Thread by @autismsupsoc

The established self test for the spectrum of phantasia (ability to visualize with your "mind's eye") is to describe how well you can picture an apple.

- Hyperphantasia (1) is indistinguishable from reality.
- Aphantasia (5) is an inability to picture anything at all.

Some individuals who experience hyperphantasia or near it report being able to superimpose their visualizations over their perception of sight, akin to what is demonstrated in the Iron Man films.

Though it is rarely talked about this phantasia for sight is replaced for every human sense and how well any given person can do it is a spectrum.

Some can listen to music "in their heads"
Some can taste foods "in their heads"
Some can feel textures "in their heads"
etc ...

People who experience Aphantasia can go their whole lives thinking that "picture this" and similar statements are idioms and not meant to be taken literally.

Here is a video by an artist who has Aphantasia discussing their lived experience with it.

Autistic people are disproportionately likely to experience Hyperphantasia or Aphantasia.

Part of what makes all of this difficult to discuss is the double empathy problem, where we all assume that everyone else has the same internal experience as ourselves, but we all actually do vary, and only the extremes are readily categorizable.

A fallacy of logic that many make is to assume that those who create amazing visualizations must experience hyperphantasia, but the truth of the matter is that many who experience aphantasia spend their lives perfecting the skill creating visuals because they can't "picture" them

Many people only begin to understand how varied our internal experiences are when fiction reveals to us that there *are* different ways of perceiving the world

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1665463524271828995

Some people don’t experience the flow of time the way others do, and many didn’t realize there perception was atypical until Janet from the Good Place explained that she can revisit her past experiences as if indistinguishable from the present.

We often try to explain the intuitive perception of patterns that many Neurodivergent people experience.

One way we do it is raising awareness through reoriented text.

https://twitter.com/autisticvu/status/1640933934035771392

Some people are so intuitively capable of reading RIR (upside down and backward text) that they don’t even perceive that it’s in an atypical orientation.

Some people won’t even register it as text.

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1611322366197661698

*replicated not "replaced"

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1665455092642770944?s=20

Note that the show "Only Murders in the Building" explores very Neurodivergent characters and experiments with visualizations.

Charles actively pictures Bugs and Porky following him around.

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1553150904471265287?s=20

Mabel, while in Tim Kono's apartment visualizes a conversation with him, projecting that visualization into her space.

Oliver on the other hand has an entire stage pictured entirely in their head, completely with actors who are amalgams of cast members and residents of the Arconia, that he immersively interacts with.

These are example of how the minds eye is presented in media and yet those who don't experience a mind's eye assume that these are story telling devices instead of literal expressions of what the characters are experiencing.

Please note that 2, 3, & 4 in the image are meant to be taken as abstracts levels of realism and not literally.

The possible variation between the absolutes are infinite in their variety.

You can read the replies to this thread to see that experiences vary immensely.

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1665453438128488448

In response to this thread we have gotten feedback from a person who has Aphantasia who can overlay mental constructs over their visual perception

We have added this poll if you would like to participate:

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1665808477824905218

It is estimated that regarding the general population, 2–4% of people have aphantasia, and up to 10% have hyperphantasia.

This poll is delightfully demonstrating what was already known: Autists are disproportionately both.

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1665808477824905218

~14% of the genpop experiences aphantasia or hyperphantasia.

the poll is indicating that Autists are ~5 times more likely to be one or the other.

If we assume that 5% of the genpop are Autistic, this means that ~1/4 people who have aphantasia or hyperpahntasia are Autistic.

This napkin math that 1 in 4 people who are experience aphantasia or hyperphantasia are Autistic is not intended as a highly scientific number.

It's just an estimate that might help hatching Autists to overcome their imposter syndrome.

Here is a poll asking specifically about editing your own perception of sight as an act of will.

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1665868190520320000?s=20

One of the things I think is super cool about the responses to this thread is that some of the people who indicate that they have Aphantasia indicate that they have other senses they can manifest for the apple, like touch, taste, hear (the crunch of biting it), etc ...

Btw, we asked people about "smell phantasia" a few months ago:

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1625931099028484096?s=20

We have created this experiment in "visual projection" to try to explore the spectrum of willfully controlling what you choose to see.

https://twitter.com/autismsupsoc/status/1665911769297227776?s=20