This is a thought experiment "Ball on a Table" for detecting whether someone has Aphantasia. What do you see when you perform this experiment?
This is more of me trying to understand how people imagine things, as I almost certainly have Aphantasia and didn't realize until recently... If this is against community rules, please do let me know.
Try this: Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it) a ball on a table. Now imagine someone walks up to the table, and gives the ball a push. What happens to the ball?
Once you're done with the above, click to review the test questions:
What color was the ball?
What gender was the person that pushed the ball?
What did they look like?
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of?
And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?
I've noticed that after getting older, suffering several concussions, a short spat with drinking, and COVID that my ability to picture things in my mind has degraded a lot since childhood.
Does your ability to imagine things naturally decline? I remember as a lad I could vividly imagine the feeling of things. My imagination was also much more colorful. But I could never see things in 3D like some people can (I've worked with some really talented tradesmen/machinists who can like assemble or fold or machine a piece in their mind, I don't know maybe that's just practice)
What happens to the ball? It rolls of the side of the table.
Color: I didn't imagine a specific color
Gender: I didn't imagine a specific gender. Most of the person was "out of the frame"
What did they look like: Again, most of the person was out of the frame, they were just kind of a gray silhouette
What size was the ball? Like a dodgeball I guess?
What about the table? Very minimalist square table made up of five rectangular prisms (the surface and four legs). No specific material, uniform texture. I imagined everything in isometric perspective.
This is what I recall from my first time imagining the scenario, I'd have to imagine some more if I wanted to give specific answers.
With all due respect, I don't believe aphantasia is a real thing. The way people imagine things is so varied, weird, strange, and unique that I don't think it makes sense assigning labels. Different people will give varying levels of detail to different parts of their imagination based on their past experiences and knowledge.If you ask someone to imagine a chessboard, someone who plays chess might imagine a specific opening or valid board state, while someone who doesn't might just have a vague blob of chess pieces on a board.
Even with your ball on a table experiment, the experiences people have had throughout the day may give more or less detail to the imagined scenario. I'm fairly certain that the reason I imagined everything so abstractly is because recently I found an artwork with a similar minimalist isometric style that I liked a lot, so it's kind of floating around in my subconsciousness and affecting how I imagine things.
I have aphantasia. The reason this experiment works is because someone with aphantasia will logically think about what they're being asked, but since they're not really "picturing" it, they won't have any answers about details. Color, type, and size of the ball? I have no idea, that information wasn't relevant to my mental checklist. For me, it really does work like a checklist. My brain supplies exactly zero imagery. For some people it's more like a spectrum, where they might be able to have a hazy picture with minimal details.
But aphantasia is 100% real. It's just hard for people to believe it because it's so foreign to the way they're used to thinking, in the same way it sounds unbelievably exhausting to me that regular people are constantly creating movies in their heads.
I think my brain might just be lazy... I skipped over the entire walk to the table part. And just imagined a detached arm pushing the ball on a surface, until it rolled off the surface and that was all.
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.
So, in this experiment you're asking people to picture a certain situation that doesn't call for any specific details, then asking them to describe the unnecessary details they came up with: colour of the ball, etc.
I'm curious if the people who have aphantasia can picture something in their heads when it does call for all that detail.
Picture a red, 10-speed bike with drop handlebars wrapped with black handlebar tape. It's locked to a bike rack on the street outside the library with a U-lock. You come out of the library and see that the front wheel has been stolen. Think about how that would look. Picture the position of the bike, and anything you might look for if it were your bike and you were worried. Pretend you needed to examine the situation in as much detail as possible so you could file a police report.
Questions
Were your front forks resting on the ground, or up in the air?
Was there any other damage done to your bike or to the lock?
Are there any other bikes nearby? People nearby? Security cameras that might have caught the crime?
I’m aphantasic. You can say “picture this” followed by whatever you like. It’s not possible for me in any way. Growing up I honestly thought “picture this” or “close your eyes and see” was just metaphor. I legitimately didn’t understand other people can see things.
My mind has a verbal descriptive stream, and I’m good with muscle-based or proprioceptive spacial memory, and the two combine to handle most things, but nothing visual. So like I can easily describe things from memory or from an idea, and it’ll be fully consistent, but not something I see.
If you have aphantasia, and not just hypophantasia, it makes no difference how much detail is provided, there’s a total, fundamental, inability to visualize things.
