This. If you ask me to imagine a triangle I'll start thinking about having three sides and three angles and the area is half of the base times the height and it's a rigid body and the angles add up to 180 degrees... but there's no visual aspect to it.
Sometimes I wonder if aphantasia gave me an advantage in mathematics, because I had no trouble whatsoever with the concept of "abstract symbols".
I think you have some abstract symbol capability that is not the opposite of imagery.
I lack imagery but also am nonverbal and hit limits in math. I am terrible at rote memorization or application of formulae.
I did well in math up to a point, which may have hurt me. I simply felt answers to quite a bit of algebra and some calculus, but it doesn't scale. I also got accused of cheating a couple times in primary school, when I could not explain my work when arriving at an answer very quickly.
This. If you ask me to imagine a triangle I'll start thinking about having three sides and three angles and the area is half of the base times the height and it's a rigid body and the angles add up to 180 degrees... but there's no visual aspect to it.
Sometimes I wonder if aphantasia gave me an advantage in mathematics, because I had no trouble whatsoever with the concept of "abstract symbols".