A thought about the psychology of comics appreciation.

[andrewducker]

I'm suddenly curious whether comics-appreciation is even somewhat correlated with aphantasia.

(Thinking of someone from many years ago who said that they didn't like comics because they got in the way of their own imagination.)

Comments

[mountainkiss]

I'm aphantasic and like comics because the storytelling is great but I would be just as happy reading them without the pictures. The pictures don't affect my apprehension of the story at all, for good or ill.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. I was reading some spooky comic stories and thinking that with the style of them that they were very close to just being illustrated short stories. There was nothing in them that *needed* them to be comics. And wondered if I was enjoying them more because they didn't need me to imagine how they looked.
But then I've enjoyed lots of short stories with no images attached.

So I don't know!

(Also many people replying on Facebook who don't have aphantasia and love comics. So, short of someone doing the research, I'm going to assume no connection.)

[angelofthenorth]

I'm aphantasic and don't do comics.

[andrewducker]

You can't just go around destroying theories with your evidence like that!

No, wait, you totally can ;⁠-⁠)

[jducoeur]

Just to adduce more inconvenient facts, I'm not aphantasic, and I'm about as big a comics geek as you'll find.

[andrewducker]

Sorry, the window for updating opinions has changed. It will reopen once the stress levels have dropped.

[toothycat]

In one of the comics panels at Worldcon, one of the panel members said how much he appreciated comics because he had aphantasia and it was good to see how the author imagined things as well as to read it. I suspect it's one of those mileage varying things :)

[juan_gandhi]

How interesting. And what do these people with aphantasia do IRL? E.g. in math, there's algebra and there's geometry.

People with geometric mind can rotate a tesseract or even a higher-dimentional object, including compacts with projective spaces glued in; people with algebraic mind manipulate expressions easily, and they don't need any pictures (except maybe commutative diagrams, which are easy anyway).

I'm of a rather algebraic type; and when I read a book, I enjoy the combinations of words. E.g. a letter from Merteuil to Valmont is a treasure of style, without having to see the faces; seeing their faces would just distract me from ideas and narrow the perception of the words.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. I can do some basic "work out what the other side of this shape looks like", but it's not because I'm rotating the shape mentally, it's because I'm applying the rules to work out how things must be. (This runs out pretty quickly for me. I can't do more advanced geometry at all.)

[channelpenguin]

If I recall, aphantasics are hugely overrepresented in science and maths.
The presumption is that the ability to think abstractly about things that without needing images can be advantageous.

I am (pretty much) aphantasic and definitely good at abstraction. I was also fine with other early university maths. Interestingly, the standard RYA (Royal Yachting Association in that UK) way of teaching some parts of boat navigation use a lot of more visual methods and drawing angles and I find myself thinking "this is just working out the missing angle of a scalene triangle, just doing that would be easier" For me. But teaching others, I completely see that it works better to "see" it.

[juan_gandhi]

Maybe there are different kinds of aphantasy. One is an inability to imagine something unimaginable, another is an inability to imagine something that could be imagined if one gets into a habit of manipulating topology, geometry, Hilbert spaces, etc. - it may just take time.

[starwatcher]

That seems plausible.

But also, don't discount early exposure, or lack of. My mother absolutely forbade comics other than Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. I have great difficulty reading comics or graphic novels. (I really tried to get into Elf Quest). I'm so word-oriented that I keep forgetting to look at the pictures, so I miss non-word details.

[juan_gandhi]

Good description. Same here. Maybe it takes some phantasy capabilities to perceive those comics. I just can't, seriously, extract content from those vague drawings.

[foms]

This reminds me of a program item and conversation at a convention a dozen or so years ago. There was a presentation (by the experimentalist) about mapping brain activity by the use of MRI. They gave information about how different areas react to text, depending category of subject matter. Drama versus humour sort of things but also fiction versus nonfiction, prose versus poetry and music with or without words, and other combinations.
There followed a panel discussion and audience participation. There was a blind person in the audience who had been a reader before losing sight and their reactions were interesting. Particularly, I remember a thread about some people preferring to receive text by eye or ear and then whether by computer reader or human for differing reasons. The specific reason that I remember was that a human reader imposes too much interpretation on the author's words for some people's taste.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that's fascinating!

[mountainkiss]

Do you think aphantasia is psychology?

[andrewducker]

It seems to be a physical property of the brain*, which makes it part of the subject area, from my understanding. Am I missing something?

* "Analysis of the results showed that participants with aphantasia showed a reduced BOLD (MRI) response during perception compared to the control group."

From.

[mountainkiss]

In my view this is neurology but I don’t know as I’d die on that hill. To me psychology describes human behaviour, but then you also know that I don’t really believe that’s a science anyway.

[andrewducker]

I'm happy to discuss ontology, but I'm not sure if it makes that much of a difference.

"Human behaviour" *to me* includes "causes of human behaviour", which includes "differences in the brain". Which would make neuroscience a subdivision of psychology. (And I'd distinguish between neurology and neuroscience.)

But you could decide to slice up what belongs to what and which discipline is a subset if which discipline in a wide variety of ways. And I'd slice it up in different ways myself, depending on the context.

[mountainkiss]

I can argue both distinctions. Neuroscience vs. psychology as a discipline yes you are right. Neurology vs. psychology as a property, both of which people have. But this is entirely semantic.

I really don't have a strong view on this. I just found myself surprised because it was so different from the filing I'd have gone for.

[andrewducker]

I'd love to know the filing you'd go for!

[mountainkiss]

No, I think it's neuroscience (better than neurology, your point holds). To me, psychology doesn't describe properties of wiring. It describes behaviour. But this is all part of the massive conversation about research paradigms that you and I have scheduled for when Gideon goes to art school.

[andrewducker]

That seems reasonable.

(I don't think I have hard lines here. I don't see a real distinction between wires and behaviour. To me that distinction is one that people draw based on what helps them think about things better/more happily/etc. From what you're saying it feels like this is fundamental to the difference between us. But I may well be entirely wrong there. We can fill Gideon in during his breaks.)

[mountainkiss]

We once had a very long conversation about this, involving steering wheels. I can't remember any more than that. It was one of these cases where proposition A seemed entirely self-evident to you, whereas the reverse of proposition A seemed entirely self-evident to me.

[andrewducker]

Which is a useful place to get to!

We can make a list and dig until we hit axiomatic bedrock. Sounds like a fun weekend!

[mountainkiss]

It does to me too.

[mountainkiss]

I don't know if they give you breaks at art school, but I am pretty much 100% certain that if they do then he won't want to spend them talking about taxonomy.

[andrewducker]

I can't predict my child's behaviour that well into the far flung future year of 2040 ;⁠-⁠)

[mountainkiss]

You're no fun.

[andrewducker]

It's against my religion.

[ritaxis]

I have a pretty robust visual imagiation so presumably don't "need" a visual component for narrative arts, but I don't think that has much to do with why a person (well, okay, I) might be more or less into comics. I appreciate comics just fine. I do prefer more word-dense stories but I don't think it's because I'm keeping the decks clear for my imagination-I think it's because I like a lot of words!

[amberite]

I know a reasonably famous comics artist with aphantasia!

[andrewducker]

Oh that's fascinating!

I wonder how they put scenes together.

[doubtingmichael]

A has said that she doesn't like comics because she prefers what she sees in her own imagination, and doesn't want that interfered with.

I am not aphantasic, though I may be low on the ability to visualise things - I've never done a formal test: I think I can see things in my mind, but they are vague and changeable. But I remember at the age of seven burrowing through the scrapbook pile in class finding all the comics so I could read them. I think that was just wired into me, whatever else happened.