So as someone who coaches sometimes I have to ask. Can you imagine and feel body movements? Sometimes I'll ask someone to visualize themselves performing an action before they do it.
Interesting point and I'm glad you made it, with a thought (?) experiment to check.
I think I am somewhat aphantastic, but not officially diagnosed.
Tap for spoiler
Front forks down.
No other damage.
No other bikes, bike racks, or even street furniture. But as I read this question I retroactively added in the bike rack and street furniture outside my hometown's library.
My brother in Christ you have described almost the exact same specs I visualized. The only difference is in the level of resolution of my "scene." And by that, I mean essentially I did a few more render passes in my head to anchor everything you've written within a sort of Impressionistic, highly softened, out-of-focus backdrop. I saw hints of shadowy cabinets, the concept of a darkened kitchen out of sight. The shape and finger placement of my slightly more textured, clothed yet featureless male. The gray-brown feeling of a floor below, a dark white ceiling above, and the faded glow of sunlight through an unseen dining room window grazing one end of that oaken table.
But the basics ... They're the same, and before being asked to recall them. Damn.
I mean, people will imagine a similar thing when asked to imagine something specific. At the end of the day there's just so many ways to imagine someone pushing a ball off a table.
More or less but person didn't have gender because that wasn't relevant to the subject which was the rolling ball. Ball also bounced a few times when hitting the floor.
Colorless ball, around the size of a tennis ball on a colorless round table. Person was colorless, genderless, and generally without any distinctive features.
I have hyperphantasia according to these kinds of tests (although I am not sure how accurate they are). In any case, the ball was white with a green glow it was smooth and looked like plastic but no seams where the halves were joined, male, like a large blue bird I saw in a cartoon, a bit larger than a baseball, the table was a very long rectangle shape. It was also white. The ball was pushed very hard from one end of the table to the other and then it bounced on the wall, the floor and the ceiling. The room was a bit small, with only a very small window rectangular window. It was black behind the window. The room was also rectangle shaped, with concrete grey walls. It was a bit dark, but there was some artificial light from a lamp. The bird acted very cartoonish when pushing the ball. I think that is all.
Weird. I’ve been thinking a lot about my aphantasia recently.
The closest I can describe what I imagined, was the feeling that those things happened.
For example. That vibe you get when you feel someone is just behind you. You can’t see them, but you know it. If I imagine someone behind me, I get the same uncomfortable feeling and an urge to look behind me.
White/colourless ball. And honestly, more of a circle viewed from a perfect side on angle.
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.
See above.
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.
Table was rectangular and wooden. But no legs. Unsure of the thickness.
Included the timely-ness of the details in my answers above.
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.
Maybe I am broken by all the physics thought experiments, but my image was very bare-bones
spoiler
I imagined a small ball (roughly of size of my fist) but only an outline, no features, I did not imagine practically anything about person - just a force (imagined impulse was parallel to table plane) - I did imagine ball rolling (considered forward rolling, as opposed to impulse on center of mass (which in a frictionless situation would make it just linearly translate, or backspin) and falling from the table after a few seconds
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".
I can imagine it in the sense that I can understand what happens. There is nothing visual at all for me. My assumption was that it was roughly-tennis-ball-sized absent any other info, but it wasn't even a person, just a hand pushing a ball (and again, just the idea and nothing visual) as no other info is relevant.
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.
Exactly. There's no need to add more details unless that's part of the requirements. Otherwise it makes it harder to keep track of things. Keep it simple first, then add complexity as needed.
Don't know, the "camera" wasn't panned up that high
All I really "saw" was jeans
Looked like one of those rubber balls that people like to bounce against walls, like in handball or squash. About as big across as the palm of your hand. Hollow, you could squish it without much effort.
one of those simple black square tables from Ikea
That's kind of what just popped into my head before I knew there were questions.
That's how I did it too. There is a sphere on a plane. A force is applied to the sphere, parallel to the plane. Neither the sphere nor the plane have a defined color, size, material, etc. Nothing specific pushed the sphere.
My job is often to mathematically model the things people say to me, and in those circumstances thinking like this is correct.
I don't think this way when I daydream, although the visual components of my daydreams are more like the feelings I get when I look at something than like concrete mental pictures.
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.
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.
