See, what intrigues me about this is I wonder if you're just more nuanced and precise in your description. I always thought of myself as being very visual, and I'm like ninety-nine point something percent of spatial ability, and yet your description seems like a fairly accurate description of what I experience.
The problem is that the descriptions depend on so many subjective things. For instance what does it mean to be able to see someone's face in one's mind? At what resolution question mark at what level of detail? I mean it seems like a lot of people with uncorrected vision can't even see faces to any standards I would consider seeing. So could it be that you're holding your mental visualizations too too high a bar and comparing them with people you have a low bar for mental visualizations?
Edit .. your description of having to trace out the facade is particularly apt to me. It's almost like some kind of DRAM thing where I have to refresh my mental image by touching / scanning parts of it or it goes away.
That's what I always thought originally, but from when I've spoken with other people about it, it's not the normal way of 'visualizing'. In particular, not being able to do things like imagine a persons face is pretty odd. Similarly, when i'm told to "imagine you're in your childhood bedroom" or "imagine you are on a hot desert island", I can't get anything going, while I'm told most people will construct a detailed mental scenery of it.
Like growing up, I always assumed that those scenes where someone's imagination goes wild and they envision other characters doing crazy things (see: the entirety of Scrubs) were just a literary device, but apparently that's at least sort of close to how a normal brain actually works.
The DRAM comparison is pretty good. Or like having a plastic film over the world that you need to press down on to see anything through.
The problem is that the descriptions depend on so many subjective things. For instance what does it mean to be able to see someone's face in one's mind? At what resolution question mark at what level of detail? I mean it seems like a lot of people with uncorrected vision can't even see faces to any standards I would consider seeing. So could it be that you're holding your mental visualizations too too high a bar and comparing them with people you have a low bar for mental visualizations?
Edit .. your description of having to trace out the facade is particularly apt to me. It's almost like some kind of DRAM thing where I have to refresh my mental image by touching / scanning parts of it or it goes away.