From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Tue May 28 2002 - 20:29:39 MDT
Dear Extropy folks....
There is a thread on the psych D discussion forum at the moment in relation
to those of us without the capacity for mental imagery. I have attached the
latest example.
I was wondering if any of you folks out there with the same (or a variation
of) would like to post your experience to the list (or to me to forward to
it). The list is a direct connection to researchers who may find it useful.
It is a highly moderated list. Flaky descriptions will go to the dumpster!
It is because you guys are a literate tribe - seem capable of stringing
nice verbage together - that I thought I'd give extropy a shot.
The issue is one of great relevance to those of us interested in nailing
down consciousness in humans (an obvious AI/singularity issue).
Thanks in advance.
regards,
Colin Hales
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-----Original Message-----
From: PSYCHE Discussion Forum (Theoretical emphasis)
[mailto:PSYCHE-D@LISTSERV.UH.EDU]
On Behalf Of LarryVictor137@CS.COM
Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2002 9:16 AM
To: PSYCHE-D@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Subject: LACKING IMAGERY
Yes, there is (a Santa) IMAGERY. We all MUST have imagery, claims Rick.
Might it be so, but unfortunately, it isn't. It is interesting how people
claim to know what others are experiencing, or not experiencing. What Rick
reports is the discovery of a person that they explicitly have imagery, and
then being able to intentionally develop imagery skills. Why it takes
someone to explicitily be aware of imagery is as puzzling as for someone
(like myself) to live 22 years speaking as if I had imagery, but actually
lacked imagery. I even worked for summers as a draftsman without the
ability to move objects around in my mind. Many people can begin to
appreciate a lack of visual imagery when they realize that they may lack
imagery in other sensory modalities. Rick, I would fail your experiment,
and have many such examples that I used with subjects/students to determine
their lack/style of imagery. Unless I note verbally to myself a feature of
a percept, I cannot recall that feature. This is REAL, and IMPORTANT.
Eli Ness, you are not alone. In a very old study (by a woman, Roe, from
New Zealand), about 3% of the population lack visual imagery. I am one of
them. People lack "sensory-like" imagery in all sensory domains: visual,
auditory
(music and/or speech), tactile, taste and odor, proprioceptive and
kinaestic. Roe gave percents, but the study must be repeated. I appear
unique (as to literature searches) in lacking "sensory-like" imagery in ALL
sensory domains. Most people have such imagery in some modalities, but the
intensity and degree of control varies greatly. Indeed, many people report
imagery that is so weak and uncontrolled that it is "useless". Only a
small percent report strong imagery.
The story about your father is very interesting. My father was a draftsman
who claimed to have imagery, but I never was convinced he had visual
imagery. I have never heard of a person gaining visual imagery, as your
father reported. Once, a student was referred to me who had reported to her
instructor that she woke fully lacking visual imagery (which had been
strong all her life) and was devastated; unfortunately she never saw me.
Most person's imagery styles seem to remain constant throughout life. I
have no sensory-like rememberances of my past. I don't know what my
friends and family members look like - but I can recognize persons after
some time knowing them.
I also dream visually, in color. I have never noticed sound in my dreams.
On waking I can't replay the visuals of the dream, but the emotional force
may linger for minutes. Some of my dreams are semi-lucid, I often know it
is a dream but I cannot influence the dream. I can meta-comment
conceptually (not verbally) on my dream and this meta-commentary can
continue after my dream, to the extent that I can sometimes describe them
in considerable detail. But, the descriptions don't come from a visual
replay, nor to they excite visual remembering.
I also sense pre-imagery in my preconscious. Often I will sense it as a
field of variations of what might be presented to consciousness, but there
is no selection going on so nothing comes up. A few times a month before
going to sleep my inner visual field will become bright with swirls of
color for a few seconds. This is different from visuals made by pressing
the eyeballs. Attempts to maintain the experience accelerates its
disappearance. A few times a year I will have a very brief, very weak
image - like black on black. Sometimes a face, or a body, or a landscape.
Less than a second and without the focus and sharpness of "real" images.
They are always too brief for "identification". But, I know they were
there, and was pleased. In total dark my visual is usually deep black -
but often with some weak texturing.
I discovered my lack of visual imagery while in graduate school in physics
at the University of Chicago in 1957 when I was 22. It happened when I had
a brief, intense visual image. I told my friends and they didn't think it
special. Over my life I have had a few brief representational visual
images, and I thus know what they are and what I ordinarily lack. The only
auditory image I have is an occasion of thinking I hear my name spoken. I
have NEVER imaged even a simple melody in my head (I can hum them). Nor
can I image my body in positions or movements other than what it is doing.
