this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024

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This is a thought experiment "Ball on a Table" for detecting whether someone has Aphantasia. What do you see when you perform this experiment? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 2 months ago by zlatiah to c/asklemmy

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This is more of me trying to understand how people imagine things, as I almost certainly have Aphantasia and didn't realize until recently... If this is against community rules, please do let me know.

The original thought experiment was from the Aphantasia subreddit. Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/g1e6bl/ball_on_a_table_visualization_experiment_2/

Thought experiment begins below.

Try this: Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it) a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball?

Once you're done with the above, click to review the test questions:

What color was the ball?
What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
What did they look like?
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?

And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have aphantasia. The reason this experiment works is because someone with aphantasia will logically think about what they're being asked, but since they're not really "picturing" it, they won't have any answers about details. Color, type, and size of the ball? I have no idea, that information wasn't relevant to my mental checklist. For me, it really does work like a checklist. My brain supplies exactly zero imagery. For some people it's more like a spectrum, where they might be able to have a hazy picture with minimal details.

But aphantasia is 100% real. It's just hard for people to believe it because it's so foreign to the way they're used to thinking, in the same way it sounds unbelievably exhausting to me that regular people are constantly creating movies in their heads.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think my brain might just be lazy... I skipped over the entire walk to the table part. And just imagined a detached arm pushing the ball on a surface, until it rolled off the surface and that was all.

[–] reinei 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing this as well! I also just imaged a detached hand + short bit of lower arm pushing the ball (for which I did imagine it to be of a gray shiny metal slightly larger than the hand)!

And I also imaged a super plain square wooden table so when the questions about the person hit I was super confused wether or not this counted as aphantasia or not (because I am fairly certain that I don't have it...)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

You basically just expanded on everything I imagined. I couldn't have described it better.