快猫短视频

Call to your mind鈥檚 eye mid-winter, or a red balloon. What comes up? Vivid images of bare trees and rain zipping sideways, a bobbing balloon on a long string 鈥� or the look of the words, the ideas they denote, the feelings you link to them? The type and vividness of imagination we have vary greatly (see 鈥�The extremes of imagination reveal how our brains perceive reality鈥�). As it exists in several forms, no single test can measure it 鈥� but here is a handful of ways to gauge the resources of your own imagination.

Test 1

The strength of reproductive imagination 鈥� our ability to visualise the appearance of things in their absence, hear their sound or recreate their tactile feel 鈥� has typically been assessed using vividness surveys.

Here are four scenarios adapted from the

Visualise a rising sun. Carefully consider the picture that comes before your mind鈥檚 eye:

• When the sun rises above the horizon into a hazy sky
• When the sky clears and surrounds the sun with blueness
• When clouds appear and a storm blows up with flashes of lightning
• When a rainbow appears

Then rate each of the four images you formed, if any, on the following scale: 听

• Perfectly clear and as vivid as real life = 5
• Clear and reasonably vivid = 4
• Moderately clear and lively = 3
• Vague and dim = 2
• No image at all, you only 鈥渒now鈥� that you are thinking of the object = 1

A score of 4/20 would raise the possibility of aphantasia, the inability to visualise mental images听(see 鈥淭he extremes of imagination reveal how our brains perceive reality鈥�). A score of 20 might point to hyperphantasia, the ability to 鈥渟ee鈥澨齣ncredibly vivid mental imagery, often as detailed as actual vision (more in 鈥淭he four types of imagination and how they create our worlds鈥�).

Most of us will score in the low to mid-teens for these four examples (the full test has 16 such scenarios, with a score range from 16 to 80).

Test 2

Here are some questions tapping into other aspects of our senses from the

Imagine:

• The sound of children playing
• The smell of a rose
• The taste of lemon
• Touching a soft towel

Rate the vividness of your image on a scale from 1 to 10, where 0 is 鈥渘o image at all鈥� and 10 is as clear and vivid as real life.

People score 6 to 7 on each of these images, on average.

The vividness of imagery in one sense aspect typically correlates with vividness in others, but there are exceptions: people who lack a mind鈥檚 eye sometimes have an active mind鈥檚 ear, for example.

Test 3

Creative or productive imagination, the ability to come up with 鈥� novel to you, at least 鈥� can be tested with either open-ended tasks that have a large set of solutions or convergent tasks that have a single solution. In real life, your capacity to make things that are both new and useful, the standard definition of creativity, seems to depend on a happy combination of well-developed skill and playful spontaneity.

Here is an open-ended task: How many uses can you think of, in 2 minutes, for a brick?

Answers can be scored on variables including fluency (the number of uses) and flexibility (the number of categories of use, e.g. for building, for throwing, as furniture).

The average number of uses thought of is nine. The average number of categories thought of is four.

Test 4

The next is a visuospatial task:

Draw this grid. Then, without lifting your pencil from the paper, use four straight lines to connect all nine dots:听听

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Test 5

The final test comprises two examples of a verbal task from the

What single word relates the three that follow:

• Pine, tree, sauce
• Room, blood, salts

Each of these three tasks can be solved either by racking your brain or, if you are creative and lucky, by a moment of illumination. The Remote Associates Test, for example, has been used to study the brain activity 顿辞苍鈥檛 get disheartened if inspiration deserts you on this occasion 鈥� but be very proud if you came up with all the answers, which are found below.听听

Answers听

• Dot task: Allow your pencil to stray outside the dots to 听

• Verbal task: Apple and bath听