'ball on a table' is very generic, so my brain keeps suggesting different versions. A beach ball on my grandparents' living room table when I was a child. A fairly featureless basketball-sized sphere on a beech-like table in some kind of gallery-like environment. A tennis ball, but on little more than the concept of a table. The person, not being specified... could be anyone. In some versions it's my own arm, POV, in others it's like something seen out of the corner of your eye. Yeah someone came in and did a thing, I wasn't really looking.
The motion is more like a series of vignettes, unless I concentrate more - in which case the surrounding detail gets more abstract.
Now, if you give me details, that's another story.
A fuzzy yellow tennis ball on that cheap folding card table from my childhood with the padding cut off, leaving the textured fibreboard surface. My older sister strides up and shoves the ball across the table, making the flimsy legs wobble as she does so.
Do that, I can see the texture of the carpet and the bare walls from our shitty childhood apartment, I can downright smell the table and have the heft of the thing kinaesthetically along with the shape and visual textures. I can see the skitter and wobble of the ball across the table; my sister more an abstract bundle of mannerisms and gait, and the actual path of the ball is still more implied than observed, though.
For the most part, my visualisation is handwave, like looking through your blind spot or your peripheral vision: the part your brain makes up to fill in the missing details. When I read a book, it's like half-remembered cover-illustrations of the general scene: more vibe (sometimes richly textured, vivid vibe) than a literal image.
That is interesting. I imagined it more like an abstract physics problem than an actual scene. My ball was about 6 inches diameter, made of a nonspecific hard but not very dense material similar to, but not necessarily solid plastic, of no specific color. It was in the center of a table roughly 3 x 6 feet in surface at normal sitting table height, and was also of no specific color or material. The person was just the vague notion of a person applying a push slightly off from across the short axis of the table. The ball bounced slightly on the generic idea of a floor as it rolled away. My mind quickly supplied the additional details when requested, but not until then. (Yellow ball, wood table, etc). If I'd been asked in a way that didn't feel like a physics problem, but instead asked me to imagine a scene, I would already have had many of those details in my mental view.
Interesting, on the first sentence I actually thought of many different sizes and shapes for the ball, then realized I'd have to pick one before moving on to the next part, so it was kind of a conscious decision. I ended up with a simple grey anti-stress ball. But the table was always the same, light brown wood. All focus is on the ball so the person is just a silhouette partly out of camera but the hand is white and wearing a black sleeve. I only chose what the person looked like after the questions based on what felt right for the initial visualization, like panning out the camera.
There's another question though. Would your mind get into all this trouble if you didn't know there would be questions coming?
My ball was gray, too. With no details whatsoever, just shading. In the edge of the table, a hand came from the left of the camera view with its index finger stretched out and poked the ball, which rolled a few inches and stopped (while in other faded versions of it the ball fell off the table or rolled further over the table surface)
It's interesting how many people picked a brown wood table. I'd guess that's probably the most common material and colour for tables. But I'm typing this on a black table, and yet I still pictured a brown wood one.
Interesting. I also had only the vaguest impression of the person pushing the ball, but I definitely caught a glimpse before the ball rolled off the table. Slacks and a blue shirt, that was about it.
What gender was the person that pushed the ball? A woman
What did they look like? Short straight black hair, pale skin tone, fit build, black blouse, plaid skirt, black leggings, wearing black pumps
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? Slightly larger than a baseball, slightly smaller than a softball
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Wood, square, about 1 meter/yard square, thick square legs one at each corner.
Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions? All of this was a picture before seeing the questions. Other things about the image that weren't asked were also there like:
the room was lit from a single light bulb above the table with a wide shade. Light was cast straight down on the table/ball and extended slightly beyond the table, but I couldn't see how big the room was...until the ball rolled off the table and hit the floor. I could tell the floor was smooth wood and the walls in the room must also be of a hard material because the sound of the solid ball hitting the floor reverberated. The light showed one wall was red brick. It was indoors.
