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Not spooked by Halloween ghost stories? You may have aphantasia:
So why are some people more easily spooked by stories than others? We ran an experiment to find out.
[...] One reason some people are more easily spooked could relate to how well they can visualize the scary scene in their mind.
When some people listen to a story they automatically conjure up the scene in their mind's eye, while others have to focus really hard to create any sort of mental image.
A small proportion cannot visualize images at all. No matter how hard they try, they do not see anything in their mind. This inability to visualize is known as aphantasia.
Although we have known people vary in their ability to visualize for many years, the term aphantasia was not coined until 2015.
We don't yet know exactly how many people have aphantasia. But estimates vary at 1–4% of the population.
[...] If the ability to visualize images and scenes in the mind plays a role in how we react to spooky stories, what does that mean for people with aphantasia? How do they react when reading scary stories?
We ran a study to find out. We had people sit in the dark and read a number of short stories—not ghost stories, but ones with frightening, hypothetical scenarios.
[...] For most people who could conjure up images in their mind, their skin conductance increased when they read these stories. But people with aphantasia didn't show a significant increase in their skin conductance levels when reading the same scenarios.
There was no difference between the two groups when viewing scary pictures. This suggests aphantasic people's lack of a reaction to these stories wasn't due to a general dampening of emotional responses.
Instead, we concluded the lack of a change in skin conductance in these people with aphantasia is specific to being unable to visualize these fear-inducing stories.
[...] One study shows both the frontal and visual regions of the brain are linked to visualizing images. And in people with aphantasia, the connection between these two areas is weaker.
Another study found the pattern of activity in visual regions of the brain is correlated with the vividness of the mental images.
Journal References:
1.) Marcus Wicken, Rebecca Keogh, Joel Pearson. The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: insights from fear-based imagery and aphantasia, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2021.0267)
2.) George I. Christopoulos, Marilyn A. Uy, Wei Jie Yap. The Body and the Brain: Measuring Skin Conductance Responses to Understand the Emotional Experience: [open], Organizational Research Methods (DOI: 10.1177/1094428116681073)
(Score: 1) by SnorkleZ on Monday November 01 2021, @03:41AM (2 children)
I first ran into a problem in early grammar school - when we had nap-time we all had to rest on our towels, close our eyes and visualise a beach blah blah blah. I only saw a dark gray field and wanted to keep my eyes open. My first experience of many of teachers fallibility.
I read a book on bio-feedback written in the 70's - pretty cool - they were using bio-feedback to race toy cars. They mentioned having found that some people could not visualise and had discovered that they could determine who these people were by looking at the EEG while flashing a red light in their eyes. It was nice to discover that I was not alone. Finally believing that maybe other people actually could visualise (I had always thought that was just bull, since it is a tendency to think that everyone's mind works like your own) I asked my family. My mother also could not visualise while my father and sister were great visualisers.
Some years later I took an informal poll among my fellow engineers at work. All were great visualisers and I got comments like "how on earth do you do math"? How nice it would have been to visualise equations, curves and surfaces when I was in school! I had to do everything abstractly, and no, I was never very good at math, had to really work at it. But unlike all my fellow engineers I was great at English and writing.
One day I was reading a copy of an old Tibetan Buddhist book brought out of Tibet as a part of the flight from the Chinese in which it mentioned that some students in the monastery were incapable of visualising and fortunately ways to remedy that had been found long ago. No other details.
Fortunately a local monastery has very knowledgable monks with Geshe Lharam degrees, which involve 23 years of study. I asked one for advice and learned how they handle the problem:
Find a photo, preferably of someone you love very much - one's mother, spouse or for Buddhists a photo of perhaps the golden Maha Buddha statue at Bodh Gaya. Then holding the photo at eye level one focuses intently, fixing it in their mind. Then lower the photo and as soon as the image leaves the mind raise it again and re-focus on it. With lots of practice the photo can be lowered and the image remains. He also commented "Do not let the image go three dimensional - if you do you are in trouble!"
This tells me that the difficulty is in visual memory and simply training the visual memory strengthens it. In later years with different teachers I found that it was good and desirable for the image to go three dimensional - and here I had spent years fighting that! Never knew why he said that - probably part of the irritating teaching technique where things are tiered into different levels.
I hope someone finds the above useful or at least interesting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 01 2021, @02:59PM (1 child)
Maybe it doesn't bear saying or maybe it does -- if your flat picture of the golden Budha comes out of the image (becomes three-dimensional) and probably starts talking to you, you're hallucinating! ;-D
When I started reading you actually raised the question, "What happens if you're looking at something and close your eyes?" -- and then you answered it. That's very interesting.
(Score: 1) by SnorkleZ on Monday November 01 2021, @08:14PM
Good point. The instructions I was initially given must have been on how to visualise memories, explicitly excluding creative visualisation. Uncontrolled visualisation would be hallucinations. It is common for students to have their visualisation float around or start walking and talking - students are reminded that THEY are in charge. I learned way back in Psychology 101 that the human brain, under sensory isolation, will invent hallucinations just to give it something to do. The example given was someone who suddenly saw pink ducklings start walking across the wall and up the ceiling.