Nick Schwankl

I completely agree with your skepticism about aphantasia being a barrier to language learning. I'm certainly near the bottom of visualization ability and I wouldn't say it was aphantasia that gave me any specific trouble. I never got past a few years into learning Japanese, and aphantasia definitely made learning Kanji (symbolic written language) tricky, but the same techniques and adjustments I used for everything applied just as well to language. Memorization is terrible in my experience, but with practice and use I can automate the reaction and perform just as well (if not better) than classmates. I found an absolute ton of value in even attempting a second language too, so much so that I've taken Japanese at 3 different schools (never advanced, but just to try it out again). It helps absolute loads with information processing and understanding language. Even made my spelling and speaking better by hinting patterns and rules I'd not discovered in English. All that said, I do understand why forced second language requirements could be limiting, more so for those homeschooled or with language conditions than for those with aphantasia (or at least those with my style of it). I do think requiring some advanced language knowledge is good, but I could see language theory or descriptivist vocal training or something along that line being just as valid as another language. Definitely an interesting topic!

I understand the why she might not like school in general, but that's just as likely to be unrelated (I did exceptionally well in school despite aphantasia, it just requires motivation and a lot of self-effort to reframe and restructure information for better comprehension yourself). Minecraft and other "external visualizers" can be absolutely amazing from what I've found. Sketching, minecraft, Computer Aided Design software (I learned sketchup as a kid), video editing, photoshop, etc. all massively assisted in my development. Not liking fiction is interesting. I find that I greatly enjoy fiction, but it's more about the "feeling" and "flow" of the story, nothing too specific to the characters or locales described. I think that fiction might be harder for those with aphantasia, but it can still be experienced in a different way (I was read a ton of books as a kid, so that might have helped too). Good luck, and definitely consider speaking with teachers. You don't want to embarrass or make her seem "dumb", it's just a noteworthy difference after all, but if she isn't taking action herself to adjust strategies and engage with the content, performance probably won't improve at ton at my guess.

I sometimes like to think that aphantasia is like having a 1-way connection in your brain. Most people can see something and recognize it, or recall something and imagine it. For me, I can recognize things just as well (if not better) than most, but it's a 1-way street. No imagining the thing back from the recognition process. I can tell when something looks "wrong". The spelling doesn't seem right, the perspective in the sketch is off, the colors used don't quite match, etc. etc. but that doesn't mean I can "see" what the right thing is. Even faces are that way. I can recognize someone, but not really describe what features I was looking at to do so. With a piece of paper, I can kind of use it as the "scratch surface" for the recognition to play off of. Scribble a little and I'll know if I got closer or further from what I wanted. Math isn't hard with paper since I can put all the numbers there and not have to remember what I was doing. It's just process at that point, and my brain can do processes. Neat to hear that experience is somewhat parodied in others with aphantasia!

Same thing I've found. I can remember an absurd amount of random stuff, just not really "forced" memorization. I have to connect it to something (experience, interest, etc.) to remember it long-term, and even then it requires some kind of trigger to reappear. Process based stuff on the other hand (engineering, design, etc.) is super natural and I don't have to study it at all really. My brain can kind of just "rebuild" the information at any time.

For sure the way it works for me. I've got a couple poems, lots of digits of pi, and some other random stuff automatized through practice. I don't exactly "remember" them, but if I can start speaking them I can run through the whole thing perfectly after. The hard part is the practice and the reliable trigger to start the remembrance.