The problem isn’t that people with aphantasia can’t visualize; it’s that these people are generally unaware that they have it in the first place. (People who know they have it will correct for it in the same way that handicapped people will automatically correct for ‘ableist’ language.) Because of this, I’m not sure what kind of notice would suffice. I think saying to skip the sensory detail step if it doesn’t resonate may work for people with poor phantasia; but for pure aphants like me, the phrase “struggle with sensory detail” won’t pattern match to what’s going on in my head. If you had asked me five years ago whether I struggled with sensory detail, I would have said that I didn’t, because I didn’t know that visual mental imagery was possible at all, and I would have thought that I had a lot of practice with memorizing elements in a scene.
However, people with aphantasia only take up 1-3% of the population. The 10% figure I cited earlier was for people who merely have poor phantasia: their visual mental imagery exists but it is cloudy, in black and white, and/or is generally not suitable for close inspection. For people with poor phantasia, I think the proposed sentence will work well, as they’ll certainly realize that they “struggle with sensory detail”.
Regarding the other senses, I can only really speak for myself. I have no visual mental imagery at all, nor can I simulate textures or smells in my mind’s ‘eye’. Regarding sound, I can kind of hear auditory mental imagery, but not well at all. (If you tell me to imagine a cow’s moo, I can think “moo”, but can’t reproduce a cow’s belt in my head. If told to imagine raindrops, I can think “pitter-pat”, but not hear the sound. If told to remember a song, I can runback individual series of notes, but can’t hear the combination of several instruments.)
Anecdotally, I’ve heard many in r/aphantasia and elsewhere report similar lacks, but it is definitely not universal. A stickied post there claims that half of people with aphantasia report “being unable to simulate any of the 5 [sic] senses”, but it apparently came from a reddit survey and has no other source. Wikipedia says that “many people with aphantasia also report an inability to recall sounds, smells, or sensations of touch”, but they don’t give a citation for this. This may be because the term “aphantasia” was only just coined in 2015 and there may not have been any proper studies yet that have focused on how many people lack mental imagery of senses other than sight.
Regarding whether the sentence will suffice, I say yes. It may exclude full aphants who don’t know that others have visual imagery, but this is a very small part of the population. The sentence will successfully help people with poor phantasia, which is a far more significant portion of the population, so I think it is sufficient.
The problem isn’t that people with aphantasia can’t visualize; it’s that these people are generally unaware that they have it in the first place. (People who know they have it will correct for it in the same way that handicapped people will automatically correct for ‘ableist’ language.) Because of this, I’m not sure what kind of notice would suffice. I think saying to skip the sensory detail step if it doesn’t resonate may work for people with poor phantasia; but for pure aphants like me, the phrase “struggle with sensory detail” won’t pattern match to what’s going on in my head. If you had asked me five years ago whether I struggled with sensory detail, I would have said that I didn’t, because I didn’t know that visual mental imagery was possible at all, and I would have thought that I had a lot of practice with memorizing elements in a scene.
However, people with aphantasia only take up 1-3% of the population. The 10% figure I cited earlier was for people who merely have poor phantasia: their visual mental imagery exists but it is cloudy, in black and white, and/or is generally not suitable for close inspection. For people with poor phantasia, I think the proposed sentence will work well, as they’ll certainly realize that they “struggle with sensory detail”.
Regarding the other senses, I can only really speak for myself. I have no visual mental imagery at all, nor can I simulate textures or smells in my mind’s ‘eye’. Regarding sound, I can kind of hear auditory mental imagery, but not well at all. (If you tell me to imagine a cow’s moo, I can think “moo”, but can’t reproduce a cow’s belt in my head. If told to imagine raindrops, I can think “pitter-pat”, but not hear the sound. If told to remember a song, I can runback individual series of notes, but can’t hear the combination of several instruments.)
Anecdotally, I’ve heard many in r/aphantasia and elsewhere report similar lacks, but it is definitely not universal. A stickied post there claims that half of people with aphantasia report “being unable to simulate any of the 5 [sic] senses”, but it apparently came from a reddit survey and has no other source. Wikipedia says that “many people with aphantasia also report an inability to recall sounds, smells, or sensations of touch”, but they don’t give a citation for this. This may be because the term “aphantasia” was only just coined in 2015 and there may not have been any proper studies yet that have focused on how many people lack mental imagery of senses other than sight.
Regarding whether the sentence will suffice, I say yes. It may exclude full aphants who don’t know that others have visual imagery, but this is a very small part of the population. The sentence will successfully help people with poor phantasia, which is a far more significant portion of the population, so I think it is sufficient.