Oh my! I didn't know what to expect, and I have to say... I was quite surprised by some of your answers. Also confirmed to me that I am definitely not normal
Not many replies that are indicative of Aphantasia so... here goes nothing. I tried really hard at this okay
spoiler
I don't "see" see anything when I close my eyes. I can create a very vague concept of a ball, a table, and... kind of a person in my head, but I don't actually see the scene, I used to think when people say imagining things they were just making a metaphor. Things get really funk from here... But the overall schema feels more like one of those badly drawn scenes from the hit visual novel Slay the Princess. And yes I imagined it in 2D for some reason
Color: the ball doesn't have a color
Gender: it wasn't even a real person; it seems like a silhouette of the hand and back of a person
Looks: As I said, the person isn't even facing me
Size: No idea; in retrospect it's fairly large compared to the table (diameter probably 1/2-1/3 of table?), but the table is also an abstract concept so...
Table: no clue, it is a square table but that's it. If anything it looks like the things served on Pizza Hut pizzas
Well I spoiled the question for myself so... but I didn't have to choose, heck I couldn't choose even if I know what the questions are
Just as an exploration with you on this. Use your same instructions for the placing and actions with one difference.
The room is pitch black, and you can't see a thing.
What do you hear?
Click for review questions:
what did the steps of the person sound like? Can you tell what kind of shoes they have with "heal/toe" impact sounds? single thumps indicating flat footfalls? nothing?
how long were they walking before they got to the table?
Did the ball make any sound as it rolled on the table? What kind of sounds? What kind of table would make that sound?
When the ball hit the floor did it bounce or fall flat? Was there an echo? Did the sound of the fall indicate you're in a tiny room or a giant room?
How close was the person to your point of observation?
Could you hear the person breathing?
What else did you hear that I didn't include here?
The person didn't walk, that wasn't the focus of what I was imagining
The ball didn't make a sound when it rolled, but I was imagining a soft futsal ball that would make almost no noise rolling on a table. If I'd been imagining a marble or something that would have been different
The ball bounced once a bit, then fell flat, it's how a futsal ball bounces, it's a kind of "splat" sound with no echoes. I didn't imagine walls, so the room is effectively infinite sized
The person wasn't really part of what I was imagining. They were there to give the ball a push, but otherwise were irrelevant, so I didn't focus on them in any way
If I'd let my fantasy get "polluted" by the other questions and stories, I'd have answered differently. With all the questions about the person, I'd have invented a person and effectively "panned out" so that the person was part of what I was thinking about. Instead I went with my original visualization which just involved an effectively disembodied hand giving a ball a push. If this were a TV show or something, the only part of the person that I ever saw was the hand that gave the ball a push, everything else was "out of frame". But, I wasn't imagining a "frame", just whatever my mind's eye was focused on, which was almost entirely the ball, and not anything else.
You imagined a lot more details than I did. For me it was just the concept of a ball. And then the idea of it moving. The person and the table were left our as irrelevant.
The thought experiment I use when explaining to people about aphantasia is a much simplified version of yours:
"imagine a circle",
"ok",
"what color is it?"
That's it. People give an answer, sometimes including more details, like texture. Then I tell them that for me the question doesn't make sense, I just imagined the idea of a circle and didn't actually "see" anything, so there's no additional detail to it.
This sounds similar to how it works for me too. I closed my eyes to try this.
I saw a very rough version of the table that's in the room with me. The table is a low rectangular coffee table with a coarsely threaded grey throw over it going lengthways, but I saw it as a rectangular shape with a vague grey top. The ball was featureless with no colour, and was about the size of my fist, so an adult man's fist.
I saw a low quality arm push the ball, but I really struggled to picture it, and while I knew what would happen in real life, I couldn't picture it happening in my head.
It's strange, as sometimes I can picture things fairly well, but other times I can't do it at all. I have very vivid dreams on the occasions that I remember dreaming, but I can't close my eyes and picture my family. I know what they should look like, in the same way that I know what a rotating cow should look like, but I very rarely get any sort of mental image of them.
Ironically, I was in a coma a bit over a decade ago, and while I was in it, the dreams that I had were so realistic that it took me months to get things straight in my head.
I find it very interesting that the vast majority of people saw a red ball. I did too.
red
Indeterminate, mostly just an arm
shoulder-length brown hair, androgenous body, hidden face
Like a rubber bouncy ball you'd get in a party bag
wooden, square
Mostly I already knew, but it felt like things were "filling in" as I tried to "remember" the image to answer the questions, especially around the person.
I imagine it's because it's the simplest, most common type of ball that you commonly see described as such. Like, baseballs and basketballs and soccer balls and beach balls exist, but out of context they're typically called that rather than just "a ball". So, a simple round ball. Giving it a pattern requires some extra thought, and of the solid colors red seems like the most common (think dodgeballs).
I can visualize things in my mind, but it's not... Clear? Like it's not as vivid as seeing with my actual eyes. It's like seeing images as reflections on tinted glass. Dark, murky. Muted colors. There is also an emphasis with text. I think of a ball. I imagine a red ball with the text "Ball" above or below it.
In the scenario given, I see a dark image of a red ball on a wooden table. A hand not attached to a person pushes the ball. The ball rolls across the table and falls off. There is text below describing the situation.
For me it's kinda unfocused, like I can imagine a ball on a table and someone giving it a push.
Only after I force myself to think a bit harder about it, I get a regular square wooden table in a kitchen-esque room, with a silver pinball on it, while a guy approaches it and gives it a small push, at the same time, the post didn't ask me to imagine the ball falling off the table, so the ball barely rolls at all.
Too abstract I more imagined an arm more than a whole person
Baseballish
Square, I dunno it was also purple. I get very like, early computer animation type vibes from the whole scene. "Ball" and "table" without any context just leaves everything kinda blank.
I think I already knew. Maybe the gender one was a stretch.
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.
The ball was about the size of a baseball, and the table was square, but I couldn't answer any of the other questions without just making something up when they were asked.
Tall, thin. I don't remember a face, but he was wearing an old-fashioned formal shirt and sport jacket. The cuff of the shirt was unbuttoned and folded back. He also wore a wide-brimmed black hat. (I'm currently watching an episode of Hell on Wheels which probably influenced that.)
Large for an apple, small for a canteloupe.
Square, dinner-table-hieight. Dark-stained wood. I'm no woodworker, so I wouldn't know what kind of wood it was, but I've got a couple of bookcases of the same wood and staining.
Aside from that, I can say it took place in an old cabin and in the background, I saw an open doorway to a... foyer? The door to the outside was open. It was very sunny. And I saw green grass outside.
And, I knew all those things before I got to the questions. I just had to consult/replay the scene in my head to get all the answers.
The ball was red and smooth and uniform and shaded like it had been painted there or drawn with colored pencil.
the gender of the person was indeterminate, perhaps leaning female
they did not have a definite look to describe, it was more a concept of a person. They were a featureless, fuzzy, void-white silhouette adorned only by a similarly featureless light blue t-shirt, black pants and black hair, all so ill-defined it was as if they they had been hastily cut from craft paper and slapped over top the glowing form. Like the color scheme of the fitness boxing mascot, but the more simplified form of South Park Canadians, and more amorphous.
the ball was slightly larger than a baseball but smaller than a softball
the table was rectangular, of beige ‘wood’ with a light grain, and very sharp edges. It looked distinctly like it was out of a low poly video game.
Important question: The ball and table were distinct and known but oddly not “real-life”. The person was very indistinct and the gender is merely speculation. The edges defining their arms and hands became more defined as they approached and interacted with the ball. The color and form of the clothing and hair manifested then too.
Interestingly, I “know” the visualization took place in my kitchen, in an orientation different than my actual kitchen table. I saw the light from the windows Illuminate the table and the ball, and I could tell where I was in the space watching it happen, but the kitchen wasn’t there and neither was I. The table, ball and person appeared alone in a murky dark void.
The person was of indeterminate gender, I only really saw their arm
They were wearing a blue button up over a white shirt
The ball is about the size of an orange, and it rolled forwards
The table was made of wood
I had to picture it again to get the shirt color but not the rest. I can say that the background was dark, almost like a dimly lit billiards hall, and there was a light shining on the ball
Haven’t until recently thought much about people using vision-related words to describe thoughts. Never realized they mean those words literally. I suspect I have the aphantasia.
My answers to OPs questions:
The ball has no concept of color, it’s an abstract notion of ball
the individual is also an idea of a person that has ability to approach the table and the ball and apply force to it, but it is not fully thought out representation of a biological person, it has no such thing as gender or limbs, it’s a concept of “someone” as was required
They (none of the objects or the person) don’t look like anything, they exist as ideas of entities in void
The size is not set, so the ratios can be applied very fluidly to play out different sizes of objects or forces applied, like pushing force, or gravity, or lack of them. I thought this was very vague description so I thought best to make a few different tests to understand what would be outcome before continuing the question. When I got to the end (what happens..) I thought well a fuckton happens depending on multitude of other related but undefined things! What a stupid question.
