Minichan

> I want the researchers

DIY
Don't be lazy. Become a researcher and do it yourself.

i had an english teacher in high school that claimed this. talked about an apple; had us all think of one and picture it in our mind. claimed he wasn't able to "see" it like we did in our "minds eye." people questioned him some, i listened.

i thought it was horse shit then and i think it's horse shit now. he talked about thinking in "concepts" and not being able to "see a story like a movie in our heads" but could understand the elements and follow along with the plot just fine. if i could talk to him today i'd ask him if he could "hear music in his mind's ear," because i think he's confusing his internal experiences for something that has to do with altered perceptions. he talked about "closing his eyes and not seeing the movie," and i was thinking, "dude, the fuck are you expecting to see, like a literal movie. i don't close my eyes and have the blackness give way to a fucking projection screen."

i can visualize an apple just fine, but i can't literally manifest that image as something... as prominent as direct sensory input. he talked thinking in concepts, like red as a concept, i can imagine the color red, like a red apple, and i can visualize it as a red apple, but i can't "see" it in my mind with the... same presence that i actually see something with my eyes. i can totally picture a red apple in my mind, but it's not manifest in any way... like physically. and i think that's maybe what my english teacher thought. that we could... stop seeing the world around us and just watch movies in our eyes?

i mean, everybody thinks in "concepts" and shit like that, and i think the whole not being able to visualize something in their minds eye or whatever is just people taking the question way too literally.

i dunno. just sounds like horse shit to me. be like saying they can't "hear" their internal monolog. horse shit.

(Edited 1 minute later.)

Yes, I was thinking that too, can they imagine a word in their mind, or few notes of a song they've heard. Or back to visual imagination, how would such a person make a sketch of anything? Just push a pencil around?

@787,097 (squeegee)
It's probably something like this. My mom says that when I was a baby I had photographic memory, and I thought I must have lost that ability at some point because I was no longer capable of recalling images in my head. Later on I kind of came to realize that I was taking the meaning of "photographic" too literally. I think it just means you can recall and contemplate things in a non-dialogue manner with a relatively high level of detail.

The idea of such a memory is also something that has been repeated over and over in stories, such as in tv shows, so we might grow up thinking it's a real thing. The supposed effectiveness of hypnosis to remember things in vivid detail is another such thing, as is subliminal mind influence, and pretty much all the ideas of what came to be called pop psychology (that is, not academic psychology).

@787,097 (squeegee)
A simple test would be to have him draw an Apple right?