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diegocaleiro comments on Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles - Less Wrong
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I had a professor, David Berman, who believed some people could image well and other people couldn't. He cited studies by Galton and James in which some people completely denied they had imaginative ability, and other people were near-perfect "eidetic" imagers. Then he suggested psychological theories denying imagination were mostly developed by those who could not themselves imagine. The only online work of his I can find on the subject is http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=fZXoM80K9qgC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&ots=Zs03EkNZ-B&sig=2eVzzMmK7WBQnblNx2KMVpUWBnk&hl=en#PPA4,M1 pages 4-14.
My favorite thought experiment of his: Imagine a tiger. Imagine it clearly and distinctly. Got it? Now, how many black stripes does it have? (Some people thought the question was ridiculous. One person responded "Seven. Now what?")
He never formally tested his theory because he was in philosophy instead of the sciences, which is a shame. Does anyone know of any modern psychology experiment that tests variations in imaging ability?
No large N experiments. but Feynman in one of his autobiographies tests this with a friend. One of them hears numbers, the other sees them. They are unable to multitask within the domain they use to process numbers. I for one hear numbers. I can count while performing visual tasks. My father sees them. He cannot. He can speak and count, which I find amusing.
I can read and count, but not speak and count. While trying this out, I realized I can not count silently, but am always pronouncing the numbers in my head. I wonder if that is related?