yes! the strongest overlap i have is music and colors/patterns. theres some cool synesthesia art people have made that depict it pretty well. this artist for example!
As someone without aphantasia, I don’t always quite get it either. Reading is often a last resort medium for me, but it does have it’s place. Plain text primarily engages my narrative imagination (where is the story going) and only a little bit of visual imagination (since it’s kind of hard to convey certain things like body language in text without being very boring), while for example a video might invoke narrative, visual, and auditory imagination. Video games are even better to me, as they engage narrative, visual, auditory, and decision making imagination. It’s about stimulation to me, the more coherent the better, and books just don’t seem to stimulate enough for my imagination to kick off to where it’s enjoyable to read.
As a person with aphantasia, I’ve enjoyed it since I was a child. But my parents read to me every night before bed for a long time, and so my hunch is that I latched onto it because of that positive association.
For me I rarely actively try to visualize what’s going on. Perhaps you haven’t found something that really sparks your interest in reading, I’ve only started reading a couple of years back.
Although, of course, I may be completely wrong and visualizing is a big part of reading that I simply haven’t realized
From what I understand is that people can read without subvocalizing because their brain can just simply pick up the meaning of groups of words together.
I cannot read without subvocalizing. Like I can skim and read only words that stand out to me and I’d get the gist of it. But to full comprehend everything I’d basically have to subvocalize every word.
To me there’s no difference between reading a chemistry text book or a romance novel. Just words I have to read to comprehend.
I’m sure I’d enjoy reading some things more than others. Like a story with a compelling plot and not a lot of visual word fluff.
But reading pages and pages of words just so I can know what happens next in the story when a simple sentence would suffice doesn’t sound enjoyable to me.
Kind of like how instead of reading the book you could read the cliff notes. At best I’m only going to remember the cliff note facts after reading the book. “How the author tells the story” is lost on me because I’d rather them just get to the point. All the word fluff of setting up a scene are just facts that I’m not going to commit to memory.
As someone with aphantasia I never got why people enjoyed reading
having synesthesia, descriptive text has a whole other layer i cant fully explain. words are pretty. lol
That’s the thing where your brain overlaps sensory information with areas for processing of other senses, no?
yes! the strongest overlap i have is music and colors/patterns. theres some cool synesthesia art people have made that depict it pretty well. this artist for example!
As someone without aphantasia, I don’t always quite get it either. Reading is often a last resort medium for me, but it does have it’s place. Plain text primarily engages my narrative imagination (where is the story going) and only a little bit of visual imagination (since it’s kind of hard to convey certain things like body language in text without being very boring), while for example a video might invoke narrative, visual, and auditory imagination. Video games are even better to me, as they engage narrative, visual, auditory, and decision making imagination. It’s about stimulation to me, the more coherent the better, and books just don’t seem to stimulate enough for my imagination to kick off to where it’s enjoyable to read.
As a person with aphantasia, I’ve enjoyed it since I was a child. But my parents read to me every night before bed for a long time, and so my hunch is that I latched onto it because of that positive association.
For me. Reading something myself vs. Having someone read to me are completely different.
I enjoy audio books way more than reading myself because it doesn’t pull as much of my focus.
When I read, I have to read, understand, process.
When I hear it, it’s just understand and process.
It would be the equivalent of having to read subtitles for an in person conversation rather than hearing their voice.
I can listen and process. I cannot process as well while reading because I’m focused on processing words
For me I rarely actively try to visualize what’s going on. Perhaps you haven’t found something that really sparks your interest in reading, I’ve only started reading a couple of years back.
Although, of course, I may be completely wrong and visualizing is a big part of reading that I simply haven’t realized
From what I understand is that people can read without subvocalizing because their brain can just simply pick up the meaning of groups of words together.
I cannot read without subvocalizing. Like I can skim and read only words that stand out to me and I’d get the gist of it. But to full comprehend everything I’d basically have to subvocalize every word.
To me there’s no difference between reading a chemistry text book or a romance novel. Just words I have to read to comprehend.
I’m sure I’d enjoy reading some things more than others. Like a story with a compelling plot and not a lot of visual word fluff.
But reading pages and pages of words just so I can know what happens next in the story when a simple sentence would suffice doesn’t sound enjoyable to me.
Kind of like how instead of reading the book you could read the cliff notes. At best I’m only going to remember the cliff note facts after reading the book. “How the author tells the story” is lost on me because I’d rather them just get to the point. All the word fluff of setting up a scene are just facts that I’m not going to commit to memory.