Good example, me too.
I’ve never considered that some people don’t visualise images, ideas, concepts, words, and things. Interesting. For me, memory almost requires a visual image to be written to the mental hard-drive. Words, diagrams, whatever on a page blackboard etc. It works even better if I say the word or description out loud at the same time.
Well, I generally have a good idea to imagine things—I don’t make myself hallucinate an actual image in my visual field, if that’s what you’re asking.
If you asked me to visualize something I certainly wouldn’t close my eyes (I just see black). I’d think about it and just know. I don’t see anything, it’s just a thought.
When I read your question the first thing that I thought of was reading books. Do you *see * the words and story as you read? I never considered that there are people who don’t, at least to some degree. I just had this conversation with a friend and she said that in her high school class when the teacher asked if “they could see pictures when they read,” many said that they didn’t…that all they saw was the word itself. I was surprised. I not only visualize, but if something is told to me with enough detail, or if I am reading a piece of descriptive writing, I can absolutely “see it.” Of course it is my interpretation – it may vary from person to person. At times, even other senses come into play. My sense of smell, for instance.
I love being told stories. When people tell me about a certain time and memory, if told well, I can visualize their words and almost put myself there. My boyfriend and his dad are particularly good at this. His dad and mom served in the Peace Corps - I’ve been told many stories of their experience there. Visualizing the words makes them even more interesting.
I wanted to ask you if you have ever read a really spooky book and had to stop reading for a bit because it was scaring the hell out of you. If so, you had to have been visualizing the scene. I remember reading alone years ago and having to put the book down and pulling the covers over my head while listening to every little sound in the house. :eek:
My memory is mostly visual. I can remember places far more readily than I can remember faces and much more than numbers. I could easily draw a map of any school I went to, and even any movie theater I’ve been in.
Computer interfaces are pretty much the same. I often get woken up with computer support calls, where I have to talk a person through solving a problem with their computer. I consider it a personal triumph if I can solve the problem without ever having to open my eyes. Back in the early 90s, I did support on a particular 3D animation program, and I pretty much had a copy of the software in my head, and could answer questions and talk the caller through whatever modeling or animating issue they had without ever booting the computer.
I have an extremely visual memory. Like Digital is the New Analog, I can re-read pages of notes I’ve made. Because of that, I’ve tended to make quite elborate notes with a particular style of headings, annotations, etc, because it makes it easier to read in my minds-eye. I
t was definitely handy at school/uni for recalling facts, but I think it made me a bit lazy - I could recall the fact easily enough, but I hadn’t really processed it enough to understand it. Probably why I did a lot better at high school (which emphasised recall) than with my arts degree at uni (which emphasised understanding and applying knowledge to novel situations).
It came as a complete shock to me to find out that people can visualize. I don’t see anything. Like others, though, I dream vividly, so it means that my mind is capable of creating images, it just has decided it won’t while I’m awake. 
My sister and mother are also similar, but my younger brother apparently can visualize very well. He’s able to see things in 3D and rotate them in his mind.
My chess rating has been static for some time and I think it’s because my ability to visualize is quite poor.
I can think through a few moves happening but I can’t actually see the board after the sequence. When the moves get played out and I do actually see it, it may be instantly obvious to me that the line is losing.
I can describe things excellently, with detail, as though I were seeing them in my mind, but I can’t see them. I have everything about seeing them except the actual image. I wish I could train myself to have a visual imagination, but I don’t know how.
I dream in pictures. I also tend to recall information by remembering where I was when I read or heard it. It was on the bottom left of a page of a textbook, I was passing the Burger King when I heard it on the radio, etc. Despite these being visual cues, I would not describe myself as seeing them.
It’s intermittant with me. I can call up vivid visual images when I set out to, but when I’m reading, I take the story in abstractly, rather than visualizing what things look like. I also have trouble with remembering and recognizing some faces. Not all, so I’m not actually face-blind, but some some faces never stick in mind, and I can’t call them up.
So I can do a vivid visual visualization if I’m doing a visualization or self-hypnosis session, say. And I can replay concerts or songs or sounds in my mind. Smells and tastes are a bit more abstract in my mind, but I can call up a few to a limited degree. What I have trouble with is deliberately calling up emotions on demand.
Wow, I was visualizing a red corvette, too.
I can visualize things like this (as well as manipulate them), but I am seeing a difference in being able to visualize something in my mind and actually hallucinating about the item to the extent that it actually appears in my field of vision. I can’t really do the second. Is everyone else considering this difference, or are people actually talking about an ability to inject objects directly into their field of vision in a Virtual Reality kind of sense?
Good question. I always assume “visualize” means to draw a mental picture and actually “see” it in one’s mind’s eye. People I ask say yes, they can close their eyes and “see” what they are visualizing. If visualize means “imagine” then yes, I can do that. So do you visualizers actually “see” in the sense Robert means?
More like a heads up display.
For you non-visualizers, a couple of comments…reading novels must be pretty damn boring; and how the hell did you use your imagination as kids; and what does day-dreaming mean to you?
For me at least, visualize and imagine have two entirely distinct meanings.
I can’t “see” pictures in my mind’s eye or call them up into my vision. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an imagination, Omar! Reading novels has never been boring to me, and I always had a rich imaginative life as a child (and still). Day-dreaming is generally telling myself a story, I suppose. I can describe things in detail and as Antigen describes, will use what you might call visual cues to help me remember things, but I can’t “see” them. If you tell me to picture a red car - I just can’t. I don’t see anything. I do dream in images (moving, that is, like a film. I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream that was a series of stills!). I have good spatial awareness and can describe things in detail, it’s just that these things are more like words in my mind, not images. It used to upset me a little when I was young and went to boarding school, that I couldn’t picture my home or my mother’s face, but I just accepted it as normal.
It was on this very board, not so very long ago, that I discovered that some people really do “see” an actual image. I seem to recall that the previous thread suggested that people on the autistic spectrum might be more likely not to be able to visualise. I’d be interested to know where people in this thread fall on that spectrum, if they know and are willing to share. I know I score pretty high on that AQ test that was going around facebook a while ago, and the score fits with observations (my own and others’, natch), but I’ve never needed to get a proper test or diagnosis.
I cannot. Made drafting class tough in college. I think in words, not pictures.
I can meta-visualize. 
I can visualize Mrs. Krabappel saying “visualize” to Bart Simpson in Bart Gets an F. 
Judging from your user name, you are the author of the material in the link? As a layperson slogging through, am I correct in saying that you think barring some kind of brain damage, everyone has visual imagery and some just don’t have access to it? (Please forgive me. To a non-psychologist, the link is like a giant wall of jargon and very difficult to understand if one is not familiar with that kind of language.)
Can you summarize what you are saying in your link?