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.

[angelofthenorth]

I'm aphantasic and don't do comics.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[mountainkiss]

Do you think aphantasia is psychology?

[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!

[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.