First or Third Person Visualization

[Layria]

Question 1.

Look at your surroundings, wherever you are right now, then close your eyes and picture what your surroundings look like in your mind. Are you viewing it through your own eyes like you first perceived it (first person), or from behind your head as if in a video game or a book (third person)? 

 

Question 2. 

Look around again, then close your eyes again. Can you, entirely in your mind (no actual physical movement), turn 360 degrees to view your surroundings? 

 

Question 3.

Can you visualize what is directly behind you, as if you are looking through eyes the back of your head? 

 

 

My explanation:

I have always been very good at visualization. I typically 'see' in first person for close things, but the moment it’s bigger than my body I start to 'see' the world in third person. No longer am I visualizing through my own eyes, I am 'looking' at myself from behind. I can 'look' directly behind my head easily, but when I do a 360 I have to exclude what is directly behind my head or I get stuck. 

 

I have no idea if this is an actual studied phenomenon, but I thought it was cool to figure out for myself, and have always wondered if I was alone in this or if others had the same happen to them. Then I saw Ab_S’s poll on Visual Imagery and thought this might be a fun compliment to that poll! Hopefully I gave you all something to think about and you had fun with this little exercise - let me know your experiences with visualization in the comments! 

[Guest]

heeeeeeeeeelp I don't know how to answer because I have aphantasia (I cannot see any images at all) but I still have preferences ie first or third person, and still 'visualize' but there are no images, it's just blackness behind my eyes. I might know the room off by heart, but 'visualizing it' is like walking around in the same room in the pitch black. I 'feel' where everything is, like a sense of spatial awareness, rather than seeing any of it.

 

If I'm thinking about my environment or 'doing something' (like, er, shopping?) the spatial awareness is from my own perspective and I can 'feel' in all directions

 

but if i'm fantasizing or reading or whatever, it's always from a different 'all around' perspective and my own individual perspective is not involved at all.

 

My preferred books are usually like LOTR or GoT style, so the narrator is explaining everything that's happening and who is doing what etc.. with graphic and detailed descriptions of the surrounding environment and buildings etc which 'paints a picture' for me as someone who is unable to see it for myself due to having no visual images. However some first person perspectives are good too as long as they're super detailed (like the Last Kingdom books)

 

But yes, also, i cannot 'visualize' so it makes it complicated for me to answer, haha

[Anomaly Q3Xr]

I can't visualise, as I have aphantasia. I don't generally read fiction as I struggle to concentrate with it, but on the rare occasion that I do I'm not really fussed about the POV. I like choose your own adventure books, which are generally second-person, and I also read some third-person.

[J. van Deijck]

I can visualise things and have a good visual memory, but

 

3 hours ago, Layria said:

Look at your surroundings, wherever you are right now, then close your eyes and picture what your surroundings look like in your mind. Are you viewing it through your own eyes like you first perceived it (first person), or from behind your head as if in a video game or a book (third person)? 

I can't see the difference between these. What comes through my eyes, comes through my eyes. I don't get what "seeing from behind your head" feels like. Is it like seeing the surroundings at 360° angle or something? If so, then I visualise in first person only.

[Guest]

I can imagine 1st-person ‘off-line’ (i only see the surroundings like if i weren’t there at all – i can’t even see the rest of my body) or ‘on-line’ (there is also a feeling of my own skull with eye holes, but then the image quality often sucks) or ‘normal’ (off-line, but i am there). I can see 3rd-person only from behind my head, imagining my own face is just too hard. Even the image from behind doesn’t always match how i currently look like, but that’s also the case for the surroundings (1st person off-line is usually most exact) so...

 

When it comes to books, i don’t care so much wrt imagining the situation – i always pick whichever way comes first to me (1st person on/off-line or normal, 3rd person from behind, 3rd person from farther away) – but 3rd person is (except for some specific cases) more comfortable for the linguistic side of me.

 

8 hours ago, godverdomme said:

I can't see the difference between these. What comes through my eyes, comes through my eyes. I don't get what "seeing from behind your head" feels like. Is it like seeing the surroundings at 360° angle or something? If so, then I visualise in first person only.

It’s like if someone took a camera and placed it e.g. 50 cm behind your head, and projected that image into your eyes.

[silent__]

I almost visualize... both POVs at the same time? I see the room in first person, the way I'm actually viewing it, but I also have the concept of myself in the room so I'm almost looking at it from above as well, but also looking at it from sort of somewhere else, and just conceptualizing the whole room plus me in it... It's not quite like actually seeing, it's like there's more dimensions to it in my mind, haha.

 

For questions 2 and 3, yes I can easily visualize those.

 

And I have no preferred POV in reading, I like reading any POV and my enjoyment of a book or writing style is not based on the POV.

[Layria]

On 8/17/2022 at 1:42 AM, godverdomme said:

I can't see the difference between these. What comes through my eyes, comes through my eyes. I don't get what "seeing from behind your head" feels like. Is it like seeing the surroundings at 360° angle or something? If so, then I visualise in first person only.

I think of "seeing from behind your head" kind of like projecting your consciousness to a different place. I still "see" the images in my mind/eyes, but because what I am seeing is not through my eyes so to speak, I feel as if I am looking at myself from a different perspective. Like a character in a third person video game, or better yet a minecraft freecam mod. Except it's my brain doing it, so I can "look" behind my head in ways that my eyes would be unable to do without physically turning my head. 

 

On 8/17/2022 at 9:53 AM, packed struct said:

It’s like if someone took a camera and placed it e.g. 50 cm behind your head, and projected that image into your eyes.

This is exactly what I experience, in better words than I could find!! 

[Lord Revan]

Question 3 was easy, since i'm against a wall

[iff]

@Layria

 

This poll is being locked and moved to the read only Census archive for it's respective year. As part of ongoing Census organisation, and in an attempt to keep the demographics of the polls current with the active user base at the time, the polls will last for one year from now on. However, members are allowed and even encouraged to restart new polls similar to the archived ones if they like them.

  

iff, Census Forum Moderator