Visualisers' Fallacy
Overview:
There is a fascinating cognitive blind spot where neurotypical visualisers assume that aphantasics (people without a "mind's eye") are actually visualising, but simply describing it poorly or misunderstanding the concept. This phenomenon is termed "Aphantasia Skepticism" or "Visualisers' Fallacy". It's rooted in the idea that "they must be visualising, right?"
My Notes:
We should be aware of this fallacy in our teaching. We might rely on instructions like "picture this" or build metaphors dependent on mental imagery. When a student cannot do this, it may not be a lack of effort or comprehension of the task. It can be a fundamental difference in their cognitive "hardware."
I found this first when I realised I can't picture beaches or walking in the sand as anything but a kind of concept, not a picture, despite my best efforts, but I can see a relational database structure or program or system structure as a kind of 3D model I can manipulate, when in Flow state. A discussion around it with a valued friend enabled us to realise we had radically different internal representations of reality. Something we've both struggled to define since, but shines an interesting light on why some people can do some things much faster than others depending on context.
Assuming everyone's internal experience mirrors our own is a trap. We end up projecting our visual operating system onto students who are processing the same information in non-visual, conceptual ways. And, as always with humans, it's a spectrum.
Further Reading / Examples: