Hmm, I have a few more thoughts to add.
The word “face”on its own can’t be expected to convey anything more than eyes + mouth. An equal sign followed by a parenthesis is a face. That region of the body above the neck is not a “face.” That is, when one human sees that region on another human, its brain doesn’t just process “face”, it processes all sorts of subtle details that authors fail to recreate in their writings, although it is difficult I’m sure.
And about my other imaginative capabilities—well, for one I can’t hold a scene in my waking mind’s eye (with no sensory input) much longer than a long GIF animation. I have to pause before I can continue and the clarity is gradually lost no matter what I do. The scenes are clear enough for me to describe where various items like furniture or people were situated and even sketch or map on paper, but it’s all very noticeably hazier than seeing with my eyes and the field of view is reduced. With math I can roughly translate the notation into 2D graphs and some simple 3D shapes. I can’t do anything like rotate a dodecahedron with distinctly colored sides in my mind and keep track of which colored sides are adjacent to which.
XiXiDu, are you well above average in mathematical ability? Your trait is correlated with it, strongly IIRC. At any rate, you should get yourself under an fMRI for science.
A somewhat relevant quote: “In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.” —W.V. Quine
I have tried to come up with a personal technical language that precisely describes my nonlinguistic thoughts and the result is a mess. I also have a constructed language (WIP) that’s on hold while I learn Lojban. [Any Lojbanists around here?]
PS: Sorry about my low-quality posts. I’ll try to meet LW standards in due time. Until then I’ll read the blog and update my lingo.