I keep reading about people with aphantasia in threads like these, and I never hear from who don’t have it explain what do they see and how vivid it is.
Does everyone have aphantasia? Is it like ADHD where finding a person that doesn’t claim to have it is pretty much impossible?
I would like to know especially what is the perceived difference between normal imagination and hallucination. The way people with mental visualization explain it it sounds basically exactly what I always imagined hallucinations to be like. And e.g. closed-eye visuals on psychedelics. Why is it so special to have closed-eye visuals when most people have closed-eye visuals anyway?
I don’t have ADHD¹, there. But anyway, while I have aphantasia, almost everyone I talk to reports being able to see images, most being able to manipulate them. From my incredibly small sample size of ~20, my sister was the only one with possibly mild aphantasia, 1 guy online and a girl I know possibly have hyperphantasia (very realistic images coming into their mind’s eye unbidden), and everyone else were confused about me not being able to imagine/see anything.
¹: Though I do (likely) have auditory processing disorder which wikipedia called ADHD for the ears, so maybe it fits.
On an article about left-handedness, would you expect the comments to be full of people talking about how they're right-handed?
You can't deny it's a bit popular right now. "Aphantasia is the new AuDHD".
Doesn't mean it's not real, but I'm sure we'll see it creep into "I have aphantasia because I'm unable to crisply visualise a fully detailed lifelike scene from memory with my eyes closed".
Where are the articles about non-aphantasic people? And those from neurotypical people with rock-solid focus for that matter.
"Where are the articles about right-handed people?" Not being written, you'd wager, because normalcy isn't interesting.