Mind-Blindness

Some people can’t visualize mental images. Those people also aren’t scared by ghost stories. 

7 comments:

raven said...

Hmmm. So there is a reason an explanation of what some simple project will look like , draws a blank stare in a few people?
Innate or training?
Wonder how much the constant assault of video media and the decline in book reading has affected this? As a kid, the glory of books was being lost in another world- the text would disappear, it was like a movie in my head.

Grim said...

Yes, that's right; and it's one reason that none of us from our generations ever liked the movies as well as the books. The screen-image never matched what we had in our minds, and it was always a disappointment.

David Foster said...

When TV first came out, some kid was quoted as saying that he preferred radio, because 'the pictures are so much better.'

raven said...

Heh. I was a little too young to catch prime time radio shows, but the underground FM stations would play them late night- I would stay up in bed with headphones plugged in and lights out. Only the Shadow knew. There were some great sci fi radio programs,as well as the mysteries.
We were the last in the area to get a TV, my parents really did me a good deed.

Texan99 said...

"Ghost" stories in particular fail to scare me much. Scary stories of other kinds certainly can, even frankly supernatural ones, like kids going into a haunted house that actually contains a vampire--that combination of looming threat and claustrophobia. (I'm thinking of a scene from Salem's Lot.) The images from Nosferatu also strike a nerve. The only nightmare I can ever remember having, one that actually woke me up struggling and shouting, consisted of the decayed obscenity of the Murnau image, nothing like the usual debonair seducer in a black cape. The King image was conjured up in my head from reading the book, but the movie image had an ineffaceable visual impact.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

My money is strongly on innate, as it always is. We can get lazy and not pursue the media which make us work a bit harder, but we are still capable. Evolution can't change that in just a few generations.

douglas said...

I think there a quite a few other things at play that can't be cleanly put aside. I think it's inevitable that if you can't picture the shark chasing you, it's just not going to be scary, but I have near zero interest in horror movies (not scary in the least), and went a long time between childhood and fatherhood where I had near zero interest in fiction- yet I'm very much a visual thinker, and love to read and picture the story in my head. The only truly scary dream I've had in my life was one where I couldn't save my child.

I'd be interested to see what else they can figure out with all this.