The table has no height, shape or edge, since none was required, but in a few cases there were tilts, edges, motion and other topologies, and whatnot. It’s not made of anything, it’s a concept.
You are all just hallucinating and not seeing the actual things going on, and that makes you all handicapped.
Edit: I guess I said something to upset some of you, please leave a comment to explain (maybe more detail than I’m “not special”)
It was a billiards/pool ball, but no idea which one as I just associate balls on tables with playing pool.
No idea on gender, formless concept.
No idea on looks, just a concept.
Whatever size a pool ball is, 2-3 inches? Just a concept though.
It is a pool table with green felt and a raised edge and six pockets because that is what a pool table is. Can't really see it. Just aware of it's general properties and how the felt and wood feels.
Eveey detail is based ona pool tabke and ball because my first thought about balls on tables is playing pool. Without the table detail I wouldn't have anything at all to work with.
I’ve never head of this test before now. Spoiler tags to help others avoid the answers before they take the test.
Tap for spoiler
The ball was somehow chrome but not reflective, and bigger than a large marble.
The table was a flat plane with no features.
The person pushing the table had no features.
There were no other features within this thought space
Blue. Didn't really envision a person, just the hand, didn't notice the potential sex. It was a billiard ball on a pool table. The ball kinda rolled gently across the table at an angle, hit the side, and slowly rolled back before stopping.
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.
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.
Visualise (picture, imagine, whatever you want to call it)
I ignored this portion of the instruction because it was unnecessary to answer the question of what might happen to the ball if it were pushed by someone. I didn't visualize anything until moving on to the spoiler questions. Even then, my brain mostly went "nah, we'd just be making up something to fill in details irrelevant to the question, don't waste the energy".
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.
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.
What color was the ball? - Red rubber, like an old school dodgeball.
What gender was the person that pushed the ball? - Unknown, all I saw was a hand and the sleeve of a white dress shirt with the cuff rolled up.
What did they look like? As above.
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else? About the size of a softball. Bigger than a baseball, smaller than a basketball.
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Square natural wooden table.
I feel like I started to picture something more specific, but as soon as it asked what happens next I deliberately cleared the details from my mind and re-imagined it as generically as possible so my prediction wouldn’t be biased by anything not explicitly stated.
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.
I already had my answers before looking through the questions. Red, no gender, mostly a lab coat, tennis ball sized, waist-high wooden rectangular table.
I don't have aphantasia, but a rather vivid imagination sometimes. Also, a lot of my answers were indirectly influenced by my immediate surroundings:
What color was the ball? - Red
What gender was the person that pushed the ball? - Male
What did they look like? - I only imagined seeing the person up to the waist, approaching the table and giving a push to the ball. I pictured him with social attire.
What size is the ball? - Tennis ball, but very smooth. It was smack dab in the middle of the table, too.
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? - Round glass.
A question for those of you who have, or suspect you have aphantasia, how are your dreams like? Can you imagine and "hear" sounds?
I recall dreams the same way as I recall real events. There are no actual images or sounds that I can "see" or "hear" in my mind as I think back on the events, but I know I've seen and heard those things. So it's difficult to answer the question. Did I "see" things in my sleep, but remember them only as ideas, or were they just ideas in the dream too? I tend to think it was the former.
Pretty sure I dream normally. Can't discern faces but I know I can see things.
Can you imagine and "hear" sounds?
Basically how I function. If I'm thinking of a song I know decently well or heard recently it's like a live show I can control. Just with the lights off.
The ball was white/light gray. It has the surface texture of plaster of Paris, but it is somewhat lighter than would be appropriate for its canteloupe-like size.
I don't think I actually pictured a whole person as pushing the ball, more likely it was a disembodied hand or the general sensation of pushing it myself.
I remember being specifically intrigued that I pictured the ball rolling back towards the center of the table and pondering why I had chosen the table to be slightly concave. I don't remember more attributes of the table, but I have the feeling that has more to do with inattention to its details rather than not picturing them at the time.
I imagine that, based on the framing of the story, my interpretation was to picture the sphere as a literal entity, but the person as the "concept of a push"... The table probably lied somewhere in the middle.
