# Can you visualize? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 30, 2012, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457 "2012-04-30T23:33:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/61 "2012-07-13T01:40:04Z")
> [@Antigen](#): > > I can’t. > > I am thinking “red car”, and I know what a red car looks like, but I can’t _see_ it in my head. I tend to think more in words than pictures, and I always have. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. Your post makes me realize that I can’t _not_ see something if I describe it. If I say : “a car has four wheels” I see a car with wheels, or at least a wheel. I tried several times, but I can’t prevent myself from visualizing what I’m describing : moustache, book, bird, mouse, whatever…An image is immediately and spontaneously conjured. ---
**Author:** ![rivulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rivulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rivulus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/62 "2012-07-13T02:25:03Z")
I used to use my ability to visualize textbook pages or my class notes to answer questions on exams. Kind of like an open book test, but not. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ele\_the\_Stoic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4bbf92/32.png) [@Ele\_the\_Stoic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ele_the_Stoic)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/63 "2012-07-13T03:09:34Z")
I have a friend who can’t visualize. I asked him what he meant, and he said he can only think of concepts - he described it as “clouds” that are just the concepts themselves, not the manifestation of them. He doesn’t dream in pictures either, it’s the same thing. > [@Clothahump](#): > > When I read a book, I “see” the story happening as I read. Me too. And then I’m always disappointed when they make a movie about the book and the characters look nothing alike. > [@Antigen](#): > > I wish I could train myself to have a visual imagination, but I don’t know how. Try starting simple - imagine a letter, and trace it with your eyes (while they’re closed). Try shapes. Just do it constantly - every time you’re bored on the bus, or waiting in line. Then step up to outlines of more complex objects, like a car, or a house, and just gradually add more and more detail. Eventually you should be able to cut corners, and instead of tracing a whole house, you can just trace a square, or a circle. Eventually you wont have to move your eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Arabella\_Flynn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@Arabella\_Flynn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arabella_Flynn)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/64 "2012-07-14T10:23:40Z")
I can visualize. Also – what are the words for the other senses? “Audiolize”, “propriolize” and “kinetolize”, I guess. I get it strongly for visuals, for sounds (especially music), for moving parts of my body, and for tracking my body as it moves through space. I can’t imagine not being able to do it. It would be like not being able to read and write, only worse. Most of my mental filing system is based on locating things in an imaginary space. Not only would I not be able to communicate things to and receive them from other people, I wouldn’t even be able to sort out my own _brain_. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/65 "2012-07-14T20:51:48Z")
I can “see” stuff just fine. But only if I’ve seen it before. What I cannot do is be in a showroom and “see” our living room with the new couch/rug/whatever in it. I can see our living room, but with the new piece of furniture? Nope. Odd corollary: If I’m looking for something in a cluttered area, and I have a mental image of it in my mind, I cannot see (as in visually) the thing I’m looking for if it doesn’t match my mental picture. So if you ask me for a can of soup, and I’m visualizing red and white Campbell cans, I’ll likely not see the cans of Progressive soup that are right… there… Oh, and my sort of “seeing” is of the kind mentioned by **Robert\_Columbia**. ---
**Author:** ![Enuma\_Elish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5e9695/32.png) [@Enuma\_Elish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enuma_Elish)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/66 "2012-07-14T22:45:10Z")
I think I can visualize if I don’t actively try to - like when I’m deep into a good book, but if I try to call up a mental picture of a red car - I can ‘see’ an outline of a dark gray car, but I know its red. My dreams are vivid and at times have been lucid and I have flown in my dreams many times, though not lately. I have difficulty describing things to people. I can bring up a basic picture, or I can bring up words, but I have a very hard bringing up pictures and the words to describe them at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![Enuma\_Elish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5e9695/32.png) [@Enuma\_Elish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enuma_Elish)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2012, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/67 "2012-07-14T22:49:56Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Another question that crosses my mind. How sexual fantaisies of people who can’t visualize are like? I believe you have found the secret of internet porn! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/68 "2012-07-15T05:05:08Z")
I wonder if the ability to visualize is what in some cultures is referred to as The Third Eye. From what I’ve read (:rolleyes: I know) “cavemen” first communicated thru shared mental images. That makes me wonder if those who don’t need it to understand and convey a concept today aren’t possibly more evolved; they intuitively process to a stream-lined “need to know.” Good for survival and progress, but foregoing the brush strokes that used to be necessary to build upon. I visualize with eyes open as well as closed. I “see” what I’m reading. I write what I’m “seeing.” ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/69 "2012-07-15T05:36:15Z")
Was just talking to my husband about this. A while back I ran across a zombie thread about visualization using a water wheel (grist mill) as an example. The question was: can you see the wheel? and can you see it going around? My husband could see the wheel but couldn’t make it go 'round. Still can’t. I asked him about the car. He can see a car, see it driving down a winding road on a summer day, he can even change the gears. But he still can’t make that water wheel go around. So, are there gradients to visualization? ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/70 "2012-07-15T16:07:38Z")
