Define being good at visualization. I can see what I need to see when given a description. But I don’t do it automatically, and I really can’t do faces or fine details. I actually marvel at the fact that recognize faces that I can’t actually recall.
And I had an imaginary buddy named Humpty who was basically a CGI egg. CGI in that he just floated around, completely intangible, kinda like a certain CGI mupppet that featured in some muppet documentary. I never remotely thought he was real. He was just a convenient person to talk to.
Yes, apparently I had an imaginary friend that I really don’t remember. Although according to my family the friend was a butterfly I had long discussions with. (age 4) And yes I also visualize when I read and can readily visualize objects.
• I definitely imagine things being described (e.g., scenes described in books, etc) but I think I tend imagine it in a more abstract way than “visualize” implies. I have abysmally shitty visual memory, and I tend to think in diagrams and cartoonish simplifications rather than a fully fleshed-out visual panorama.
I didn’t have an imaginary friend. My older brother did, and one of my children did. I visualize when I read easily, always have.
I do not believe there is a correlation between imaginary friends and visualizing. I think that a higher % of people actually are able to visualize than those that cannot, which is born out by the results of the poll.
When I read books, I get a visual of the place in my mind. To the extent that I find myself annoyed when a door appears next to a table in a book and I had a window there in my mind. I’ve seen movies made from books that I read and thought “this is NOTHING like the real layout!” Only to realize that I’m comparing something solid to something I dreamed up.
I had imaginary friends and imaginary stories, I visualize when I read and I visualize, more or less, when someone describes something to me, although I don’t learn very good that way.
I’m surprised people say they didn’t visualize when reading or didn’t have imaginary friends.
In fact, I think it has a big effect on what kinds of fiction you appreciate.
I am a total non-visualizer when reading (but more on that below…), and I simply cannot deal with long (more than about two sentences) physical descriptions because they do absolutely nothing for me. If I really concentrate I can laboriously build up a sort of mental construct, but it has no actual image-value … just a sort of shadowy knowledge that such and such is on the left and something else is at the top …it’s all really stored in word format.
I love LOTR, to take one example, but there are whole pages upon pages of intense description that I simply leap across, panting “dialogue! give me dialogue NOW…!”
The thing is, I know what true visualization is, because I can do it when absolutely relaxed and about to fall asleep. What’s missing is the verbal/visual connection. Words do not and can not trigger images. I can see “wild” visuals that simply float randomly in front of my eyes, and very occasionally I can force myself to truly visualize a chosen object (the sea is a good one. For some reason a degree of motion in the chosen object helps). But the most painstaking written description of the sea ever written, would not help in this regard. In fact, it would destroy my vulnerable visualization, distracting my brain with the words.
I don’t recall ever having an imaginary friend, FWIW
I had dogs IRL. That certainly didn’t stop me from having magic flying ponies that flitted about and landed on my shoulders and cuddled and hung around and sometimes talked with me. My dogs were awesome, good dogs, but they couldn’t FLY.
My parents, OTOH, liked to sometimes set a place at the table for Harvey the 6-foot rabbit, or tell restaurant hostesses that we needed space for Harvey. (Jimmy Stewart movie reference. Nobody got it but them.)