Visual Mental Imagery Training

SarahNibs

36 Visual Mental Imagery Training

19th Feb 2013

5 min read

36

Previously: Generalizing From One Example

There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination" was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly, or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for considering what it looked like?

Upon hearing this, my response was "How the stars was this actually a real debate? Of course we have mental imagery. Anyone who doesn't think we have mental imagery is either such a fanatical Behaviorist that she doubts the evidence of her own senses, or simply insane." Unfortunately, the professor was able to parade a long list of famous people who denied mental imagery, including some leading scientists of the era. And this was all before Behaviorism even existed.

The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds", and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images.

Summary: I do not have visual mental imagery. I want it. How do I get it? What exercises, if any, will help?

In further detail... Here's Francis Galton's Statistics of Mental Imagery paper. I'm not quite at the 3% level of completely unable to form mental images, but I'm close. In particular there are three times I have vivid, sharp mental imagery, and the existence of such times tells me I have the brain hardware to visualize. It's enough to let me know that I want it all the time. Unfortunately I don't know how to get it. And searching online has proven difficult and frustrating... for example this article is first of all about a different meaning of "visualize", it's talking about some kind of self-help motivational thingy, and second of all it starts by saying "How to Visualize: I want you to relax and close your eyes. Picture a hot, sunny day at the beach."

Full Stop. Halt, Catch Fire and Burn.

That's already too far. For those of us who don't visualize, practice definitely does not consist of pulling up mental images, playing with them in new ways, and expanding our imagination. I'm very good at imagination in some ways, but I lack that first ability to pull up a mental image. That's what I want to learn how to have!

Here is a description of what I can do, what I have tried, what I have learned, etc.

I see vivid visual mental imagery in 3 situations:

While dreaming. My recollection of dreams has that I see fairly vivid, sharp, whole-scene imagery.
Just before sleep. When I am in a certain almost-sleeping state, I can tell my mind to picture something - like an apple, or a horse - and I will often be able to see that thing vividly, briefly, and then it morphs into a scene. A beach with an ocean, or a pleasant clearing in a forest. If I try to alter the scene, like putting a beach towel and umbrella on the beach, the scene changes and morphs in some way but seemingly without regard to the changes I requested. Maybe my POV starts moving forward down a newly created path in the forest, for example.
During meditation. Sometimes I feel like I'm in exactly the same mental state during meditation as I am just before sleep, except without the tiredness. The imagery has the same characteristics in both situations.

I have tried 3 classes of practice:

Staying in visualization situations. When I find myself in the just before sleep or meditation state, I stay there for a while and play with imagery. This is fun but I have seen no increase in control over what I visualize and no increase in the range of states in which I can visualize.
Explicit imagery practice. I have found or drawn simple shapes, like a square or a ball, then stared at the shape, closed my eyes, seen the shape for as long as it stayed visualizable, opened my eyes to refresh, repeat. This straight up hasn't worked at all. I don't visualize it, only have the afterimage, and need to refresh within about a second.
Object drawing. I have had 3D constructions of blocks and tried drawing them from different angles on paper. This is an exercise I did while growing up during summers. Unfortunately there was no actual imagery or mental rotation involved, I just logic'd out where lines must surely go and drew like that.

Here is what my mental imagery looks like, per Francis Galton's questions.

Picturing breakfast. The image is extraordinarily dim, extraordinarily ill-defined (at most an edge or two changing the black-purple-brown background static texture), and not at all natural colors.
Vividness of Mental Imagery scale. This is a sequence of 100 descriptions of imagery, organized approximately in order from most vivid to least vivid. Of the given responses I identify most strongly with 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, and 99.

Here are my results on Marks' Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire: 4s on everything except 5s on 4, 6, 9, 11, 14. Results suspect since I had exactly one 5 on every section. Marks suspects, unofficially, that those without visual mental imagery may actually have it but be unable to consciously notice/report that they have it.

I read through the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Mental Imagery, following links to places or ideas that looked promising. I have many forms of mental imagery: good aural, very good verbal, very good analytic, good motor, poor yet extant haptic. But not visual.

Eric Schwitzgebel questions our introspection about mental imagery in general based on the lack of correlation between scores on Marks' VVIQ and subjects' ability to perform certain tasks that "psychologists have often supposed to require visual imagery". Such tasks include mental rotation and visual memory, both of which I can perform easily. I find it blindingly obvious that actual visual mental imagery is not required for these tasks. Here is my own introspection about mental imagery: what I call Imagination is sufficient for all the tasks that supposedly require visual imagery.

Does anyone know of (tested?) exercises for developing visual mental imagery from scratch?

Does anyone know that developing visual mental imagery from scratch is likely impossible?

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36 Visual Mental Imagery Training

by SarahNibs

19th Feb 2013

5 min read

36

Previously: Generalizing From One Example

There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination" was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly, or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for considering what it looked like?