> [@Hockey\_Monkey](#): > > I can imagine, but I cannot actually visualize. If I close my eyes, no matter how hard I try to call up a picture, I see nothing but darkness. It’s strange too that I’m a visual learner. It’s very hard to describe other than to say I can imagine something, but I don’t actually have pictures in my head. > > I do dream quite vividly though, and see them as I would see real life happening, but when trying to recall them, even if I remember it vividly, the images are extremely fleeting and vague, like they are just under the surface of a pond, but when I reach in to grab them I disturb the surface and they are gone. I guess I’m also confused, like some of the others. Are we distinguishing between imagining and visualizing? Because I can see a red car in my mind’s eye without closing my eyes. If I close my eyes, literally, all I see is darkness in front of me, but I can still see the car in my head… ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/71 "2012-07-18T00:42:28Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I have two questions for people who say they can’t vizualize (I too didn’t know that there were such people) : > > -If you look at something and close your eyes, can you at least vizualize the thing you were watching a couple second before? > > -Can you at least vizualize things that are very important and familiar to you (say, your living room, or your children)? I wouldn’t say I “can’t” visualise, though I would say my visualisation is very weak, but personally my answers to your questions are “absolutely not” and “absolutely not”. For instance, in the car example that people are talking about, if I try to visualise a red car, what ends up in my mind is something like a vague “impression of car-ness” with a bunch of labels - I will label the midpoint of my vision “car body” , or maybe “red car body” and have four labels underneath it - “wheel”. There’s definitely a lot of semantic/verbal stuff going on. To the extent that I do actually really _see_ visualisations, they’re not under my conscious control. If I close my eyes and really relax, images will pop up (this used to happen a lot easier when I was younger) but I can’t really control what they are, and they’re more likely to be something like moire patterns or repeating fernleaves than any distinct recognisable objects. I did some experiments last night after reading some of these threads - it’s been quite a revelation to me that there are people out there who actually _visualise_ rather than just _imagine_ which is more what I’d describe myself as doing. I found that, with intense concentration, I could actually make myself truly visualise a really simple object - a whirlpool. Anything more complex than that was right out. And it wasn’t really what I’d call totally under control either - the first time I tried it my whirlpool was made up of a sort of combination of “wateryness” and raindrops, the second time it was made up of something like clouds on a mild day. The fact that it was in motion seemed to help for some reason - I couldn’t visualise a plain cube to save myself. More experimentation is clearly required. It would be really interesting to try this out for a couple of weeks and see if I can get the whirlpool more steady, and maybe try some other objects. Interestingly, in terms of getting information in, I have always described myself as more a visual learner than an auditory one. I get much more out of a page of text than a lecture, and my memory of information generally comes complete with “and that was on the top right of the page, and the end of the paragraph was halfway through the line below” or something like that. But perhaps that is because there’s no internal visualisation going on to confuse things - if I’m looking at a page of text that’s the only thing going on for me, visually, whereas there’s a continual flow of semantic chatter inside my head that rather interferes with information getting in that way. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/72 "2012-07-18T02:15:25Z")
I’m sure me visualizing/imagining is the same as anyone elses. I zoom in, look around corners, see and feel (sense?) textures, move objects & lighting around the view in my mind with some corresponding changes in shadows and reflections. Sure, sometimes my mind cheats: if there are cabinets, they are cabinets I’ve seen somewhere in my life and people will adopt filler mannerisms I’ve seen at home or at school or at work. Sometimes if I picture a place and I know the time difference, the sun just moves to that part of the sky for their time of day. But everyone does this; I’m just some boring guy who takes the time to write it down. ---
**Author:** ![AnalogSignal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/analogsignal/32/1085_2.png) [@AnalogSignal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnalogSignal)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2012, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/73 "2012-07-18T03:34:54Z")
My ability to visualize something like a car is probably average. I can visualize one but it is not especially vivid or detailed. However, I am quite good at visualizing the interaction between computer systems/applications. I rely on this ability to solve difficult problems (usually performance problems) for work. I have a mental model of how all the systems work and can “watch” the model play out various scenarios. It is similar to this: > [@Critical\_Mass](#): > > But I can see the whole route system, where the aircraft are, where the crews are, where the connections are and after considering things for a minute, I can usually mitigate the situation with the absolute minimum of disruption to passengers’ travel plans and operational efficiency. ---
**Author:** ![kstavert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@kstavert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kstavert)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/74 "2015-04-13T18:25:44Z")
> [@pohjonen](#): > > I have never been able to visualize. As in close my eyes and see a mental picture. I can describe to you what something or someone looks like, but I can’t close my eyes and “see” it. Everyone I ask claims to have this ability. Is there anyone else who can’t do this? I am seldom able to close my eyes and see things… For a very long time, I thought that there was something “wrong” with me because everyone else said that they could do this… then, I did a “test” that measured how I learn… found out that I’m VERY kinesthetic - learn by touch/ doing and VERY auditory… In some sense, I have to hear something and translate it so that my body “gets” what I’m trying to learn. Visual is a tiny percentage of how I learn./… If something can create a really high level of emotion/ passion/energy, I can FEEL it and have a strong sense of what “it” is that I’m trying to visualize… I’m listening to a recording right now and the speaker said “think of your front door…where is the handle?” i don’t “SEE” the front door… I have to use my body to recall where the handle is… so, if you cannot actually VISUALIZE/SEE something… check out your body and “see” how it FEELS…listen to your THOUGHTS about something… It’s NOT true that everyone can visualize - as in “SEE” something that they want to see/create in their lives ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2015, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457/75 "2015-04-13T19:12:56Z")
Zombies don’t visualize they just come for you and they also definitely can’t see that blue crazy font. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-you-visualize/620457.md?page=3)