642999]

>>13642978
this

[Anonymous No.13643486]

>>13642978
Kek

[Anonymous No.13643502]

>>13642931
>needing to turn fiction into a picture book to comprehend it
How does it feel being a perpetual child?

[Anonymous No.13643604]

>>13643502
>needing to turn fiction into a picture book to comprehend it
I do that to be able to remember facts more easily, not to understand it. By saving historical events as events that I have experienced and can therefore picture in my mind, I can remember a lot more information in less time.

[Anonymous No.13643610]

>>13643604
*I can learn

[Anonymous No.13644039]

They don't understand.

[Anonymous No.13644049]

>>13642990
Asian people are soulless so they can't imagine things

[Anonymous No.13644469]

>>13643604
You didn't answer my question, faggot. Really goes to show how retarded people who use this system are if you can't even comprehend two (2) lines of text, let alone reply properly to such a simple question, and the fact that you even confused learn and remember in your reply truly shows the lack of mental capabilities you possess due to using such a system. I doubt you can comprehend what I just typed, so I'll dumb it down, especially considering how much you struggled with my first post.
>you are dumb
>kill yourself

[Anonymous No.13644492]

>>13642931
Aphantasia combined with lack of internal monologue/dialogue is how I've always imagined animals to think.

[Anonymous No.13644493]

>>13642978
lmao

[Anonymous No.13644534]

>>13643502
THIS

[Anonymous No.13644565]

>>13642931
I think it might have something to do with the proliferation of screens and the way they have replaced our need to visualise internally. This is for the same reason we are less likely to laugh at a show with a laugh track. Imagination requires muscle memory, and muscle memory requires commitment and focus. If your parents let you spend your formative years watching TV instead of reading, I'm not surprised you're unable to visualise anything.

That said, how often do you need to visualise a word like "so" or "indubitably"? while visualisation will certainly enhance the experience of reading, I think that reading comprehension is far more important.

[Anonymous No.13644589]

When pulled in, people construct dreamy image to a scene described in the book. You read a book describing a war even? You picture it, see the bodies on the battle field, the shells falling down, and all the characters interacting.

It's a vague dream in a sense, and you can remember the scene you constructed later, exactly as you imagined it, kinda like how you remember dreams. This is why people who read LOTR book say the "movie is not like they imagined it", as it conflicts with the constructed scene of their own.

This happens only when you're "in the zone", ie pulled into the plot. At first, you read only on a surface, like you read this dry shitpost.
You understand it, but can't experience it. Some folks, typically those who never "daydream" and hate often have difficulty enterign the dream trance and always stay on the shitpost surface (sometimes they can enter only trances only for very narrow topics - math, erotica etc).

[Anonymous No.13644607]

When pulled in, people construct dreamy image to a scene described in the book. You read a book describing a war event? You picture it, see the bodies assigned to specific places on the battle field, the shells falling down to specific places, and all the characters interacting. If there's a room you decorate the room vaguely and so on.

It's all very vague, like a dream, and you can remember the scene the same as you constructed at a later point. Same as how you remember dreams - the pictures wane, and you keep only what it was about. This is why people who read LOTR book say the "movie is not like they imagined it", as it conflicts with the constructed scene of their own.

This happens only when you're "in the zone", ie pulled into the plot. At first, you read only on a surface, like you read this dry shitpost.

You understand it, but can't experience it. Some folks, typically those who never "daydream" often have difficulty entering the dream trance and always stay on the shitpost surface (sometimes they can enter only trances only for very narrow topics - math, erotica etc). They often are not very fond of fiction, as it seems as description of pointless events, with no way to experience it and use it for escapism.

It doesn't mean they necessarily lack imagination, it's more related to suggestibility - they are less prone to be hypnotized and controlled by the events to "enter the flow".

[Anonymous No.13644629]

>>13643502
>>13644469
>I can't do something that you can easily do in addition to everything else
>I have the same toolbox as you, but yours has all the tools mine does and more
>Therefore, I am superior to you, and WAY smarter
>Like, I'm really smart
>And you're really dumb
Notice how nobody else is talking about intelligence but you? Smart people don't need to try convincing others that they're smart. If anything, they try to be humble so they don't make it look like they're lording anything over others. Also, intelligent people understand context and meaning, and don't get lost the moment they hit a mis-typed word, probably because they can visualize the meaning of the
entire statement instead of having to follow each word on it's word-coding alone.

