Just wondering about this.
I have a friend who sometimes just specifically craves a certain dish from a certain food chain. (Like wicked wings from KFC or something)
Or they suddenly feel like watching a specific show (Like Boston Legal)
How does that work?
I never seem to experience something similar to that.
Is it common to feel like that?
“Out of sight, out of mind” really does ring true for people with aphantasia in my experience.
But from what I have heard and seen people with aphantasia are very good at memorizing lists.
It’s not really a how good of your memory it is but how you choose to store it. Are you going to pull up an image to remember, or are you just going to “know” it. Some things easier with images, some with just facts.
Like how many arches are on the Eiffel tower. Someone with really good image memory might pull up the image in their mind and count. Someone like me would have to know it as a fact and since “How many arches are on the Eiffel tower” isn’t common knowledge or I haven’t heard/memorized it then knowing it as a fact isn’t possible.
But images also tend to be wrong so you can’t always trust them.
In an experiment where people had to memorize a table set up. People with aphantasia got a total of less items on the table but placement and everything was more true. Someone with a true “photographic” memory could get everything right.
Makes me wonder how many people with Aphantasia have actually had a traumatic childhood.
Because for me it also seems almost like I don’t want to remember things or maybe my mind is unconsciously trying to process something or suppress something and that actually influences my capacity to remember and imagine things.
It’s an interesting thing to think about.
My mother and brother both have aphantasia and I never remember seeing any images in my head ever. Counting sheep never made sense to me. So I think mine is more hereditary.
That makes me wonder again.
How do they separate the effects of genetics from behavior you have learned from your parents?
Especially considering it is often said that most of your behavior is learned from the first few years of your life.
Apparently conditions like Autism and Complex PTSD also have a lot of overlapping symptoms and it can be difficult to distinguish one from the other. (And often they are also co-occuring)