Ask Lemmy

1. The ball I imagined was made of polished metal and reflected its environment.

2. A man.

3. I did not imagine a face. But he was wearing a dark blue business suit with a red striped tie. A watch was on the wrist of the hand that pushed the ball.

4. About the size of a large orange.

5. It was a smaller rectangular table made of a dark, varnished wood.

I'm an artist. I often tend to visualise what I want to draw quite well.

I'm way ahead of you at knowing I have aphantasia, no test needed.

Ball color and size, and table shape and color were the only things I distinctly pictured, and the ball being deformed when pushed. Everything else was still sort of abstracted and not specifically visualized, and the table color changed to improve the contrast as I imagined the scene. If I stop and really focus on the scene I think I would fill in more specific details but at my pace of reading that's as far as it went. I think unless I have a reason to do otherwise I tend to visualize the minimum necessary.

Maybe the ball was light blue, I smaller than a baseball maybe standard stressball sized?

I didn't exact gender the person but did kinda imagine dude-hands because I was looking at my phone with my hands holding it. And I just imagined maybe a wood table, like a dinner table.

All these details were present from only reading the title:

A very large and heavy marble that you'd need to pick up with both hands to hold. A man was already there keeping a hand on the marble, to prevent it from rolling on the wooden table. The table is simple, square and has 4 legs. I know what the marble would sound like if it were to roll, bumping over the little imperfections. This is happening indoors, but there's some natural light coming through. The table is relatively close to the edge of a room but you can still approach the table from all sides. The room is mostly undefined besides that. The man is not too detailed, I have a vague awareness of what he is like, but more like a gestalt of him.

After reading the prompt: The man rolled the ball with a soft push. It produced the expected sound and then he stopped it again before it fell. I felt anxiety when the ball rolled, and was relieved when it was stopped. I want to put it on soft cloth so that we can stop worrying about it rolling off the table. There's soft cloth nearby, and it's purple felt.

I have hyperfantasia.

Oh shit.

Table is wooden with a reddish brown stain and a glossy finish. The ball I picture is red rubber about the size of a grapefruit. "someone walks up to the table" I see a caucasian woman in her 30s with blonde hair in slacks, a long sleeve shirt and a sweater vest, she has slightly long nails. She pushes the ball with a flick of her fingers, it bounces/skips a couple times and then rolls off the end of the table. Sounds kind of like a tennis ball hitting the carpet, it bounces across the room, hits the baseboard on an adjacent wall and comes to a stop.

Everything above I wrote before even opening the follow-up questions. About the only thing I didn't think to mention is the table is a solid top rectangular dining table about 6 by 3 feet.

The "camera angles" might be slightly weird, at first I see the ball from a point of view about an inch off the table, then as it rolls off the table I "see" from my normal standing height but I only hear the ball bounce because the table is in the way, and I see it hit the wall and come to a stop from about kneeling height.

I see things photorealistically but I don't have peripheral vision. The way my mind parsed the sentence "someone walks up to the table and gives the ball a push" I processed "pushes the ball" first and I saw a woman's hand reach into my field of view to push the ball, then I processed "walks up to the table" and my field of view turned to look at her.

So my ball was the ball from toy story on a round wooden kitchen table. Probably the table from my childhood home. So the ball is yellow with a blue stripe and a big red star. It has shading and a shadow. I switched it out for a golf ball, but that didn't seem right, so back to the bouncy ball from toy story, bigger than a baseball, smaller than a kickball. Because it's the ball from toy story, the young man pushing it is toy story animation style. I tried switching him out for a regular human, but it just seemed wrong so I couldn't. He goes with the ball.

The ball is black, the table is black, the human is black. They're all just blobs I tell myself exist so I feel normal.

Really interesting reading your follow up post in here. It's so incredible to hear about how differently people can think.

I imagined the scene in detail, but to pay attention to all the details I had to think back to it and examine each part of what I imagined, if that makes any sense.

I pictured a side camera angle with a white metal table and a light blue wall behind. The ball was a soccer ball, and it was pushed by a woman's hand wearing a gray knit sweater. Only the hand and forearm are "in frame". Her arm comes in from the right side and pushes the ball to the left, rolling it across the table.

