I'm pretty convinced I experience aphantasia (never been clincially tested), I can't even fathom what it means to "visualize" something.
I'm also very good at knot tying. It's a hobby I enjoy, and a practical skill in rope rescue activities I participate in. Knot typing seems much more "spatial" than "visual" to me.
Interestingly, the article specifically mentions differences in spatial abilities as not being correlated to the ability to visualize.
"But other aspects of the findings suggest self-reporting may not be biasing the results that significantly: there were variations in answers coupled with data suggesting that spatial abilities - an ability to map relationships and distances between objects - appear to be unaffected in the volunteers."
I resonate with this as well. Anything strongly spatial, such as tying knots, navigating really any sort of space, even after just a single visit, and things such as sports come very easy to me. But even visualizing an Apple in any capacity (as an arbitrary example) seems to escape me, And asking me to, for instance draw one, would rely on a list of facts that I know about apples:
* Apples are red
* Apples are generally spherical
* Apples have a stem on one side, and a little flowery bit on the other.
* There are indentations around those bits.
* An Apple's shape is a bit heart-ish.
* Bits of the apple are bumpy when as swept around it's primary axis (I.... think only on the bottom???)
Maybe that gives you a sense of my ability to visualize.
While in stark contrast, I can often take a few looks at an already tied knot, and reverse-engineer/decompose it's construction down to a series of steps that I can feel spatially I can then often, much later be able to reconstruct that knot based on the combination of the few bits I remember, and the general knowledge I have about space in general and knots in specific.
I'm also very good at knot tying. It's a hobby I enjoy, and a practical skill in rope rescue activities I participate in. Knot typing seems much more "spatial" than "visual" to me.
Interestingly, the article specifically mentions differences in spatial abilities as not being correlated to the ability to visualize.
"But other aspects of the findings suggest self-reporting may not be biasing the results that significantly: there were variations in answers coupled with data suggesting that spatial abilities - an ability to map relationships and distances between objects - appear to be unaffected in the volunteers."