I'm not the grandparent, but after doing "Learning How To Learn" course on coursera[1] (very good), I finally realised I suffer from Aphantasia, where I don't see images in my imagination.
Even though I'd tried loads of memory techniques over the years as I have a very poor memory, I'd never really understood people actually see images. I thought they meant that they were, like me, simply listing the properties the image would have in your head.
So all these techniques like "remembering the number as a picture" never worked well from me, and finally explained why all the common techniques people recommend are pretty useless. It turns out people have a huge variation on how good they are at visualising things in their minds eye, and I'm right near the bottom in terms of skill.
On the plus side it turns out that I can make images appear, having done some exercises to help it, although I didn't keep at it and it still doesn't come naturally. Most people can improve and there are very few cases of people not actually being able to do it. I also read of one man who'd had a stroke and lost his ability to picture things in his brain.
Oddly, I am very quick at generally orienteering myself in new places and picking up map layouts in games, even though I don't visualize anything in my head.
Funnily enough it never occurred to me to think of things as pictures for my whole childhood. Even though I am almost a completely visual thinker.
It’s worth thinking about how you think. Eg if I imagine time passing as images of numbers, I can keep track of time and talk at the same time. If I count them out in my head, I always loose track within seconds.
Oh wow, I just tried counting to ten with pictures while thinking a conversation. Neat trick!
I do something similar for separating my hands on the piano, the left hand becomes a pattern rather than literal chords and I can picture the hand placement and still think of the melody. Forever a work in progress that is though.
I worked with a graphic designer with aphantasia! If you will excuse the wordplay, I could never imagine what it was like inside her head, as her process would surely be very different to mine. But she was very skilled and had been doing it for years. She also didn't realise until she was in her 30s that it was something she had.
She was capable of fluently talking about changes and the effects they would have on the design and so the fact that this could all happen without ever picturing the changes was super interesting.
