I Can't Visualize Anything When I Read

[mentallyblind]

I'm a 26-year-old engineer who's been avidly reading fiction since the age of 9. I've never visualized anything and recently found out that most people can easily form mental images. A healthy toddler can do it in reasonable detail, and most avid readers & writers can do it photographically.

I've tried many exercises and have no trouble keeping track of spatial details in my mind, but I never see a single image. Its really frustrating to realize I'm not smart enough to correctly do a hobby after 17 years. The whole point is that the author creates a sensory world and communicates it to the reader, but I'm just getting a stream of facts. I feel like a fool and am thinking about giving up fiction.

What would you do in my position?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Don't worry. It is not at all that you are not 'smart enough.' It is probably more to do with that fact that you are not a visual person/learner, that's all. Maybe you are of the more verbal or kinesthetic type? Besides if you enjoy reading fiction (and the fact that you have been doing it since 9 and you are now 26 suggests that) then why would you stop just because other people 'see' things differently? It makes no sense. So in your situation I would just carry on and not worry about it.

[Lykren]

A psychologist told me once that many people are totally unable to form images in their mind. It doesn't have anything to do with your intelligence, and as Neely said, if you enjoy fiction, why stop?

[Calidore]

My mother can't visualize either, but that doesn't stop her from reading and enjoying pretty much every genre. You're not doing it "incorrectly" if you're unable to do it to begin with.

[papayahed]

Now that you mention it I don't think I can visualize either.

[LitNetIsGreat]

You can't visualise papa? What's wrong with you?

Just joking...

Quite funny: I remember the father-in-law telling me one of the reasons why he doesn't read is that he just can't visualise what's going on. I asked him what he meant and he said that, for example, if he read that a character walked into a room and the book said that he had 'one leg' he just wouldn't know if he meant the left or right leg, so he couldn't visualise the situation and have to put the book down.:smilewinkgrin:

The other reason he doesn't read is that he says QUOTE "if the book is any good they would make a film of it anyway, so why read?"

Oh it is all good fun....:lurk5:

[Pumpkin337]

You might find this interesting:

http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2010/03/cant-form-mental-image-no-big-deal.html

[mentallyblind]

Thanks guys. Sorry if the OP was heavy-handed, its just frustrating to miss out on something really great. Like the artistic half of your brain doesn't work correctly.

Lykren, did the psychologist mention anyone overcoming an inability to visualize?

What's it like when you read Papayahead? Do you think about the story spatially, do you hear it, or do you just think about it conceptually?

Very funny Neely.

[mentallyblind]

MX is an interesting case. Like him I rotate shapes non-visually, and the angle difference between two shapes doesn't affect how fast I compare them. Wonder what part of his brain was damaged during surgery? It must be a really specific area if he has all his other mental functions.

[papayahed]

You can't visualise papa? What's wrong with you?

Just joking...

hahahaha, I said I'm not sure.... I've never thought about it before, when authors describe landscapes or settings sometimes I spend time trying to figure out how it all fits but usually I just ignore it *gasp*

I'm going to go read a book and see what happens.

[Lykren]

No, I think he implied it's just something some people can't do. I honestly wouldn't worry about it, though; I can visualize (though it isn't very vivid) but it's not a significant part of my reading process, and I think I get more than my fair share of enjoyment from literature. Somehow the feeling and idea of a phrase gives me plenty of satisfaction. I also have a lot of trouble getting myself spatially oriented - even in real life, actually.

I'm curious, by the way, do you dream in images?

[YesNo]

Like papayahed, I don't visual either. When authors describe landscapes or what someone is wearing I get impatient and start skimming until the action starts.

This isn't just with literature. There are some meditation techniques I've tried which ask you to visualize, say, light coming up from the earth or down from the sky or from where ever and I'll try it once or twice and nothing happens.

[cacian]

welcome to my world. I visualise nothing when I read let alone write.
so there you are not on your own ;)

[Iain Sparrow]

This discussion is a bit confusing to me... I visualize everything.
When I read, or more often when I'm listening to an audiobook it's a mix of seeing what I'm reading and just taking elements of the writing in. That's not to say that it's like a movie playing out, more like a series of photographs or snippets that happen without thinking about it as I read.
As horrible as it may sound, is not having the ability to visualize, or imagine things visually... a birth defect?

