francpaul

I have aphantasia. But I do have a good "visual" mind. I'm a super recognizer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser). I can see someone and KNOW that I've seen them before. I can recognize people I haven't seen in 25 years. Even if they've become adults in the interim. I immediately notice if someone changes their hair. But, I cannot visualize at all. Particularly not faces. I cannot see family members without looking at them. When I look at them I can notice deltas of things I haven't seen before. A change in hairstyle, new glasses etc. But I cannot 'see' what it was before, I cannot 'see' the old hairstyle or glasses. I can notice the anomalies. I can recognize faces really well. But only actually using my eyes. I think a lot in terms of how things relate to each other. My brain seems to work by attributes and relations, and then make analogies and predictions based on those. There's more an understanding of the relationships of the facial features to each other, and as a whole, than the exact qualia of the feature.

I also have aphantasia, and my wife has hyperphantasia. makes for interesting conversations.

1.While I do not experience visual images in my mind, I do 'form' what I can only explain as proprioceptive relationships between things. I can mentally rotate objects or my environment, but have no visual experience of it. This is a long-winded way of saying I have very good spacial understanding, direction and concept of how things relate to each other - I'm a hang glider pilot, motorcyclist, loves driving and hiking around, and never get lost.

2. I do relate with having a superhuman ability to put bad experiences behind me. I don't dwell on the bad for long, and tend to forget the bad experiences pretty quickly. My memory of accidents are also more proprioception and relation to things in my environment than visual.