Upon hearing this, my response was "How the stars was this actually a real debate? Of course we have mental imagery. Anyone who doesn't think we have mental imagery is either such a fanatical Behaviorist that she doubts the evidence of her own senses, or simply insane." Unfortunately, the professor was able to parade a long list of famous people who denied mental imagery, including some leading scientists of the era. And this was all before Behaviorism even existed.

The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds", and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images.

Summary: I do not have visual mental imagery. I want it. How do I get it? What exercises, if any, will help?

Full Stop. Halt, Catch Fire and Burn.

Here is a description of what I can do, what I have tried, what I have learned, etc.

I see vivid visual mental imagery in 3 situations:

While dreaming. My recollection of dreams has that I see fairly vivid, sharp, whole-scene imagery.
Just before sleep. When I am in a certain almost-sleeping state, I can tell my mind to picture something - like an apple, or a horse - and I will often be able to see that thing vividly, briefly, and then it morphs into a scene. A beach with an ocean, or a pleasant clearing in a forest. If I try to alter the scene, like putting a beach towel and umbrella on the beach, the scene changes and morphs in some way but seemingly without regard to the changes I requested. Maybe my POV starts moving forward down a newly created path in the forest, for example.
During meditation. Sometimes I feel like I'm in exactly the same mental state during meditation as I am just before sleep, except without the tiredness. The imagery has the same characteristics in both situations.

I have tried 3 classes of practice:

Staying in visualization situations. When I find myself in the just before sleep or meditation state, I stay there for a while and play with imagery. This is fun but I have seen no increase in control over what I visualize and no increase in the range of states in which I can visualize.
Explicit imagery practice. I have found or drawn simple shapes, like a square or a ball, then stared at the shape, closed my eyes, seen the shape for as long as it stayed visualizable, opened my eyes to refresh, repeat. This straight up hasn't worked at all. I don't visualize it, only have the afterimage, and need to refresh within about a second.
Object drawing. I have had 3D constructions of blocks and tried drawing them from different angles on paper. This is an exercise I did while growing up during summers. Unfortunately there was no actual imagery or mental rotation involved, I just logic'd out where lines must surely go and drew like that.

Here is what my mental imagery looks like, per Francis Galton's questions.

Picturing breakfast. The image is extraordinarily dim, extraordinarily ill-defined (at most an edge or two changing the black-purple-brown background static texture), and not at all natural colors.
Vividness of Mental Imagery scale. This is a sequence of 100 descriptions of imagery, organized approximately in order from most vivid to least vivid. Of the given responses I identify most strongly with 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, and 99.

Does anyone know of (tested?) exercises for developing visual mental imagery from scratch?

Does anyone know that developing visual mental imagery from scratch is likely impossible?

TechniquesPractical

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hankx778713y80

Pick a video game. Preferably something with a lot of consistent imagery/gameplay. A racing game running the same map would be a great example.
Play this video game from when you wake up to when you go to bed, with minimal time for breaks or distractions.
After hours of having these images burned into your retinas, randomly try closing your eyes for just a moment or two and rest your brain every once in a while.. When I'm playing video games intensely and then I shut my eyes, sometimes it's like I never even shut them in the first place - all the images are still mostly there and still mostly behaving as I've been watching them behave (e.g. I'm involuntarily visualizing the walls rushing by as I make turns in the race, etc. My eyes feel funny and then I realize they are actually closed! holy crap! etc...).

I've found first-person games like FPS or racing games to be the most intense and reliable in producing this effect. You might also get better results at different times of the day (e.g. alone in a quiet room in the middle of the night). But it works with any game, or really just in general I can close my eyes and have the scene flashing in my mind.

Here's another thing to try:

Walk casually around your house or another familiar area. With your eyes closed. Only once every few seconds (or when you think you really need to) - as quickly as you can, blink your eyes open and instantly shut again. Try to retain as much information as possible for the next few seconds of your blind walk so you don't run into things or step on things. You will be amazed at how normally you can perform with scant visual information.

er, also note that trying to visualize something from nothing can be extremely hard. For example I cannot look at someone's face and then imagine them in all kinds of new facial expressions that I've never actually seen on them before. If you try to change something you're not really equipped to visualize, it will just seem like an amorphous blob or an abstract symbolic designation rather than striking visual imagery. If this happens with something like geometry, that probably means you just need to spend more time trying until you get it, but don't be too surprised if you're trying to visualize this massively detailed scene of real-life visualizations, and things just aren't as vivid as you like. Visualizing geometry and relatively abstract scenes is way, way less demanding than trying to manipulate the full visual resolution of real-life images in your mind.

hankx778713y00

I guess I should point out that if you really don't have mental imagery to be careful walking around with your eyes closed, obviously.

1SarahNibs13y

I may or may not try the video game thing. Spending time is easy, spending lots of consecutive time is more costly. :) I have taken walks as you describe, except in unfamiliar areas but where I don't expect to run into things all the time. I don't see my surroundings, I just know where they are approximately (and they update when I move). My guess is that visualizing something from nothing is also part of the spectrum...? I definitely had more success with visualizing fully-featured scenes (they end up mostly as not-quite amorphous blobs but totally in the right place and kinda painted over with Imagination) than geometry.

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