(I have encountered people who claim this, of course, but with a little bit of questioning, it’s relatively easy to show that they can remember colors, spatial relationships, and other things that require some sort of visual processing, even if they don’t consciously “see” anything, or don’t call the experience “seeing”.)
Remembering is not visualizing. I happen to have a very visual memory to the degree that when I do math in my head I do it visually. I visualize the numbers and add them like I did in grade school. If the math is simple enough I can skip the visual process and just “remember” it. Remembering colors, spatial relationships, and other things that required visual processing the first time may not require imaginative processing when recalling the information.
I can remember the layout of a building by thinking about it in my head and “looking” at the floor plan as I “walk” through the “building”. When I toy around with a Rubik’s Cube I “see” the other sides while working on one side. Someone incapable of imagining the Rubik’s Cube or a floor plan would not be able to recall the information in the same way.
I do not see why someone like this could not recall the information about a picture without activating any visual processing.
I do not see why someone like this could not recall the information about a picture without activating any visual processing.
It seems to me you could test this by giving someone IQ-test questions that require visual processing steps. A lot of IQ tests do in fact require such abilities.
Remembering is not visualizing. I happen to have a very visual memory to the degree that when I do math in my head I do it visually. I visualize the numbers and add them like I did in grade school. If the math is simple enough I can skip the visual process and just “remember” it. Remembering colors, spatial relationships, and other things that required visual processing the first time may not require imaginative processing when recalling the information.
I can remember the layout of a building by thinking about it in my head and “looking” at the floor plan as I “walk” through the “building”. When I toy around with a Rubik’s Cube I “see” the other sides while working on one side. Someone incapable of imagining the Rubik’s Cube or a floor plan would not be able to recall the information in the same way.
I do not see why someone like this could not recall the information about a picture without activating any visual processing.
It seems to me you could test this by giving someone IQ-test questions that require visual processing steps. A lot of IQ tests do in fact require such abilities.