But actually it feels more something like:

class Apple {       
  public:             
    string color;  
    string shape;
    string taste;
    string recipes[];
};

I know what an apple is, I know stuff about it and what properties it has, but it produces no picture (nor code btw…) in my head.

Solid 1. Reading a book is like watching a movie to me.

Question: when you picture something in your head, do you actually see it clearly, as if it’s right in front of you?

I don’t. My girlfriend claims that she does. I can imagine things on a level 2 or 3, but it’s just a thought in my head, not a detailed image manifesting in front of me.

1 i can make a 3d model with full detail color reflections and picture it at any angle

I guess when it comes to visualizing things, the apple I’d see would be between a 1 and a 2.
But to me when I try to fully imagine an apple, I also imagine how I can feel the texture of its skin, the weight of it in my hand, the taste and sensation when taking a bite out of it, the smell of the juice, the stickiness of my fingers afterwards, etc.
Or is this also included in the scale? Because then I guess it’s a 1.

Between a 4 and a 5. I also have no inner monologue, just thoughts in the form of impulses and instincts

I’m a 5 on this scale. I was 50 years old when I discovered aphasia. When discussing this with my father I realised he has eidetic memory. This prompted me to think back and I remembered that used to see pictures in my head but it changed when I had traumatic head injury at 7 years old.

A complete 5 for both me and my partner, but her daughter has 1 to the point of “watching movies in her head” when she’s bored. Her uncle is the exact same way, at least as a child.

-1.

I can daydream so hard that it should be studied

It’s complicated for me because it’s not a specific one? It depends on my present state of mind and stuff, like when I try to visualize an apple I can kind of do it but sometimes it’s a little staticky, or my mind just kind of cycles through a bunch of what feel like video feeds? Like memories of times i have seen an apple played as YouTube videos in a series? Except some of them are purely imagined?

Sometimes I can have a pretty much perfect mental visualization of what I’m thinking of though.

I’ve always thought this was really hard to describe. I think I’m a 1. The idea of fully picturing something is such a natural thing, but I also don’t know what level of vivid people actually mean.

When I picture the apple, I could easily write a detailed paragraph about what it looks like. I could even easily picture an environment for it that just sort of comes into frame (always on an apple orchard, during the afternoon).

I can easily even put myself in that space mentally.

I’ve just never thought about this being something other people can’t naturally and quickly do that when I saw this question, I assumed people were describing actually fully fooling their senses into the thing physically appearing before them.

I picture it like another monitor or render layer that I can flip to, manipulate, and test in to work out concepts.

I can see a kind of a framework. If I imagine a wooden cottage in a mountain scenery, what I see is just metadata. I “see” the following:

• The concept of a mountain scenery
• The concept of wooden cottage exists within the said mountain scenery (its location is not defined, though).

Then I can take a look at the mountain scenery. I “see”:

• The concept of there being a valley
• The concept of a river flowing in the valley

Next, let’s take a look at the valley. I “see” for example:

• There is a concept of another mountain beyond the valley.
• There is a forest growing on the slopes of the valley

If I “look” at the forest, I “see”, among others:

• Many individual coniferous trees

Etc.

But, when I’m “looking” at the trees, I never see the actual tree, only a knowledge of “here’s a tree”. And while “looking” at the forest, I do not see the rest of the scenery, only the tree. I can of course go back to seeing the whole scenery with the cottage in it, but now I only “see” the information “there is a mountain scenery with a valley, and a cottage exists within the scenery”. Okay, the valley has appeared in a more stable fashion now that I’ve taken a look at the image.

So, shortly put, I do get very precise instructions for how to draw the image, but I do not see the image. The only way I can actually see it is to take physical pencils or an image editing program and actually draw a picture according to the instructions. This is also how my memories work. Everything is just metadata. A very thorough metadata that can be used for drawing a very precise replica of what I have seen, but no real visual information.

I can even “paint” the abovementioned scenery more precisely:

• Mountain scenery
  • Valley with river
    • River: Water is streaming relatively fast
      • White “foam” visible on top of waves
      • Basically this is something between a river rapid and a wide mountain creek
    • River: Slightly bending here and there
    • River: Has waves
    • River: Going from near the lower right corner, meeting the horizon maybe 30 % from the left side of the image.
    • River: Direction of flow not clearly defined
    • Valley: A slope exists on the other side of the valley
      • Forest on the slope
        • Consists of coniferous trees
          • Spruces, maybe 70 % of trees
            • About as tall as a four-floor building
            • The shape is uniform, beautiful
              • Branches have needles on them
                • Branches have subbranches
                  • The branches’ structure seems to be recursive
                • Needles are dark green
                • Individual needles are visible
            • For some reason, there is one squirrel among the spruces.
              • The squirrel is brown.
              • Its tail is fluffy
                • Reaches a bit over the top of its head
          • Undefined coniferous trees, remaining 30-ish %.
            • Cannot be further observed
  • Sky
    • Covers a bit over a quarter of the upper part of the image
    • The sun is setting or rising
      • Yellowish or orangeish colour
      • Seagulls or similar
        • Far away, not visible very clearly
        • Gliding, not flapping their wings
• Cottage
  • Wooden
    • Made of horizontal planks, possibly logs
      • The logs/planks have lines visible in them, as wood does.
        • Lines are somewhat winding, calmly
  • Has a door
    • Wooden
    • No window
    • Planks on door are vertical
    • I am apparently unable to see a handle in the door
  • Has a window
    • Made of four panes
      • Pane is transparent
      • A sofa visible through the pane.
      • A flower vase is standing behind the window
        • It is on a windowsill
        • The flowers are roses
          • Red
          • Petals
            • Petals are more tall than wide
            • Overlapping each other
          • Leaves
            • Two
  • Chimney
    • Smoke rising from the chimney
  • A person is sitting inside the cottage (okay, apparently I can “see” through the walls; hadn’t really noticed this earlier that this makes very little sense)
  • Male
  • Old
  • In a rocking chair

(Et cetera. I could “zoom” into different things in this “image” forever, and yet I cannot see it or anything it. Every time I zoom, I just get more information on what’s visible – more “instructions for what to draw” if I ever wanted to make the image visible by bringing it physically to existence. I could also probably make the river flow to some specific direction or have the “undefined coniferous trees” defined more precisely, but those are not “visible” in the original image I got when I chose “a wooden cottage in a mountain scenery” as the image I’ll be observing, so it means I’m kind of “painting over” the original image if I define them.)

Wait, there are people who aren’t a 1?!?!

1. I can spin it, animate it, transform it into other things

Full on 5. Maybe a 4 if I try really hard. But I still have a “big imagination”, I just can’t see it in my mind.