Aphantasia ???? never knew I had it

I got a high score. I can easily visualise many things. If I think of certain occasions I can close my eye and 'see' it all happening. When I feel stressed or cannot sleep I can conjour up a picture of one of my favourite places and put my self there, often hearing the sounds and scents too. I 've never thought that maybe this was something some people cannot do.

This really confuses me. I've done the test twice, 31 first time, 29 second. The second time I answered as though I could visualise better, but it rated me lower.
I think I can only visualise if I've got a similar memory to base it on.

For those with Aphantasia there is a new web site especially for you -- aphant.asia/index.php

BTW , no need to feel sorry for us, it is not a problem for us.

I have just scored 37, I found I could visualise quite a lot without even thinking about it, I find that quite strange, I don't know why. I do know that several years ago we had a small factory adjoining an auction house, and they would leave their unwanted furniture alongside our factory, and one night someone decided to set light to it. On being asked if I had noticed anyone suspicious hanging around over the past few days, I described a man - and was later told by the police, that it was an exact description of one of the plain clothes officers who was having a look, but that of course is memory, not visualisation. (he was not the guilty one)

40/40
I can see/hear/smell the sea without closing my eyes!
I quite often 'visit' other places in my minds eye and can't imagine what it's like not being able to do so. So sorry for those of you who have aphantasia

Aphantasia?
Sounds like a morbid and unreasoning fear of Walt Disney

Hilda, I could hug you, need a fellow aphantasiac that understands me.

I would have thought smells were to do with memory.

PS. Like pompa I scored 8.

Well there you go. I couldn't visualise anything. I can remember perfectly well what my sister looks like, but as for visualising her clothes and walk, nothing at all. I know I dream in colour, and remember very clearly the last dream I had about my late mother. As for trying to conjure up a picture in my minds eye, well that is just a blank black space when I close my eyes. Like pompa I am all amazement. I never knew I lacked this capacity. How strange.
It doesn't bother me at all!

For a long time I couldn't remember, or visualise, what my children looked like when they were very young. I could only bring photographs to mind. I can remember now, thank goodness.

38
I can also smell things as I visualise.
Couldn't draw or paint to save my life!

How exactly do you "see" the house when you remembering the layout?

Doesn't make sense.

well, I have moderate face blindness and failed the visual memory test I was testing five year olds with. I seem to manage ok with landscapes.

I scored 31, I have no problem visualising scenes, indeed one way of getting to sleep is to imagine lying in all the different bedrooms on our trip round the world in 2012. (Hope that doesn't sound smug, not meant to)

But I have a real blindness for faces and people. If asked to even describe my husband's face, I would really struggle! I cannot remember my parents faces or voices, which is sad. I have better luck remembering photos of faces, but actual people, not a hope!

Icyalittle, no, I can remember things, like the layout of the house I lived in as a child, but I cannot bring any visual image into my mind. This must seem very odd to anyone that can visualise things, but to me it is normal.

Memory is totally different, for instance you can remember being in pain, but you can't visualise pain. You may be able to visualise the circumstances that caused the pain, but pain itself can not be visualised.

Re Exeter Uni, I have put myself forward for study.

I think I score 40 as well, but I'm confused about differentiating between memory and visualisation. Surely you have to have seen the component parts of something to be able to visualise it? And then it is in your memory, isn't it? You can then put items together to make an image, such as phoenix and her frog/stone/dripping water. (p.s. mine is a little green tree frog btw)

39 - how many will take the exeter uni challenge? I will if you will...

Can remember many things from early childhood. Can't draw to save my life.

Smells are very evocative for me, and bring back situations/memories, therefore pictures. No-one has mentioned those, or is it to do with memory rather than visualisation?

I can visualise but what's in my mind's eye doesn't transfer to my hands if I try to draw it.

39
When the DDs were small, one had trouble getting to sleep around the age of 7 or so and I can remember telling her to visualise a big picture and make up a story to herself about all the people or animals or things in her picture.
It always worked and that early visual imagination might have given me a hint of her future talents. She is now a successful theatre designer who has designed plays, musicals and operas, including work at the NT and the RSC at Stratford.

I wish I was soon. I can draw people - well, I don't know about these days, but I used to do a lot of drawing when I was younger, and it was always people I wanted to draw.
I'm quite creative in other ways, craftwork and so on, and enjoy photography - and particularly love creatively editing photography in Photoshop.

Though thinking about it, even if I see it, I cant draw it!

Are you good at art Indinana?
I am not. I cant visualise it so I cant draw it.

40! But actually that didn't surprise me as I've always been aware of this ability to visualise things, people etc. My sister and I used to share a bedroom and would lie in bed at night describing to each other the vivid scenes that randomly unfolded in our heads. There would be people involved in various activities and I would be able to see their faces as clearly as if they were in the room with me, people who, to my knowledge, I'd never met (though of course they may have been in my subconscious from having seen them in the street or on TV etc.). I could describe the surrounding countryside down to the buttercups growing in the fields. My brother never really got this and always maintained it was imagination. It wasn't, because these were scenes I could see, like a film running through my head. I didn't know what was coming next, I wasn't consciously 'making it up'.
Sometimes we would suggest a scene to each other, and it would appear in my mind's eye, just like that. It might be an urban landscape, for example, and I would be able to describe in detail all the shops I was walking past, the colours of the doors, etc. etc.

So why is it more difficult for some of us to visualize faces? I am hopeless at recognising people. When we had a school reunion I was so embarrassed as people were coming up to me and warmly greeting me with my name, and I didnt even ever remember seeing them before let alone their name!