Techniques for non-mental imagers? [Aphantasia]

General Memory Chat
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Hi Darkshade,

It is gratifying to know this helped.

It occurs to me this morning that, even though I have no trouble visualizing, I, too, might benefit by pretending I have recently gone blind. It is said that when you lose one sense, you strengthen the others. That is probably true in the realm of the imagination as well. By pretending to be blind, I believe I would tend to strengthen my imagination of my tactile, olfactory and sound senses. Plus, I would also strengthen my story generation skills.

In your honor, I would like to call this variation a “Darkshade Journey”.

Regards,

Darn

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tarnation, I’ve toyed with a somewhat similar idea once: to double the “storage space” of a memory palace by going through it twice: the first time in a usual manner and then “turning the lights” off and going through it again in total darkness, relying on sound, smell and touch (and maybe an occasional spark of light). Never got around to actually trying it though.

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That’s ingenious, Urfin.

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I am absolutely convinced that an ability to visualize is completely unecessary after my experience here & my further reading about mnemonics all i think matters is that the individual is able to pick a location they are familiar with & then decide how much they need to remember & then sort out the information into rooms after 1st choosing the objects the information will be tied to as long as the information has been tied to the specific objects & sorted properly & it interacts or is integrated creatively with it’s surroundings then i think it should be able to be retained with relative ease i am still a complete noob though what i really want to know though is how i would tie information such as say quotes & chapters out of books into a place i’m familiar with say like my house or a building or a place i am familiar with

i can still remember that list of items from the other day & i can name them in any given order i am as you could say very hungry for more

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Hello Darkshade, hello everyone !!

I personally never felt I visualize anything, we are using what we already have stored, no matter the form, it can work. We dont see in our minds as our eyes see, right?, We sometimes use the word “image”, but its not more an image than whatever comes up in your own mind when you think about the same thing. I suggest anyone starting out to go through the tricks they find here (dont forget its a skill to be develop like any other, a bit everyday at the very least) but instead of images, pretend, just pretend, with whatever you have, like when you remember what you did one second ago, picked up your keys, what comes up? the feeling of metal? the prickling of the tips on your skin? the sound of them ?simply the word keys ? what does the shining silver have that helps you distinguish it from a bright, furiest red ?.. the list is infinite and it does not matter what happens in your mind. You do not need to connect with these things through a specific way, call them images, locis, actions, people… to use these techniques. We take what we have and put’em together like a bunch of kids in a sandbox or egging a bus. Add that feeling or thought you get, or read it, or whatever it is(if you can understand these words, your almost done, its magic !).

When you pick up your keys, or drink a cold glass of water, and then feel the keys suddenly crawling down your throat along with the cold water (how would that feel like? have you ever choked before ? or simply know what it is ?) and your choking on it, but it makes you laugh, strangely, the keys are tickling you, just like it when as a child you were tickled, and you laugh and laugh, the unique way that you laugh, you dont need to hear it, nor see it, you already know how you laugh, right?You dont need to remember anything, you are using thigs you already know and just playing lego with them (not visually! hhehe:) ! )

Keys+hand+water+glass+tick(A)le+feet+laugh ==== (with bits on pronounciation and spelling) ===

K(keys)+h(an)d = quand (when in French) + water =>vas-tu (will you) +c(l)aissé + (tick)LA +Fille(feet)LA(ugh) ?

When will you leave the girl there ?

listen to it here if interested to make the links :slight_smile: not the best example, but one off the top of my hat on a tiring friday night.

Have a great weekedn all and thank you so much for sharing, its warm in this forum.

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If you’re online tonight (California time) at about 7 PM, I could speak on Google Hangouts. Otherwise, we could aim for next week or weekend. I could show you a couple of techniques, and I’d be interested to hear about how you’re encoding the information. :slight_smile:

27

Hi Darkshade,

Very happy to hear that you have figured how to get it up and running.

The 8 items that you memorized above were all very concrete in nature. That is a good way to start. It makes it easier for your imagination to generate ideas for interaction between the object and the location. It is probably a good idea to continue practicing memorizing lists of concrete items for a little while, until you feel you are pretty comfortable with the process.

