A Test for Aphantasia

[Luminesce]

https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2022/04/windows-to-the-soul-pupils-reveal-aphantasia-the-absence-of-visual-imagination

 

Apparently, when visualizing bright light (e.g. imagining a room getting brighter and brighter) your pupils will constrict, and when visualizing darkness (e.g. imagining trying to find something you can barely see in the dark) your pupils will widen - with the reaction being stronger based on the clarity of the visualization.

 

I just tried this myself, recording my eyes with my phone camera, and although my visualization clarity is poor, despite it being pretty bright IRL I was able to see my pupils widen just a little bit when imagining struggling to see something in the dark, by scrubbing the video back and forth - pretty crazy

 

I wonder if this can also be used (in an equal/controlled setting at least) to determine someone's visualization vividness compared to others'? Not that we can't surmise that from talking about it, but having an objective measure (if it is consistent) is pretty novel

More importantly, having a test for aphantasia is a big deal!

(Aphantasia is the inability to visualize mental imagery in case anyone doesn't know the term, with the MUCH rarer used term anauralia for inability to imagine sound, though they often occur together)

 

 

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I came across this phenomenon a while ago and I'm also extremely intrigued by it! Pupils dilating is just the beginning, though. I came to the conclusion that this phenomenon is directly related to the Clever Hans effect.

 

Clever Hans was a horse that lived from the late 19th to early 20th century. He gained fame for being able to solve arithmetic and other problems with extreme consistency by tapping out the answer with his hooves! As the fame of the horse spread, the Germany board of education organized a commission to determine how the horse was able to do this. In 1904 the Hans commission determined that there is no trick involved! 

 

The truth was finally discovered by a biologist and psychologist named Oskar Pfungst. He discovered that, generally, any person could ask the horse an arithmetic question and the horse would answer correctly, but only if the questioner knew the answer themselves. Thus the trick is revealed: the ability of this horse to read the facial expressions and body language of the questioner was so keen that Clever Hans would take extremely subtle cues from from the questioner to know when to stop tapping his hooves upon arriving at the correct answer. (With his keen equine eyesight, perhaps he even saw pupils change size in real time!) Despite discovering this, Pfungst was unable to prevent himself from giving off these cues when asking the horse to solve an arithmetic problem. In spite of himself, his face and body would tense in very subtle ways as the horse tapped, finally relieving the tension as the horse arrived at the correct answer!

 

There are actually many examples of this in other animals throughout history. Other horses and even dogs have been able to perform similar tricks! It is directly related to the phenomenon discussed here - just as Pfungst was unable to control his facial expressions and body language enough to conceal the answer from Clever Han's tapping hooves, many people will find that by imagining a bright light or dark room that their pupils cannot help but change size. Indeed, human physiology is full of subtle tells that can and will occur in spite of efforts to conceal them. Humans are not necessarily that great at discerning them, by default, but it has been shown that horses can be, and the next likely thing to discuss is AI...

 

I wish there was more study in this field. The main people that I am aware of who actually study this phenomenon are con artists, magicians, certain salespeople, and interrogators. It doesn't have a big foothold in academic circles. As early as the late 1970s, books and audio-visual media were commercially available in the US that describe how to take advantage of this phenomenon by training yourself to artificially give certain cues in order to become basically a better liar.

 

Is it really such a stretch to suppose that humans subconsciously look at the size of pupils of others to determine whether or not they are lying? Could you become better at deceiving people by actively visualizing a bright or dark room while talking to them if you trained the ability? Again, I think pupils are just the beginning.

 

Maybe there are other species of mammals out there, or perhaps even humans, that can tell if someone has a tulpa through some sort of invisible cue that we haven't even conceived of yet... I don't know if there is a body of evidence yet to support a claim like that, but certainly there is something here!

 

Edited April 16 by Luminesce