I even have weak body perception, I don't know where my feet are pointing
without looking at them, which is a handicap if one attempts to ski. I
can't imagine the taste of garlic nor the smell of skunk. In fact, visual
imagery is the only kind of sensory-like imagery that I have experienced in
a very limited way. I frustrate greatly those experiential leaders who
depend on forms of imagery
(usually visual, auditory or movement). Often I discover others at such
sessions who also fake it.
When I discovered I lacked imagery, I began to study imagery - just as it
was emerging from behaviorist suppression. I interviewed many artists who
employed imagery in their work: painters, composers, dancers. I know very
well what people report who have powerful imagery and I know that I don't
have such experiences, even slightly. Many personal friends are at the
other end, having very powerful and controllable imagery. Researchers in
imagery were not favorable to persons who reported a lack of imagery. This
led me to write and present a paper: "Categories of Mental Experience:
Conceptual -Emotive Imagery", presented at The Second American
Conference on the Fantasy and Imaging Process in Chicago, November 3-5,
1978. My paper was not well received, with many researchers insisting that
I experienced imagery but didn't recognize it. For a decade I subscribed
to the Journal of Mental Imagery, which never seemed to get itself out of
using behavioral research paradigms to study imagery. A passage would be
read and the subject asked, "what happened", and told that a horse jumped a
fence. Few asked, what did YOU experience: were you on the horse, did you
feel the gravity and wind, were you observing from high above? Maybe they
are doing this today, but they weren't in the 1980s.
Teaching introductory psychology for 23 years I found a few percent of
students each year who lacked visual imagery. They were very pleased to
learn of their problem and how to begin to compensate for it. One woman was
studying sheet metal construction and was relieved to learn why she had
difficulty imagining the sheets being folded into 3D forms. I also began
an informal study of individual differences among those who reported mental
imagery, and the diversity is great. I discovered that degrees of visual
imagery was very important in learning to read. Visual imagery can be an
asset in reading descriptive literature, but usually visual imagery is a
severe handicap when reading conceptual literature. Reading teachers and
researchers were not interested at all about this issue as it didn't fit
with their preconceptions about the nature of reading.
I personally don't expect lack of imagery to be directly related to
synaesthia (which I have also studied extensively). I won't go into the
details of my imagery styles here, but I am searching my archives for what
I did write and am open to dialog with others about lacks of and
differences with imagery.
I speculate that the biological source of my lack of imagery relates to a
need for the consciousness "screen" to be continually refreshed. When
perceiving from my senses, energy from the continuing sensory stimulation
keeps the "screen" refreshed. If the stimulus for the "screen" is internal
and requiring feedback to maintain a pattern, the image on the screen could
be too brief to be noted. This could be due to an internal erasure of weak
neuronal resonances (mini shock treatments - possibly the origins of some
EEG patterns), that for me is too powerful to permit images other than
those in continuous reinforcement to exist long enough to be noticed. It
would be interesting re Rick's suggested experiment to assess what my
responses to colors or other features of percepts would be, even if not
from conscious experience. Yet, this would only show that I had recorded
the feature, NOT that I had CONSCIOUS IMAGERY.
This may be related to those neurologist subjects who have very narrow
temporal consciousness - who lose contact in about a second if not
reinforced. I speculate that my condition has a strong genetic basis. I
had vivid, rapidly changing, highly detailed and colored visual imagery
EYES CLOSE using LSD. I could not keep my eyes shut for more than a second
or two, too intense. No eyes open imagery with LSD, although some form
distortion. Holotropic Breathwork did not generate imagery.
I have compensated for my lack of sensory imagery, which enables me to
experience DIRECTLY what I call explicit "conceptual-emotive imagery" -
which serves as a background experience for those who are experiencing
sensory-type imagery, either from perception or from memory or imagination.
Although I would like to be able to switch on imagery, lacking it most of
my life would mean I would have little control over it. Many people exhibit
strange behaviors because of intense unbidden mental imagery which can be
very difficult to live with. I do not want unbidden imagery.
As a brief background. I have two PhDs, in Physics (1965) from Yale and in
Educational Psychology (1970) from Minnesota; but my learning has become
transdisciplinary. I have attended all the Consciousness conferences in
Tucson and was a participant in PSYCH-D listserv for a few years. I am not
currently involved in imagery research.
Larry Victor larryvictor137@cs.com
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