While doing that, you may notice some interesting principles that don’t always get spoken about a lot. For example, you might notice a difference if you are an active player in the imaginary action compared to when the interaction is just between the object being memorized and the location it is being associated with. Typically, autobiographical memories persist longer than dissociated memories. At least that is my experience.

Anyway, once you are reasonably comfortable with memorizing lists of concrete items, you will probably want to start building skill in memorizing abstract words. For me, many of the real practical things I want to memorize involve non-concrete words, so knowing what to do with them is important, in my view.

One of the main methods I use is wordplay. I use wordplay to convert an abstract (or non-concrete) word into one or more concrete things, or memorable actions, or often some combination of concrete things and actions.

For example, I recently had to remember the word ‘hypoblast’, so I used wordplay to convert it to ‘hippo-blast’ and imagined a hippo opening its mouth and making a loud sound that blasted me across the room. For many words, the word play gets more complicated than that, but that’s the essence of it.

Once you get a handle on the wordplay, you will have the essential tools you need to be able to memorize quotes and chapters of books. There are a lot of other techniques worth learning, but these basics will carry you a long way.

When it comes to memorizing books, I suggest you only use mnemonics to memorize what you need and let your natural memory help out with some of the lifting. Unless you have the specific goal of memorizing a passage verbatim, you will probably find it better to use mnemonics only up to the point that natural memory can take over. IMO, this will save you the unnecessary tedium of turning every last word into a mnemonic. Mnemonics are amazing, but when you only rely on mnemonics for everything, you may find you lose some of the feeling for what a passage is actually about. Finding the right balance will tend to strengthen both your mnemonically-boosted memory and your natural memory. At least that is my experience.

Best of luck,

Darn

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I come back and go down my journey the opposite way to double what Im learning and to my great surprise, never got mixed up! I was sure I would mix 2 infos on same place, but I guess there is more impact from the direction from which I come to meet the locus than I thought. And now Urfin, your added note on “turning off the lights” is motivating me to go a third time but without lights. Cool! cant wait to see if itll mix me all up again. I mean, how much separated info can you have per single location, what tricks helps seperating it without actually seperating it all by keeping it as effective and precise? Closing the lights, wow, planned for a first try tomorrow.

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Oh my this is the perfect explanation for this (I have aphantsia aswell) I have never been able to find a perfect definition and this is it thanks

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I am a total noob, but I do have aphantasia, and my brief tentative experiments with memory palaces and the peg method have shown me that this can work perfectly well with my type of brain. I can imagine myself walking through a place without really visualizing the place, and I find that it works well even if I don’t visualize all the details.

I’ve also had great success with the peg method using a “visual alphabet”. It’s not really visual for me, but I can link the letter associations with the concepts I’m memorizing without really visualizing anything at all. For example, my letter A is an Alien. I can easily remember “an alien slipping on a banana peel”, for example, without really even knowing what the alien looks like or how the scene looks.

Admittedly, I’ve only briefly started my foray into the world of all things memory, but I think all of these techniques can work quite well for me.

31

Hi Tarnation
I have aphantasia so I lack the ability to ‘see’ images in my mind,
I had thought until now that memory techniques like Memory palaces were not possible for me,
Your posts around this subject have shown me that is not true,
Thank you very much you have helped me a great deal,
My only restriction now is finding Palaces that I know enough to use, or finding a way to create new ones.
I will investigate how visualises do this and see if I can find a way.

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It’s not always that easy. I’ve been doing practice drills every night for years now to attempt to visualize. It just isn’t a thing everyone can do. It’s a condition that effects roughly 2 percent of the population. It even shows up on mri, people with aphantasia don’t use the same parts of our brain when attempting to visualize things. Please stop implying we’re just not “trying hard enough” or that “practice can fix it” if you’re not going to actively help the person, and are going to continually tell them they’re wrong, just don’t comment.

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Sadly some people with the condition all have problems with recreating sounds, touch, and smell in their head.