It was so confusing for me as a kid - I remember being about 4 years old looking out the window at my 2 older brothers playing with their friend (who had a similar hair color/style) and trying to figure out which one was the Not-Brother - I couldn’t puzzle it out. Or once when I was with my mom at the store, and a guy with facial hair walked past with a son about the same age as my brother, and I remember staring at them trying to figure out if it was my dad and one of my brothers, or a stranger. My mom didn’t seem to notice them, and I knew we’d taken the only family car, so I was able to follow the logic train and conclude that it could not be my family members - but I absolutely could not tell just by looking.
I’ve gotten better at recognizing people in adulthood, but I still probably won’t recognize a person I’m used to seeing at work or school if I run into them in a context I don’t expect, like the grocery store in a different part of town for example. Usually I wait until someone greets me, then have a very rapid mental process that goes “Who do I know who has brown hair AND wears glasses AND lives in this part of town AND is very short - ah, it must be Jane!”
Interestingly, I found a weird loophole in my face blindness a couple of years ago. I find I can remember objects just fine… and that includes photographs, if it’s a physical printed one. So while I can’t picture a face, I can picture the framed photo that sits on my desk, and I can kind of “see” the faces of the people in it that way. Not in great detail, but certainly much more so than I can when just trying to imagine them!
Think of a story? You can read it for yourself. Or you can listen to someone telling the story.
But if someone asks me to ‘watch this video link’ I look for a verbal transcript.
Yeah I have an easier time remembering people from photos, too. Though bizarrely, this has never worked with my closest family, whom I can’t picture in my head at all - whereas I have acquaintances that I sort of can from the photo trick.
I also always find I have a brief moment of shock every time I look in a mirror, it always takes a split second for my brain to remember that that’s me.
Just wait until you hit your sixties! I have a trick though – the bathroom mirror (there’s only one) is mounted optimally for the height of my wife, who is five-two. I’m six-four. I can see that I need to shave, but I rarely bend down low enough to get the full face
Also, all through the years, I’m the one taking 90% of the social photos so I’m rarely in them. Not until the selfie shot came around, anyhow. And even then, those are very rare when you have a drawer full of cameras.
I do not have aphantasia, but my mother does. We noticed because when I try to teach her plant identification she cannot really use visual clues as easily as I do, because she cannot compare the plant in front of her to some remembered possibility. So in her case it makes learning identification harder, and likely prompts her to make more observations as the learning time is longer!
Since realizing this I try to use identification methods that are less about the picture in one’s head and more word-based, which seems to help.
Although I don’t have aphantasia I am not sure that visual memory is my primary ‘memory sense’, mostly I remember the physical shape of things and spaces. Spaces especially I can remember very easily the feel (I.e. there was a wall behind me with a door, which has a particular feeling in my body. might be synesthesia, which I definitely have a different form of) and not so much the visual elements.
You can display common names in 3 langauges on iNat. That helps me - I may remember the scientific name, or the ‘common English’ name, or the evocative Afrikaans name (both the English and Afrikaans may have deeper roots in the pre-colonial local names chink for example) chink and Tjienkerientjee
Aphantasia is the inability to deal with the hypothetical. It is usually associated with low intelligence (unless it is caused by a brain injury) so researchers devised simple visual tests to measure it. This is how people who do not prioritise visuals for reasoning and planning got labelled as such.
I don’t think anyone who posted on this thread actually has aphantasia, at least not as a mental condition. Ask someone what would a combination of rosemary, apple and petrol(gasoline) smell like. Most would not have a clue and even fewer could describe it. Should we call the majority olfactory aphantasic? I think not.
I can’t read on a moving vehicle. It is fine on public transport but when we swap driving and navigating duties on longer trips I can’t read the road and street names. I always wonder why, most of my family can do it.
This what I think happened: Growing up, I wanted to retain photographic memory and practiced it. I wanted to think about different things and different options at the same time. These and more demands just chewed up the available cortex and not enough left for image stabilisation.
We can shape how our brains are wired. Unfortunately those decisions are made by us as young children, not capable of considering the consequences. Reverting to a different way of thinking is harder as time goes by and might not be worth it as a grown up.
Do most people not have the ability to imagine (or dream) smells or tastes, the way they do sights and sounds? I have heard others say they can’t, but I have always been able to
I can’t remember having a scented dream. If I had, that memory could have been erased. COVID knocked me around and I lost a lot of notes (coffee, rose, etc) and I can barely hang on to the memory of what they used to smell.
I think most people can recall taste and smell from experience. The ability to imagine a new taste or scent does not come easy, needs a lot of practice or natural talent. It is in the job description of top chefs, winemakers and noses (perfume designers).
I’ve been participating on the Fragrantica forum for years and scented dreams usually referred to getting a rare, desired fragrance. I think it is safe to say that most people don’t dream smells.