>Inb4 you claim that being able to get the job done with less tools makes you more intelligent
>Because the guy hammering on a bolt for an hour to get it loose is so much smarter than the guy who can just use the special wrench he was smart enough to acquire to do the job quicker and easier

There's no need to get sensitive or upset that this is hitting close to home for you. If you have trouble visualizing thoughts, it doesn't mean you're inferior, it just means you find different ways to think about, learn, and remember things.

[Anonymous No.13644690]

>>13643502
It happens without trying though. Read Man and His Symbols by Jung. If you can't visualize symbols as like dreaming you're basically a retard who's missing out on most of the human experience.

[Anonymous No.13644710]

>>13642931
I know what an apple looks like, I do not need to visualize it to know what the word apple means, if you visualized every word you read you would read quite slowly most likely.

[Anonymous No.13644817]

>>13644710
(1/2)
>if you visualized every word you read you would read quite slowly most likely
That's the entire point of visualization: You don't have to look at every single word to get the meaning of a sentence, because you can just pick out key words and context to create an image/movie of the sentence in your mind. If you get to sentence like:
>I went outside, threw a tennis ball, then, in mid-air, my dog jumped up and caught it in his mouth.
All you need to do is quickly skim the sentence for the key words that stand out and give context, without even reading every single word. After starting with "I went", which tells us this is first-person, past-tense, meaning this happened to the speaker in the past, no visualization needed, we then just skim through and quickly hit the key words:
>outside
>threw
>tennis ball
>mid-air
>dog
>jumped
>caught
>mouth
The little function words like "the," "my", "in," etc. don't get visualized, because visual thinkers don't need (or want) to visualize EVERYTHING. We understand function words by their inherent context/meaning, because they are abstract words, but even then, you can visualize symbolically what "in" looks like, or what the different between "the something" and "a something" looks like. Then, when we later try to remember that sentence we previously read, we don't need to remember every single word and the images associated with them, because we created an image/movie of the entire sentence happening. Remembering a simple picture of a dog catching a thrown tennis ball mid-air is way easier than trying to memorize all 21 words of the sentence.

[Anonymous No.13644823]

>>13644817
(2/2)
This entire process takes less than a second, by the way. Visual thinking, to those who are used to doing it, happens automatically. It takes absolutely no concentration, and it often takes EXTRA concentration to turn it off, like when you just put words out there like:
>toothpick under toenail, kick the wall
And everyone starts cringeing and screaming and wincing in pain, because their brains not only automatically imagined the image of the toothpick getting jammed under the toenail when the wall is kicked, they even automatically imagined the FEELING of it happening to them, and, through understanding typical context, the pain that would almost certainly result from it. This is why sympathy and empathy exist in people, we can imagine, visualize, and feel what we understand others are going through. If someone is sad that their mom died, the average person won't (usually) just say
>Glad I don't know what that's like, now get back to work
They're more likely to imagine/visualize what it's like to have their own mom die, and how they would feel if that happened, to understand why this person is so sad and behaving inefficiently, which results in them saying something more like
>I can only imagine how terrible that must be. I feel sorry for you, and since I would be really distraught if that happened, and I would want someone to pat my back and help me out, I will now pat your back and help you out, unless I really really don't like you and enjoy seeing you suffer

[Anonymous No.13644880]

>>13644817
>key words and context to create an image/movie
You do not need to create the movie to get the meaning, at least I don't, and personally, I would say focusing on key words and contexts is just skimming, not even reading.

[Anonymous No.13644893]

>>13644629
>>I can't do something that you can easily do in addition to everything else
>>I have the same toolbox as you, but yours has all the tools mine does and more
>>Therefore, I am superior to you, and WAY smarter
>>Like, I'm really smart
>>And you're really dumb
I really appreciate the strawman and heavy projection.
>>Inb4 you claim that being able to get the job done with less tools makes you more intelligent
Using the best tool for the job makes you more intelligent. Visual thinking for reading isn't the best tool for reading comprehension, antithetical to what OP suggests. Reread the OP and stop getting assmad that you can't comprehend the most basic sentences due to a lack of colors accompanying it.

>>13644690
Thanks for having a valid point, but it has more use in other areas of life and is less useful in reading fiction.