[Frostball]

I don't think anybody visualizes things perfectly when they read it. Now, I could be wrong here, but here's what I think. You read and you are given certain details about what is going on by the author. Things like what the characters are wearing, where they are at, what they are doing, and what they are saying. Even when the author describes a piece of clothing with great detail, there is no way that everybody imagines the garment the same, and nobody even probably keeps all those details in their "picture" of the character for very long.

It's more like dreams, your mind just keeps certain details floating around, and it's only when you specifically concentrate on a particular thing that the image shows up. What I mean is that I don't most people are actually building a picture in their head, but just remembering details like the fact this this guy is wearing a blue jacket, and the woman is wearing a white hat, or whatever. You aren't picturing the articles unless you specifically think of them, but say if you're reading some dialogue, the picture of the characters' clothing goes out the window, and it's more of the detail of the "him" and the "her" that are floating abstractly in your mind and you're concentrating on the conversation. Basically your mind wanders and only holds on to a few details necessary to what you are exactly reading. It feels like you hold all the details in, because when you reflect on past details those details show up in your mind like the little vague pictures again, just like before. It feels like they are there all the time because they are there as soon as you think of them. But when you're not thinking of them, they actually aren't there.

Everybody's mind is different, so I'm sure people do this to varying degrees, and there very well could be people who picture things very vividly and consistently while reading. I'm pretty sure I've heard this same kind of thing applied to human sight. It seems like we always have a big picture in our brain that is the exact picture our eyes are giving us. But actually only what we're concentrating our vision on is pictured in our mind, and everything around it is blurry, out of focus, and hardly even present. It seems like a picture all the time because at any given moment every single thing we're concentrating on is visible like picture, and only the things we are not concentrating on are out of focus, so we can never really notice it. This is to say that even things in our peripheral vision aren't getting to our brain unless we purposely think about the peripheral vision. So even if you're staring at your computer screen, and something far to the left of your vision is visible when you think about it, even as you are keeping your eyes fixed to the screen, that object to the left may not have even been in your brain's picture, even though it is when you're trying to focus on your peripheral vision. This seems counterintuitive, but I'm pretty sure there's evidence for our vision working this way.

Somebody else could probably explain this better than me, and once again, I could be all wrong. This is just my thoughts.

[Ecurb]

I've never been able to visualize world peace. What (I often wondered upon seeing the bumpersticker) does world peace look like?

[YesNo]

As a test of my own abilities, I just tried visualizing world peace. The image of a nuclear bomb's mushroom cloud appeared in my mind and then I thought, "Not that."

There is also Daniel Tammet who seems to visualize better than most of us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd1gywPOibg

[mentallyblind]

Lykren, sometimes I dream in vivid images and other times I just dream in concepts.

Do you write fiction Cacian? I'd be really interested to know how you describe things if you don't visualize. Do you act out scenes? Look at photos? Or just maintain a spatial sense of the story in your head?

Iain, in some cases it may be a birth defect. When the brain is oxygen deprived certain parts die more quickly, so a blue baby could lose their mind's eye at birth and become a successful adult. In other cases it may just be the wiring in your brain. I find algebra really easy and some people struggled massively with it. Not because they're stupid, but because they aren't wired to think that way.

Frostball, your visualization is interesting. It may be that you visualize individual things really well but don't form a big picture, while others visualize panoramically.

YesNo, you mentioned not visualizing but say you can picture a mushroom cloud. Is it just that you don't visualize books? Like you'd have to stop reading to see a picture?

This is really interesting. I might put together a survey on another page. Like ranking visualizing on a 7-point scale. Or questions like do you see still pictures or movies?

[YesNo]

I guess I am too impatient when I'm reading. Perhaps the problem is that I mainly read technical documents and memos and so I want to get the idea as quickly as possible and move on. Convert that habit into reading, say, a romance and, well, I find that I don't read many romances. Instead, I might read a poem. They're usually short. Although the poet expects the reader to visualize all those "images", I just want the punch line. I should limit my reading to jokes.

[prendrelemick]

Some writers describe a physical landscape better than others - or it may be that I am more in tune with them than others, Tolkien for instance builds a world I can visualize (even before the film came out), but I have trouble with Dickens (inspite of all the films).

In any case it rarely matters, it is the mental and emotional landscape, the philosophy of the characters and the unfolding of events that draw me in.