Hector Martin

I'm not sure I'd call it "just as vivid". What I visualize is like a higher-level representation of the image. I can try to focus on a particular part and visualize it in more detail, subject to the limitations of how much I remember about it. But it's not like a photo.

If you're seen my laser tracer stuff, it's kind of like that, with varying levels of detail/simplification. I figure how good you're at this varies between people though. Obviously people with photographic memory are much better at recalling such details.

Ha, so you still get to recall sound? I lack that as well; as a drifter teen I discovered I can 'hear' music I'm thinking of vividly when I'm extremely exhausted, on the verge of falling asleep, and actually thought I was hallucinating before I learned people do that all the time

I'm the same, but interestingly it's not an exact copy. It *feels* like an exact copy, but if I sit down and actually try to analyze a song and copy it in a synthesizer, I often find I've been picking up (and audiating) some parts wrong.

You know what the most bewildering question people ask when you say you don't seem to have an imagination, or visual memory? It's 'why (or how) do you read books then, if you can't see what happens?' It really gets you thinking on how different our conceptual frameworks are

You know, this reminds me of language. I'm bilingual (half trilingual?) and people ask me what language I think in. I... don't know? Unless I'm explicitly trying to put things into words, it's some abstract conceptual system, not a language.