I have partial facial blindness which makes it hard to picture faces that aren’t super familiar and I can’t create new faces in my head. I end up picturing faces of people I know and celebrities.
It becomes frustrating when I’m reading as the faces morph constantly into my head. I constantly stop to get the faces right. Sydney Sweeney ended up as 2 characters when I read “Bunny” lol. I also get a biased view of the characters this way. It makes it really hard to enjoy reading nowadays. Any suggestions? Different strategies for picturing or reading without picturing?
Like others on this thread, I have aphantasia, so I don’t. Rarely is this information vital to the book.
People on this post might be interested in the book What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund. Essentially, very few people see a fully detailed face while reading.