I've always found this subject fascinating. Why are we all so different in this regards? What's going or not going on up there? Anyway, this is my result…
Tap for spoiler
I imagined a bright red ball, like a shiny red plasticy looking ball
The "person" pushing the ball was just a disembodied arm, the ball rolled and bounced around the pool table much as a pool ball would
The arm was pretty much my arm. I didn't bother to visualise the person, instead concentrating on the interaction with the ball.
The ball was larger than a pool ball, maybe softball sized or even slightly bigger
The table was basically a pool table, green felt, but smaller or maybe the ball was just much bigger
All this I knew from my visualisation but when answering the questions I probably solidified my thoughts a bit. When viewing things they are constantly changing or shifting to match new information/ideas/concepts of what's there. I don't really see the whole scene at once easily, instead focusing in on different aspects of it. For example if I'm concentrating on the red, shiny ball then the table is just a green plane/background.
What gender was the person that pushed the ball?: seen from the bust, but a masculine physique
What did they look like?: Grey shirt, light skinned, clean nails, hands looks slightly worn.
What size is the ball? Like a marble, or a baseball, or a basketball, or something else?: Tennis ball size. Smooth and has a good bounce, but sounds solid.
What about the table, what shape was it? What is it made of? Rectangle. Wooden. Smooth, but had a knot in it.
And now the important question: Did you already know, or did you have to choose a color/gender/size, etc. after being asked these questions?
I already knew? .
I had to visualize it first to answer any questions.
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.
The ball was pale, not any color specific, something life a cream color.
The person was nongendered, just a hand extending from a black suit with no determining orientation.
They were a suit below the shoulder to above the knee, no other visible details past the table.
The ball is maybe baseball sized, just big enough to comfortably fit the hand.
The table is my current dining room table, an antique drop leaf table. This detail was the oddest to reconsider because until now I've been imagining either my previous table or the coffee table from my childhood, I don't normally decorate the thought space.
The ball, a red ping pong ball of maybe 1.5-2 inches diameter, is on a square, concave white, glazed ceramic plate that is on a rectangular matte white table that is plastic. I have no idea why the ball is on a plate but that's how it is when I imagine it for some reason. The entire room is white with a door on the wall that I am looking towards. The door slowly opens, and it is me (I'm a girl)! I look exactly like I do when I look at myself in photos. When I push the ball with my hand, it gets pushed off of the plate and lands on the table. It rolls toward the end of the table and bounces on the floor twice, making a noise you'd expect a ping pong ball to make when it collides with hard flooring. The whole scene looks like how a YouTube video of it being physically acted out would look like.
I already knew after I read the prompt. It was like a little YouTube video playing in my head! 😃
The ball started out crystal, then changed to a colourful pool ball, off-white & yellow / red,
The person doing the pushing had no distinct features / might have been me in the first person / was otherwise unremarkable, most of the visualization starts after the point of pushing the ball
ditto.
ditto
The ball was roughly pool ball sized.
the table was a relatively non descript wooden (pine coloured) dining table, in a kitchen / dining room ish area with the vague sense of cabinets and a counter behind it, but these were all very blurry and non descript
The ball I imagined was made of polished metal and reflected its environment.
A man.
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.
About the size of a large orange.
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 didn't picture a person, but a real cat that I'm worried about. She's a female.
Like that specific furball looks like. She resembles savannah cats from a distance but she's a pure-bred mutt.
Around the size of my palm. Massive, springy.
I pictured the ball over the desk table that I'm using now.
I picked a lot of RL stuff (like the cat, or the table) to "build" the image with; I often do this. I picked all those things before seeing the questions.
the table was circular and small for a table, like maybe two could sit at it. I didn't imagine a material.
I imagined more about the ball than anything else, it was made of a spongy material like in those sponge brushes for painting, and it was red. The person was a complete blank slate. The table was only circular, nothing else.
Fun experiment! It's amusing reading the comments.
spoiler
Red ball pushed by an older gentleman, only imagined the hand and arm (wearing green long-sleeve but I'm not sure if I added the long sleeve after tbh, Im pretty sure I only imavined the hand). It was a red rubber ball, the kind you throw to a dog and it was on my kitchen counter (it has a distinct pattern).
Except for the log sleeve, I knew the rest without a doubt. Also, I didn't really see it fall, my angle was from across, I couldn't see the other side per say and I stopped imagining the moment it slipped off. I don't really remember a floor either.