I pictured a smooth red rubber ball about the size of a baseball on my kitchen table. The "person" was more of an invisible force, not explicitly male but definitely not female. That might be male bias, or subtly thinking of myself doing it (combined with playing too many physics engine video games where your disembodied self pushes things around).

All of this was pretty vague though, like I didn't really imagine the details of the room or the exact path of the ball other than knowing it would roll off and bounce on the floor.

Color: greenish-blue

Person: male (I identify as male, the person kind of represents me, I guess)

Looks: Cannot see entirely, because "the camera" is very near. Blue pants.

Size of ball: Fits in one hand. The ball is made of a light material and will probably bounce on the floor.

Table: Very generic table. Beige, light brown.

I think, all of that I knew before reading the questions, I was able to answer the questions without really thinking about it.

The scene was like an example reel from a video game, greenscale-ish translucent humanoid mannequin standing in a pseudo void, with a nondescript rectangular table of a similar greenscale-ish semi translucent material, and only the ball is "finished" as it is the camera focus. It is approximately between baseball and softball size, smooth, but I did not pay attention to the color. There is an "interaction/activation" sound effect as the mannequin kinda leans over and lightly pushed the ball to cause it to roll. It rolls to a stop on the table top, and this action loops.

The center of focus pulled back as I read the questions, more becoming aware of them than choosing them, and the scene changed with a camera pull out as part of the "ball is pushed" tutorial clip.

I have realized how much growing up as a gamer as influenced my perspective.

Red

Didn’t think about gender

Didn’t think about what they looked like

Ball was baseball sized

It was a square wooden table

Bonus, I imagined the ball rolling across the table and then falling off the table and bouncing a few times on the floor.

I didn’t choose any answers after reading the questions, but didn’t have an answers for the person.

• yellow
• male
• round face, beard, brown hair, mid 20s (I think probably some internet-famous person whose name I don't remember)
• small plastic ball filled with air
• a simple square table with a natural wood top and legs

That was my first thought. But then (before reading the questions) I also imagined other similar scenarios like with a soccer ball and my desk at work, lol.

My experience with this experiment was kind of like when they play memory flashbacks in movies, I could see the ball being pushed and falling, but with jump cuts and the timing was off. Detail-wise I'd say it was kinda like what you got from AI image generation when Dall-E first came out two-ish years ago.

I don't think I have the most visual imagination out there but if aphantasia is one end of the scale I'm pretty far to the other side.

• White

• Not in shot, just a hand

• The arm was the same complexion as my own

• Tennis ball sized but made of that stuff billard balls are made of, smooth and shiny

• Classic oblong wooden table, looks like that cheap ikea pine with a clear grain

• The ball rolls along the table with again, the same sound you get with a billard or similar rigid ball rolling along a solid surface, upon falling off the table it hits the floor (pale orange ceramic tiles) and bounces a few times in that satisfying way that produces an ever increasing frequency until it stops.

• I already knew and did not have to chose after being asked the questions.

Don't know, they were an amorphous humanoid so I uh don't know for these two, baseball ish sized could fit in a palm, the platonic ideal of a wooden table. The first questions did not make me change the thing in my head. I don't think I see color in my mind eye, but I can uhhh label things with a color. Like. This ball is red, I think to myself, as the ball... continues to ball. Maybe if I imagined a specific red ball it world be redder.

• The ball was a futsal ball, so white with green markings
• I didn't see the person who pushed the ball, just their hand, I was concentrating on the ball
• The table was at about the height of a typical dining room table, it was plain wood about 1cm thick with a dark top and had fairly thin black metal legs

I already knew the answers, for the most part. The questions didn't cause me to add more detail, but they did cause me to reflect on the details I had chosen. So, for example, I never looked at the person who pushed the ball. Because of that, I couldn't fill in any details about their looks or gender. But I did clearly see the hand giving the ball a push, and I think the hand belonged to someone white. Having said that, I did have to stop and think about the answer for the table. The table was part of what I imagined seeing, but it wasn't the focus of my attention. I realized I could think about what I had imagined and the details came to me. But, it's possible that I didn't actually dream them up until I was asked the question.

Also, nobody asked, but the ball fell down and hit a white surface (something like white tiles) and bounced the way a futsal ball bounces, which is to say mostly a soft "thud".

1. White/colourless ball. And honestly, more of a circle viewed from a perfect side on angle.
2. I didn't visualise a person only the effect of their push on the ball. And like another poster corrected the slide to a roll.
3. See above.
4. Ball was of uncertain size. It was viewed side on, and no other objects to give a sense of scale. Maybe tennis ball sized, but I think that's retroactive.
5. Table was rectangular and wooden. But no legs. Unsure of the thickness.

Included the timely-ness of the details in my answers above.

• Ball rolls about two feet and stops just before it rolls off the table.
• White ball, polished surface, shiny
• Male
• Tall person, slender build, light brown hair, clean shaven, white button-up collared shirt, blue jeans.
• Ball was a bit bigger than a billiard ball, but smaller than a baseball. Smooth, and heavy. Like a white cricket ball but with no seams.
• It was one of those large common fold-up trestle tables but with a white table cloth on it.
• I knew all those without having to think about it, or choose afterwards.

To me the imagery seemed like a cheesy "how to push a ball" educational video with a paid actor to demonstrate how to push the ball in the correct manner.

• Striped white and blue
• Male
• Casual clothing, nondescript
• About the size of a softball
• Round wooden table

All of this came before I was asked about it.

What happens to the ball? It rolls slowly off the table, and bounces a few times away from the table before coming to a stop.

What color was the ball? Blue

What gender was the person that pushed the ball? Male

What did they look like? Tall, average build, short brown hair with facial hair, maybe mid-30s, gray shirt, brown pants

What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? A bit smaller than a basketball, like a ball for kids or a handball.

What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Round, wood, but like the cheap laminate kind with plastic edging. Metal legs. Like a cheap table you'd see in a school or office.

I feel like I imagined a lot more detail than others. The questions were really easy for me to answer, and like a lot of unnecessary details came to mind. The guy pushed the ball because he was asked to, and he didn't know why he was there.

Blue

Gender-nondescript, like a drawing in a school book

See above

Tennis ball size

Square, particle board like Ikea furniture

Some of them I extrapolated upon after seeing the questions because having unknowns in your mind's eye is not uncomfortable to people with intellectual integrity

I instantly saw a soccer ball on our dining room table. The push throws a glass of the table.

• The color of the ball was white with black pattern like a classic soccer ball.

• The gender was male.

• I didn't see the person clearly, only the hands pushing.

• Soccer ball

• The table in my imagination was exactly our light brown beech wood dining room table.

The points described were instantly in my head. Only for the person itself I would need to try again.

What I don't like about this experiment is that being hyperphantic doesn't necessarily mean "you need photographic visualizations of every scenario at all times". My mind conjures scenarios differently depending on context.

I can imagine myself barely being able to see a ball on a table, let alone a person moving into view.

I can see the ball having a glossy, low-res texture alla 1980s CGI, with the ball being pushed by a polygon figure, moving without any real animation and limply falling off the table with no gravitational speed.

I can picture a worn, shiny leather baseball sitting on an old coffee table, stained walnut. The person is Mark Wahlberg and he has a smirk on his face as he lazily finger-flicks the ball, which only barely makes it to the edge of the table before just being able to tip off the edge, bouncing twice with a heavy bomp-bomp and rolling unevenly for a couple seconds. Mark winces because his finger hurts now. I could also imagine the flavor of the baseball and what it would smell like.

The point is that an aphantic might only be able to visualize this scenario at best as well as the first description, or perhaps not even at all and they can only 'know' of the movements in the scene with zero visual or otherwise relation to it.

Hyperphantics generally can conjure near limitless detail and they can retain that information visually for long periods of time without much effort.

What do i have if i can't stop the ball from falling? Like the person stops it from one side and it bounces to the other and fall that way.

I also have trouble stopping clocks from spinning in my imagination

Color: red

Gender of pusher: undetermined

Looks of pusher: detached skinny white arm/hand

Size: roughly palm sized (full grown adult)

Table: wood, circular. Changed to black void with half pipe like pinball track upon being rolled.

After a quick visualization, that's what I got. Seeing the questions didn't change my answers

Edit: ball moved along the track for a moment before I stopped thinking about it, mostly since that train of thought made my brain switch to Sonic Spinball.